There's a change in management at Yahoo -- will Carol Bartz's arrival
attract interest from Microsoft again? And don't you just love newsletter entries that are really just questions?
Posted by Lee Pender on January 15, 20090 comments
Oh, it's on now. Sure, Microsoft and Google have been competing for a while, battling it out in search and, to a much lesser extent, in productivity suites (which means Microsoft Office and Google Apps, in case you were wondering).
But it's really on now because Google has decided to replicate arguably the smartest move Microsoft ever made: selling through the partner channel. That's right -- Google has a partner program, and it's looking for you.
Well, it might be looking for you, anyway. The program is primarily focused on Google Apps -- the search giant's low-cost answer to Microsoft Office -- right now. A Google spokesperson shed a little light via e-mail to RCPU on what the company is seeking from partners. It's nothing you wouldn't expect, but here are the guts of what he said:
"As our customer needs are diverse, we also expect the characteristics of our reseller community to be diverse. For some, this is an opportunity to add SaaS products to complement their existing on-premises portfolio. For others, it's an opportunity to go all the way into the cloud. We anticipate that those firms who have a strong orientation toward SaaS and cloud computing as a primary or a complementary business will be most successful. And we expect that a commitment to providing value-added wrap-around services and solutions is also essential. Successful partners will help customers to plan, migrate, integrate, customize, optimize, extend, and support their Google Apps solutions."
That's sensible enough. Google's looking for SaaS-oriented partners that want to provide add-ons to Apps or offer other services that add value to Google's goods. Of course, partners would be working with the Premier version of Apps, the one Google actually charges for, and would keep recurring revenue after buying Apps at a discount. Presumably, the real money would be -- as it almost always is -- in providing services and add-ons, and Google's prepared to help train partners to do that, too.
Everything considered, it sounds like a good effort for a first-time partner overture. And nobody can argue with Google's desire to copy the model that has made its chief competitor in this space so successful. What we wonder is what Microsoft thinks of all this. We haven't seen a response from Microsoft yet -- and, to be fair, we haven't asked for one yet, either. But we're guessing that Microsoft doesn't have much of substance to say about Google's move. Companies rarely do in these situations, and that's understandable. It's not Microsoft's announcement.
Besides, Office isn't exactly under threat for now. It's still the dominant productivity suite by miles, and Google Apps still can't compete with Office in terms of functionality. Beyond that, just about everybody's used to Office by now, and Office file formats are de facto standards. (In fact, the Office Open XML format actually is a standard now.)
Ask yourself this, though: If you're a Microsoft partner, how will Redmond look at you if you decide to dip your toe into Google's waters, or maybe, more appropriately, reach for Google's cloud? Sure, Microsoft partners link up with other companies -- with competitors -- all the time and Redmond doesn't look at it as the end of the world.
But this is a little different. This is Google, the new superpower, coming right at Microsoft, recruiting partners -- in all likelihood, Microsoft partners -- to try to take down Office, which is still a big cash cow grazing in the fertile fields of the Pacific Northwest. Google seems to be offering a pretty good deal for the right kind of partner, but if you're tight with Microsoft -- or, more appropriately, if you're worried about your relationship with Microsoft -- think about the consequences of linking up with Google before making a move. Because even though Google's a huge underdog in this space, we have a feeling that this fight could end up getting pretty nasty.
Will you look at Google's partner program for Google Apps? Why or why not? Let us know at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on January 15, 20091 comments
Sometimes security breaches begin with the folks writing legitimate code.
This is a must-read for the Skittles and Mountain Dew crowd.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 14, 20091 comments
You didn't think we'd get out of this unscathed, did you? The ever-darkening economy is going to throw a cloud on the technology industry in 2009, at least according to one survey.
Forrester Research says that IT spending will fall 3 percent year-over-year worldwide in 2009, meaning that the IT industry will actually shrink for the first time in seven years. Ouch. But, hey, it's no surprise, right? It could even be worse...right?
And the bad news isn't all that bad for everybody. Forrester says that the bulk of the spending drop will hit hardware; software spending should remain more or less flat. And flat doesn't sound that bad right now. For partners, though, there's another warning sign: Those all-important services revenues might decrease, given that spending on IT services and outsourcing is set to drop by 3 percent.
Bad economic news is definitely dog-bites-man -- as opposed to the opposite, of course -- these days, so none of this data is unexpected. But it's also not welcome, either. The partners that are going to get the most out of 2009 will be the innovators, the ones that can embrace new models (SaaS, anyone?) and find ways to drive unexpected value for cash-strapped customers.
Oh, we know -- that last sentence was just a bunch of clichés. But that doesn't mean those clichés aren't true. Just something to think about...as if you weren't thinking about it already.
What's your plan for getting through tough times? Let us know at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on January 14, 20090 comments
This is a
considerable jump in the number of testers from the current version of Exchange, which only had 5,000 people toying with it at the same point in its development.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 14, 20090 comments
Well,
one critical patch, anyway. It's a boom-bust cycle for patches these days, but in this case a smaller number is probably better than a bigger one.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 13, 20090 comments
Aside from ragging on the European Union once in a while and maybe throwing the odd Commie joke at the more extreme elements of the open source movement, we try to stay apolitical here at RCPU.
So, as you read this post, keep in mind that we're not making value judgments about our leaders, outgoing or incoming. But we are saying this: By pretty much any objective measure, Barack Obama is more popular than George W. Bush right now. There's a definite buzz around the president-elect, and we think it's fair to say that not too many folks are shedding tears about W's departure.
Why do we mention this? Because, in terms of popularity, Windows 7 is Barack Obama. And, yeah, that makes Vista George W. Bush. Last week, users clamored for the Windows 7 beta until Microsoft's servers just couldn't handle the traffic anymore -- and now, Microsoft has eliminated the limit on the number of users who can download the beta version.
Everybody wants a piece of Obama 7, but only hardcore fans are still rallying around George W. Vista. But is Windows 7 change we can believe in? Does it deliver hope? That's for beta testers to decide, and ultimately consumers and businesses will make the call. Thus far, the reviews look pretty good, but Windows 7 is a long way from taking office.
The expectations are high. The stakes are high -- maybe higher than ever before. They hype is reaching fever pitch. The outgoing figure is...not popular. We just can't help but see the parallels. Barack Obama will be in office long before Windows 7 comes out, but the two will always be tied in history. In our minds, anyway.
What do you want to hear in Windows 7's inauguration speech? Sound off at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on January 13, 20093 comments
A new study suggests that SaaS hype is
becoming reality, at least among developers.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 13, 20090 comments
Does it take money to save money? Microsoft would like you to think that it does. It has put together a
series of ads in which
executives talk about how software can save companies money. And, hey, we believe that's true -- but the question is, do companies have money to spend on software this year so that they can start saving down the road? We sure hope they do...and so does Microsoft.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 13, 20090 comments
So, you bought Vista, and maybe you don't like it so much, and you're thinking that you spent a bunch of money for not much in return. Well, you'd be wrong -- because you didn't just buy Vista. You also bought Windows 7. Maybe.
Apparently, Microsoft might be preparing to give free upgrades from Vista to Windows 7. At the time of writing this, we're still not sure whether that's true. But according to a Web site that actually manages to get things right occasionally, Microsoft is going to (with restrictions, of course) give Vista buyers a free pass to the next level.
Now, for those of us who are mainly concerned with the enterprise, Redmond's little gesture, should it actually come to pass, is pretty irrelevant, in large part because not many enterprises bothered to buy into Vista in the first place. Beyond that, this is, or would be, clearly a consumer-focused effort aimed at burying the mostly lousy legacy of Vista. We have no idea at this point how or whether the free upgrades would work with volume licensing -- but, again, unless we're talking upgrades from XP here, a lot of companies won't care.
What interests us here is Microsoft's attitude toward Vista in particular and Windows in general. As recently as July, Steve Ballmer was banging on at the Worldwide Partner Conference about how Microsoft wasn't giving up on Vista and how partners should continue to push the forlorn operating system. There were even pro-Vista sessions with partners and IT folks at the conference.
Then, seemingly almost at the same time, news about Windows 7 started to leak, and Microsoft started floating demos of Vista's successor. Within a few months, Windows 7 betas were appearing, and now Vista seems to be about as welcome a name in Redmond as Madoff is on Wall Street or Blago is in Illinois.
And now this upgrade program comes along -- potentially -- and that old Chicago tune "Hard To Say I'm Sorry" is running through our minds. (Get your lighters out for that one -- even the YouTube video is legitimately retro.) Microsoft won't -- can't -- admit that Vista, despite all its hype, was pretty much a dog in many users' eyes. So instead of just saying that it was a bust, Redmond is trying to move us all along...nothing to see here...to Windows 7.
Of course, with 90-plus percent market share, the Windows franchise isn't exactly crumbling. And it probably won't for a while, until Software-as-a-Service becomes the norm and the operating system becomes mostly irrelevant, anyway...we say as we try for the fifteenth time to log into a (non-Microsoft) SaaS application that's been down all day.
How excited are you about Windows 7? What do you want from it? Will you ever give up XP? Sound off at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on January 08, 20097 comments