Microsoft, HP Invite VARs To Host

This week, Microsoft and HP revealed an initiative aimed at preparing VARs to undertake what's called private-label hosting. Basically, VARs resell applications hosted in datacenters by Microsoft-approved managed service providers (or MSPs, of course); HP and Microsoft provide some technical infrastructure and handy tips for getting started.

The nice thing here for VARs, other than getting some assistance in moving into a hot, new technology model, is that they can put their names on these hosted services. That's the nature of private label -- VARs brand hosted offerings as their own rather than selling a product with somebody else's name on it and just settling for a referral fee. With private label, VARs don't have to give up their identities as trusted advisers to customers.

For MSPs, too, there are advantages. Despite considerable efforts from the good folks at the MSP Alliance, managed service providers still face a bit of an uphill battle overcoming the bad impressions a few of the bad apples in their industry have left with customers. HP and Microsoft, with this new program, are giving MSPs a little endorsement in selling to VARs. Private-label sales to VARs already is and should continue to be a nice revenue stream for many MSPs; a positive word and some technical help from Microsoft and HP should only help service providers' cause in attracting VARs as customers.

Of course, this new initiative doesn't make everything OK. Microsoft is still planning to host its own applications and therefore compete pretty directly with MSPs, as well as with VARs. And unless Steve Ballmer has changed his mind since July, Redmond doesn't plan on giving a competitive inch to its partners-slash-competitors.

Still, if anything, the Microsoft-HP initiative has the look of a bit of an olive branch to the channel at a time when a lot of partners are still not totally sure how cloud computing will affect their businesses or how, exactly, they should participate in it. And that doesn't seem like a bad thing.

Will you take advantage of the Microsoft-HP hosting offer? How are you preparing your business to deal with cloud computing? Let us know at [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on December 11, 20081 comments

Google Seeks To Bridge App Gap with NaCl

"NaCl, the chemical formula for sodium chloride [See, we told you. --LP], can be seen as salt in Microsoft's wounds. If Google's Native Client becomes a robust system, the performance gap between desktop and Web applications could all but vanish.

"For companies that continue to rely on revenue from desktop software, such as Microsoft and Adobe, that would further undermine the value proposition of their costly software products. That possibility has long been foreseen, however, and both Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) and Microsoft are moving their applications online in ways that make the browser less relevant."

OK, so improving performance of Web apps would go a long way toward bringing Web applications to parity with desktop apps. (We like to call it bridging the app gap.) But performance isn't the only issue SaaS, Web 2.0, cloud computing or whatever you want to call it faces. There's also the issue of uptime, the problem of ownership of applications (some companies just like to run stuff in-house) and even a few potential regulatory hurdles with HIPAA laws and the like.

We're believers in Web-based applications, SaaS and all the rest of it, but we're also not ready to declare the desktop dead yet. And with Windows Azure, Microsoft is at least acknowledging that it needs to be a player in the cloud. So we're not ready to see NaCl as salt in anybody's wound -- more like a new ingredient to spice up competition a little bit.

Posted by Lee Pender on December 10, 20080 comments

Another UC Software Package, But At Least It's Free

Posted by Lee Pender on December 10, 20080 comments

The Press and the Global Economic Freak-Out

Wrote reader Dennis back in November in response to RCPU's most grievous freak-out:

"I've been more than aware of the economic problems facing this nation for the last couple of months, as well as the failures in the housing industry that seem to have precipitated the whole thing.

"However, one thing that I've been seeing lately has me wondering if we're making things worse by the way in which we describe the situation. Words like 'cratered,' which you used in your article, seem to be a bit melodramatic to describe a growth rate of only 10 percent in Dynamics billings. Billings 'fell off a cliff' is used to describe the same situation.

"I suppose that to add some punch to their columns, writers seek for the most dramatic phrase to describe the Dow's loss for the day, or the number of home foreclosures in a month. However, when those phrases pass through the mind of the average person, I wonder if they don't have a cumulatively depressing effect. If there's any way to be optimistic in today's market, it's made harder by continually hearing about cratering and falling off a cliff.

"What I'm suggesting as a remedy isn't to paint everything as rosy, but to use less emotionally powerful words to describe, as rationally as possible, the events of the day, and then to give some context for them. To refer to the Great Depression as something which could happen only once isn't enough. We've got to refer to events more recent than the 1929 Crash or the '30s and try to do it in a less hysterical way."

Dadgummit (as we'd say in Texas), Dennis, your brand of thoughtful, sensible, rational e-mails is just not welcome around here. Just kidding. Actually, we really like what you had to say.

While we do think that we're all in for some rough times ahead (and in the midst of rough times now), we did try to qualify that Dynamics revenues being off isn't exactly tantamount to the coming of another depression. We were hoping that our readers would be savvy enough to see how silly it is to juxtapose the two, and we think that most were. You certainly were.

However, when it comes to mainstream coverage of the economy (and, uh, maybe some of the coverage here, too), we totally agree with you. There are a lot of alarmist writers out there who've bought into using scare tactics to get people to read articles. We've tried to subtly parody that just a bit, but it's entirely possible that we're being way too subtle. And, outside of attempted parodies, we've also bought too much into the same tactic ourselves -- it's just so hard to resist!

Really, the conditions of the early '90s and certainly of the late '70s (especially the late '70s) were arguably worse than anything we're seeing now, although the potential for total collapse seems much worse today. Nevertheless, some, maybe a lot, of the doomsday talk -- which has yet to die down after it was spurred partly by both presidential candidates during their campaigns -- is way out of line.

As for Dynamics revenues falling off a cliff, they might have by Microsoft's standards...but they certainly didn't by the standards of, say, AIG or GM. So, you make a very good point. We should be more careful about using language like that, and we will try to be in the future.

How panicked are you about the economy? Get your thoughts on that or anything else that's on your mind in to [email protected]. Next week we'll release our last batch of RCPUs until the new year, so hurry!

Posted by Lee Pender on December 10, 20080 comments

What You Want from Windows 7

Well, just in case it doesn't -- where's that "rolling eyes" emoticon when we need it? -- Windows 7 is well on its way. We asked you last week what you wanted from Windows 7, and some of you answered, in great detail, in the comments section of the RCPU blog online (and thank you for that). Some of you took the other route, though, and e-mailed your editor directly. We like both forms of feedback, so let's get to those e-mails:

Keith starts us off:

"The IT department here has been using Vista in case we decided to roll it out to the whole company, and I can definitely state that I have no intentions of doing so. I will use XP on my network as long as I possibly can. If Windows 7 is just a glorified version of Vista, then it may be time to migrate to Macs. It's obvious that Microsoft has lost its edge. But it remains to be seen if Apple, which has historically failed to capture the mainstream market, can use the Vista debacle to make strong gains on corporate America. I believe losing market share is the only way Microsoft will wake up and realize that Vista is a flop. It should have built Windows 7 on the XP core instead of the Vista core, in my opinion."

Keith, that whole message makes a lot of sense, especially the last bit. Why Microsoft insists that Vista's core is the way forward is as baffling to us as it is to you. (Then again, we here at RCPU don't build operating systems, so...) It certainly feels as though Redmond is trying to force the Vista-Windows 7 model down our throats, but we wonder how much leverage Microsoft still has to do that sort of thing these days. A lot, maybe, but it would be nice if Microsoft would listen to its customers and accept that Vista is largely a flop. Maybe Windows 7 will be much, much better than Vista -- but it'll have to be a massive improvement if Microsoft wants to win back the hearts and minds of a lot of users and partners.

Dave offers a similar perspective:

"IMO, Microsoft has three blind spots it will need to face before the rest of us will take a look at a new OS:

1. Legacy applications. Vista won't run them, and all security issues aside, there has to be a way. If I wanted to re-buy all my applications, I'd switch to Mac.
2. Testing. I purchased a brand-new HP with brand-new Vista Ultimate, and it's had unresolved problems since Day 1. I STILL have to reboot every day. I want an OS that is tested before I buy it.
3. Parity. My Vista computer refuses to install updates, even after a complete re-install of Vista. XP gives me no trouble, so why change? I want to go beyond parity.

"The bottom line is: What am I going through this kind of pain for? The Aero interface? If that's the big attraction, then who cares? Microsoft assumes we find value in Vista but fails to convince us that Vista has more to offer than XP when, in fact, we find Vista to offer us less. What do I want? In a word, MORE."

We hear you, Dave. We feel sure that Keith hears you as well. The question is whether Microsoft hears you. Stay tuned.

Thanks to Keith and Dave for their thoughts on Vista. We'll be running more reader feedback this week, so get your thoughts in on anything and everything to [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on December 09, 20084 comments

Salesforce.com and Google Expand Cloud Partnership

Posted by Lee Pender on December 09, 20080 comments

Microsoft, RSA in Security Pact

Posted by Lee Pender on December 09, 20080 comments

Microsoft, Fashion House

Posted by Lee Pender on December 09, 20080 comments

Vista SP2 Beta Available

Posted by Lee Pender on December 04, 20081 comments

Vista's Days Numbered as Windows 7 Beta Nears

Now, back to business. Not that Microsoft is trying to push Vista into the retirement home early or anything, but there could be a Windows 7 beta available as early as next month. In any case, folks who attend the upcoming MSDN Developer Conferences will get Windows 7 DVDs at some point, and that point might be as early as mid-January.

At least Redmond has stopped pretending that companies are going to suddenly wake up to the beauty of Vista and adopt it en masse. Microsoft hardly talks about Vista anymore -- the last hardcore marketing of it we heard came at the Worldwide Partner Conference in July, and all talk of Vista seemed to stop dead after that -- and Windows 7 has been the primary buzz generator in Redmond for a few months now.

We'd all be wise, though, not to view Windows 7 as some sort of operating-system messiah that's going to save us from Vista. It'll actually be a lot like Vista, as we all now know, and even Microsoft is starting the spin on differentiating Windows 7 from -- oh, dear -- a Vista service pack. If Redmond's already telling people that Windows 7 isn't just a glorified Vista service pack, well... We'll let you draw your own conclusions.

The real question will be whether people just didn't like Vista and therefore rejected it or whether they really, really like XP and don't want to move. If the former is true, Windows 7 will hopefully fix some of the issues that made Vista so annoying and get the Microsoft OS roadmap back on, um, track (there's a mixed metaphor in there somewhere -- sorry). However, if users stick with XP just because they like it and don't want to move away from it, Microsoft will face the much more daunting challenge of convincing customers that they really will need to upgrade to a new OS at some point -- or Redmond could just speed the end of XP support, we suppose, and force everybody's hand.

Either way, Windows 7 is as much of a watershed OS as a company with 90-plus percent market share can release. And it's already stealing the headlines from Vista -- which seems to be just what Microsoft wants.

What do you want from Windows 7? What will it take functionality-wise to pull you away from XP? Sound off at [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on December 04, 20082 comments

Ingram Offers Microsoft SPLA

Posted by Lee Pender on December 04, 20081 comments

Microsoft To Add Datacenters

Posted by Lee Pender on December 04, 20080 comments