Windows 7 Beta in Two Months?

One of the Directions on Microsoft guys thinks it's possible, and they're not often wrong about the goings on in Redmond. So, Vista inches ever closer to the scrap heap of history...with poor (OK, not that poor, given his contract) Jerry Seinfeld in tow.

Posted by Lee Pender on September 16, 20080 comments


Ingram Micro Opens Up Cisco Sales to Government VARs

An alliance with immixGovernment is making it possible for partners to sell Cisco wares to government agencies.

Posted by Lee Pender on September 11, 20080 comments


CommVault Names New U.S. Channel Chief

Well, presumably Mark Conley's parents actually named him...but CommVault has hired Conley as director of North American channel sales.

Posted by Lee Pender on September 11, 20080 comments


Microsoft Shifts Another Gear in Standards

Oh, how the proprietary have fallen. Well, not fallen really, but certainly changed. Microsoft is making noises about openness and collaboration again, this time with a couple of standards-oriented initiatives.

Redmond said this week that it'll work on a Web services interface with IBM and EMC, and it's also joining a standards group called the Object Management Group. (OK, so we didn't know what that was, either -- but this story told us).

Of course, there will always be healthy and probably justified skepticism about just how open Microsoft wants to be and what its true motives are for joining these efforts (as in, to take them over completely). But we can't fault Redmond for at least showing signs of coming out of its proprietary shell. And if this new spirit of glasnost actually leads to technological advancements of some sort -- hey, all the better!

Posted by Lee Pender on September 11, 20080 comments


Chrome Snatching IE Market Share?

Well, that's what the headline says, although we wonder how much one has to do with the other. And, at 0.7 percent market share, Chrome seems like much less of a threat to IE than Firefox -- for now. But, hey, we all love to read about Google, right?

Posted by Lee Pender on September 10, 20086 comments


Another VMware Exec Departs

Diane Greene is gone, and so now is one of the company's co-founders. Is the bloom off of VMware's rose? We'll see.

Posted by Lee Pender on September 10, 20080 comments


Hello, Redmond: London Calling

Given the hysteria in this part of the world over Tom Brady's knee, we barely noticed that the London Stock Exchange crashed yesterday. Yes, that's right; the news is shocking -- Tom Brady's out for the season.

No, wait, that's not the news we meant to talk about. What we meant to say was: Yes, that's right; the news is shocking -- the London freaking Stock Exchange went down. For almost an entire day. During a rally.

It might not have the massive impact of Brady's injury, but a whole major stock exchange going down for a day sounds like a pretty big deal here at RCPU. What's an even bigger deal, you ask? The fact that some people are blaming Microsoft for the crash.

Ugh. OK, so maybe it's not fair to blame Microsoft and .NET for the LSE's meltdown. We really don't know. Right now, probably nobody does. But this is one of those black eyes that Microsoft -- which had advertised the fact that the LSE picked its wares over Linux for "reliability" -- just doesn't need.

Maybe this little mini-storm will pass -- or maybe Microsoft really will end up being officially at fault somehow, in which case partners might have to field a few questions about just how reliable Redmond's infrastructure is. Is this a few strained ligaments or a torn ACL for Redmond? We'll see -- but Microsoft folks have to hope that they'll make out better than Tom Brady.

Posted by Lee Pender on September 10, 20080 comments


Microsoft Making Progress in Virtualization

So, this week, Microsoft held one of those non-event events in which it gathers reporters together to release a few details about upcoming products, and reporters go because, well, it's Microsoft.

OK, so it wasn't a total non-event, but we do kind of wonder sometimes why Microsoft bothers with a whole big press event when a press release and a couple of spokespeople available to take calls would suffice.

But that's all press stuff, and you don't care about press stuff. You care about what Microsoft had to say earlier this week. Basically, with regard to its virtualization plans, Redmond says that things are coming along. The Hyper-V hypervisor is free now, as opposed to costing $28, and Redmond's working on what it calls Live Migration -- "the ability to move a virtual machine (VM) from one physical machine to another, with no downtime," as Virtualization Review Editor Keith Ward so eloquently writes.

There's a whole lineup of products either coming or on the way, and the attention Microsoft is paying to virtualization signals that the technology will be a cornerstone of its strategic plans going forward. And that has to be good news given that the company won't be able to rely on the earning power of Windows and Office forever. Besides, we could use a good rivalry in the industry these days, and Microsoft-VMware could be a healthy battle -- an event not to be missed.

What's your take on Microsoft's virtualization strategy? Send it to [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on September 09, 20080 comments


Seinfeld Ad Gets People Talking

Love it or hate it -- and, let's face it, you probably hated it the way we did -- Microsoft's bizarre Bill Gates-Jerry Seinfield-shoe shopping ad at least has the blogs burning with opinions, even if most of them are negative.

We understand that the ad campaign is a series, but the next installment is going to have to do a lot of explaining and a heck of a lot more entertaining to hold our interest.

Posted by Lee Pender on September 09, 20081 comments


Redmond Updates Dynamics CRM Online

From the cloud comes a cool, refreshing rain of updates for Microsoft's hosted CRM service.

Posted by Lee Pender on September 09, 20080 comments


Four Patches Coming Tuesday

At least that's the count for now.

Posted by Lee Pender on September 04, 20081 comments


Red Hat Makes Virtualization Play

And sidesteps Microsoft in the process, apparently.

Posted by Lee Pender on September 04, 20080 comments