Bringing Windows Server Home

Microsoft made a major foray into the home entertainment market Sunday with the announcement of the general availability of Windows Home Server. Partners swarmed around the announcement with a series of related products or complete systems -- some available immediately, others coming over the next year.

One of the fastest on the draw is Hewlett-Packard. The HP MediaSmart Server, based on Windows Home Server, was available immediately for pre-order from Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, Buy.com, CircuitCity.com and CompUSA.com. HP's offering also set a benchmark on pricing -- about $600 for a 500GB server and about $750 for a 1TB server.

A few companies already have systems ready based on the system builder version of the software, including Ace Computers, Advantec, PC Club and Universal Systems Inc.

Two other systems available now are the Tranquil PC T7-HSA Tranquil Harmony Home Server and the Velocity Micro NetMagix HomeServer. Promising systems before the end of 2007 are Fujitsu Siemens Computers and Medion Home Server. Iomega Corp. is committed to shipping systems in early 2008, while Gateway Inc. and LaCie also have plans to sell Windows Home Server-based systems.

According to Microsoft, there are at least 35 applications for Windows Home Server from companies including Avira GmbH, Diskeeper Corp., Embedded Automation Inc., Proxure Inc., SageTV, SightSpeed Inc., Telligent Systems, WiLife Inc., avast!, F-Secure, CEIVA, Iron Mountain, Jungle Disk, Lagotek, LobsterTunes, Raxco Software and Whiist.

Posted by Scott Bekker on November 06, 20070 comments


Dell Buys EqualLogic

Dell Inc. announced its intention on Monday to buy EqualLogic Inc. for $1.4 billion in cash. EqualLogic, which makes virtualization-optimized iSCSI storage area network solutions, will be Dell's sixth acquisition in two years. Like several of those acquisitions (Silverback Technologies and ASAP Software), this deal has channel ramifications.

According to a Dell statement, "Dell plans to grow EqualLogic's successful channel-partner programs with current and future EqualLogic-branded products, and also plans to incorporate EqualLogic technology into future generations of its Dell PowerVault storage line available through the channel and direct from Dell."

Meanwhile, if you thought Dell would be satisfied with its recent radical transformation from a mostly direct business model to a mixed model with about 10,000 retail outlets via partnerships with Wal-Mart, Staples, Carphone Warehouse, Bic Camera and Gome...think again. During the EqualLogic call, Michael Dell said, "Six months ago, I think we had zero stores where you could buy Dell product, and now we have about 10,000 stores. Just stay tuned for additional announcements." Dell also said he'll keep offering Windows XP until customers don't want it anymore.

The main story on EqualLogic with some of the other tidbits is here.

Posted by Scott Bekker on November 06, 20071 comments


Visual Studio To Ship this Month

Visual Studio 2008 will be ready for release this month, according to S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division.

That means the much-anticipated "Orcas" set of developer tools at least will be on track for Microsoft's big day, Feb. 27, when Microsoft plans to launch Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. It remains to be seen if the new versions of Windows Server and SQL Server will be ready for launch at that time.

For more details about the current status of Visual Studio and some of the newly released components such as the Sync Framework CTP and Popfly Explorer, click here for Keith Ward's coverage.

In his update on Visual Studio progress at Microsoft's TechEd Developers conference in Barcelona, Somasegar referred to some new licensing terms for partners. One change to Visual Studio 2008 licensing terms is supposed to end limitations on partners that prevented them from building solutions on Visual Studio for non-Windows or non-Microsoft platforms.

Another new element is shared source licensing for Premier-level partners in the Visual Studio Industry Partner program. Those exclusive partners will be allowed to view Visual Studio source code for debugging purposes while integrating their products with Visual Studio 2008.

Posted by Scott Bekker on November 06, 20070 comments


Another Patent Protection Deal for Microsoft

It's been a while, but Microsoft has signed another deal with a Linux development/distribution company, promising not to sue its users for any alleged patent infringement. This time it's Turbolinux, a maker of Linux desktop and server products that sells most of its wares to Japan and China.

The deal also includes a number of collaboration initiatives, including making Microsoft's Live Search the default search engine.

Posted by Scott Bekker on October 23, 20070 comments


'MinWin' Promises Less Complexity

OK, here's an important new technology concept to think about. Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Eric Traut gave a presentation last week at the University of Illinois where he said Microsoft is working on "MinWin," a much tighter kernel to provide the foundation for all future Windows OS releases, client and server.

It's currently 25MB and Traut wants to make it smaller. I'm not going to get my hopes up, especially after all the cool technology plans Microsoft had for Windows Longhorn/Vista that were eventually dropped or delayed. But this does sound promising.

Keith Ward has a lot more detail on "MinWin" here.

Posted by Scott Bekker on October 23, 20070 comments


Microsoft, European Commission Make Nice

The long international nightmare appears to be over. The European Commission and Microsoft settled their antitrust case in a phone call on Monday morning. The agreement came after a round of dinner diplomacy between Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes in the first week of October, followed up by daily phone calls to hammer out the details.

Highlights: Microsoft won't appeal the Court of First Instance ruling, Microsoft's communications protocols will now only cost rivals a one-time fee of about $14,300 and a patent royalty will now amount to 0.4 percent of a competing product's sales as opposed to an earlier royalty of 5.95 percent. Click here for more details.

The case will be sure to generate continuing minor spats of the sort that occasionally flare up between Microsoft and its antitrust overseers at the U.S. Justice Department or state governments. But barring bad behavior on either side, both parties are now free to move on to other things.

Posted by Scott Bekker on October 23, 20070 comments


Dell Takes Another Step Toward Retail Channel

Dell, which built its once-dominant PC position on a direct-to-consumer model, took another step toward the retail channel with an agreement with Staples.

Starting Nov. 11, Dell will sell desktops, notebooks, monitors and printers at 1,400 Staples locations and through the Staples Web site. The deal was announced on Monday. It follows a similar arrangement with Wal-Mart to sell PCs in 3,000 stores. Worldwide, Dell says its products will be in more than 10,000 stores.

At Staples, Dell systems will be displayed alongside Hewlett-Packard, Acer and Toshiba machines.

We're still anxiously awaiting specifics from Dell on how they plan to include VARs in their future sales plans.

Posted by Scott Bekker on October 23, 20070 comments


Fast Company 2.0

You think you've seen good growth, or had your share of growth-related employment headaches? Well, Microsoft had a stunning example of partner growth to tell in a press release distributed on Thursday. It described the company's new report, estimating the worldwide economic impact of Microsoft.

The partner-growth bombshell from the release was this:

"Wicresoft Co. Ltd., a Microsoft partner based in China, grew from 70 to 1,000 employees in a short amount of time and generated a sales volume of $32 million last year alone."

Wicresoft President Ingrid Wang commented on the achievement in the press release:

"Through Microsoft's training program, our sales staff completed a year's sales volume in only half a year. Our business boomed. We have had a successful transformation from novice member of China's IT ecosystem to international player. We treasure the strategic alliance with Microsoft here in China."

Turns out there's more to it. Wicresoft, which describes itself as a professional IT and business process outsourcing services provider, is a bit more than a Microsoft partner. "Strategic alliance" is a bit of an understatement. According to Wicresoft's Web page, the company was formed in 2002 as a joint venture between Microsoft and the Shanghai Municipal Government. Before joining Wicresoft, Wang had worked at Microsoft (China) Co. Ltd., and two other top executives, Mike Xu and Patrick Cai, are Microsoft veterans. This is a company to keep an eye on.

Posted by Scott Bekker on October 18, 20070 comments


Lots of Action Around Small Business Server

Eric Ligman, Microsoft's U.S. senior manager of Small Business Community Engagement, has been busy over on his small business community blog in the last week. For one thing, there's a new Windows Small Business Server Test Drive feature designed to help partners show Small Business Server to prospects through a Web-based tool. There's a similar customer-facing tool on the SBS 2003 R2 product site, but it doesn't have as many bells and whistles as the version for partners to show their customers. Find out more here.

Also, Ligman blogged that the SBS Partner Subsidy promotion is being expanded. This is an extra discount for SBS customers who buy from Small Business Specialists. Check it out here.

Posted by Scott Bekker on October 18, 20070 comments


Best Books for Business

Trust a crime writer to get business right. While at a used bookstore on vacation this summer, I picked up a 1977 novel by Elmore Leonard called The Hunted. In it, Leonard's got one of the pithiest descriptions of how to succeed in business that I've ever come across.

"In the business world, you don't prepare yourself for a certain job and that's it, like a bookkeeper, a tax accountant. You hire those people," one character, a successful businessman, explains to a marine, who is about to retire from the service and is looking for direction. "What you do, you keep your eyes open, you use a little imagination seeing how you can fit into a situation or how you can bend the situation around so it fits you."

Then again, this particular businessman is on the run from mobsters, so there you go.

What are your favorite books about business? Send titles to me at sbekker@rcpmag.com. We're taking the kitchen-sink approach here, so include books that are partner-specific, market-specific, management tomes and even books that aren't obviously about business but inspire your work. When we get enough, we'll pull them into a list to share.

Posted by Scott Bekker on October 18, 20070 comments


What an Ecosystem We Live In

Microsoft released a huge study on Thursday filled with facts and figures about how much its software contributes to worldwide GDP, employment and tax revenues. With the study stored on Microsoft's Web page in a subdirectory titled "Corporate Citizenship," the primary audience for this document is obviously governments. It's something Microsoft can point to when lobbying for less protectionist trade policies and better IP protection.

There are plenty of tidbits in the IDC-prepared, Microsoft-commissioned study that give partners a sense of where they stand in the bigger picture. How about this one:

"Microsoft-related activities are responsible for 14.7 million jobs from an IT industry total of 35.2 million people -- 42 percent of total IT employment globally in 2007 -- and more than $514 billion in tax revenue worldwide," according to Microsoft.

It sounds like partners might be in the mix there. Some other highlights found in the study are:

  • "For every $1 Microsoft earns in 2007, companies working with Microsoft will earn $7.79." That figure is lower in the United States, at $6.14, but much higher in some places. "Countries such as China, India and Russia see earnings in excess of $16 to $1," Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft, said in a statement.
  • There are more than 640,000 vendors in the Microsoft ecosystem.
  • Those vendors will make more than $425 billion in revenues in 2007.
  • IDC is bullish on IT jobs and businesses. The study predicts 7.1 million new IT jobs and 100,000 new businesses over the next four years. China is expected to be the No. 1 source of new jobs, followed by the United States.

The study is available here.

Posted by Scott Bekker on October 18, 20071 comments


Partnership Adds Social Networking Capabilities to SharePoint

Earlier this week, I wrote about how Ingram Micro was going "all Facebook" with a set of social networking sites where solution providers could connect with each other to partner on business opportunities or on mergers and acquisitions.

Well, that's the opportunity for partners to do some online networking with each other. Now Microsoft is moving to make social networking itself a business opportunity for its partners.

Microsoft announced a partnership with wiki provider Atlassian Software Systems and RSS specialist NewsGator on Wednesday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The basic idea is for the two firms to put together packages that make it easy for companies to "expand social computing opportunities in the workplace."

The packages will work with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft's runaway hit server product that did $800 million in business in fiscal 2007. SharePoint is well on its way to joining Microsoft's club of billion-dollar-a-year products (Windows clients, Office, Windows Server, Exchange Server and SQL Server).

NewsGator went GA on Wednesday with NewsGator Social Sites, a collection of site templates, profiles, Web parts and middleware for SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

Atlassian is making immediately available plug-ins for exchanging information between SharePoint and its Confluence wiki product for the enterprise.

Derek Burney, general manager of SharePoint at Microsoft, said in a statement, "Microsoft's relationships with Atlassian and NewsGator represent dynamic new opportunities for integrating social computing technology into a company's business productivity infrastructure."

Do you see business value for your clients in social networking? Could you make money from it? I'd like to hear your thoughts at sbekker@rcpmag.com.

Posted by Scott Bekker on October 18, 20070 comments