Centrify, an enterprise identity management vendor with deep hooks into the Microsoft stack, is using Microsoft's Office 365 momentum to gain its own traction with managed service providers (MSPs).
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company this week announced its first MSP channel program, which is a new level within the year-old Centrify Channel Partner Network (CCPN).
Centrify has its roots in connecting various non-Microsoft servers and applications in the datacenter into the Active Directory structure to help enterprises keep identity management under control. As cloud services proliferated, the company saw a natural extension in providing single sign-on and multi-factor authentication for multitudes of cloud apps in one corporate portal, be it Active Directory-based or not.
Nathan Adams, director of North American Channels for Centrify, said another Microsoft technology, this time Office 365, is again driving new opportunities for Centrify.
"Provisioning services are being driven by the Office 365 piece," said Adams, noting that the moves to Office 365 are opening doors for widespread, sanctioned use of a lot of other cloud apps.
The Centrify User Suite allows customers, mostly enterprises so far, to provision their end users to be able to log in once for access to all the cloud apps that each customer users. Common apps include Office 365, Google Apps, Concur and Salesforce, but the Centrify catalog includes hundreds more. Some existing Centrify partners had been offering the Centrify User Suite to customers previously, but it was a resale arrangement, Adams said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
The new MSP channel program is enabled by new MSP functionality in the Centrify User Suite. The most significant feature is multi-tenancy, allowing one MSP to manage and administer several customers' implementations from a single pane of glass. The technology was functional about six months ago, but Centrify has been testing it with a limited group of partners and only formally announced it this week, Adams said.
Centrify is not new to the channel, but the company has been getting steadily more serious about growing its revenues through the channel over the last year. The CCPN brought a formal structure to Centrify partners with three tiers, clear criteria for moving from one tier to the next, competencies, training and benefits.
Channel revenues have tripled for Centrify over the last year, and the company has gone from a 70/30 split of direct to indirect revenue 18 months ago to about a 45/55 split recently, Adams said: "The goal is to get that to 70/30 [indirect to direct] or even 80/20."
That Centrify channel currently has the structure of a Fortune 5000-focused vendor, with only 122 partners in North America. The sweet spot for the MSP offerings are in the midmarket -- customers with between 500 and 5,000 users -- but Centrify doesn't plan to recruit aggressively yet.
"We want to make sure that we're continuing to provide a very personal touch with our community. For MSPs, probably throughout this calendar year, it will stay the way that we've planned and that we've laid out," Adams said. In the future, as processes become more routine, the program could expand, he suggested.
At the same time, Centrify wants to stay well out of the way of its new MSP vendor partner, AVG, which unveiled an OEM version of the Centrify User Suite as AVG CloudCare SSO, announced at the AVG Cloud Summit in October. With a large base of MSP customers, AVG can reach the broader SMB market.
"AVG is a very strong partner of ours, and they're going to be going hot and heavy into that market," Adams said.
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 14, 20150 comments
This Tuesday, the IT world will be flying blind when it concerns the security patches coming out of Microsoft.
For more than a decade, Microsoft used a special process called the Advance Notification Service (ANS) to provide a Thursday preview of the number and severity of software fixes coming in the following week's Patch Tuesday, which Microsoft calls Update Tuesday.
Last week, however, Microsoft unexpectedly killed ANS in a blog post on the day people usually looked for the notices.
It's hard to say what motivated Microsoft to end ANS. The stated reason came in the blog by Chris Betz, a senior director of the Microsoft Security Response Center:
ANS has always been optimized for large organizations. However, customer feedback indicates that many of our large customers no longer use ANS in the same way they did in the past due to optimized testing and deployment methodologies. While some customers still rely on ANS, the vast majority wait for Update Tuesday, or take no action, allowing updates to occur automatically. More and more customers today are seeking to cut through the clutter and obtain security information tailored to their organizations. Rather than using ANS to help plan security update deployments, customers are increasingly turning to Microsoft Update and security update management tools such as Windows Server Update Service to help organize and prioritize deployment. Customers are also moving to cloud-based systems, which provide continuous updating.
Fair enough, as far as it goes. Elsewhere in the blog post, however, Betz provides a few clues that Microsoft may be trying to monetize the previously free service. ANS will continue to be available to Premier customers through their Technical Account Managers and to customers in other specialized security arrangements, such as those using the Microsoft Active Protections Program. Nonetheless, the monetization motive is tenuous -- ANS would just be a value-add to a larger service, rather than a direct revenue opportunity.
Reaction to the announcement was swift within the security community. Ross Barrett, security firm Rapid 7's senior manager of security engineering, was displeased with the service cut.
"This is an assault on IT and IT security teams everywhere," Barrett said in an e-mailed statement reported by my colleague Chris Paoli on Redmondmag.com. "Making this change without any lead-up time is simply oblivious to the impact this will have in the real world. Microsoft is basically going back to a message of 'just blindly trust' that we will patch everything for you. Honestly, it's shocking."
Qualys CTO Wolfgang Kandek was less blistering in a blog post of his own, but left open the possibility that the move was a mistake.
"Microsoft will stop providing the ANS information to the general public and parties interested will have to ask for...it through their account manager. Hmmh, I personally have always thought that our customers were interested in the information contained in ANS, but we will see how that works out," Kandek wrote.
Criticizing Microsoft's failure to prepare the market for the end of the public notices is completely valid, and there's always the chance of a backlash that will cause Microsoft to change its mind.
But there are completely valid reasons for Microsoft to scale back on its exceptional process for publicizing and explaining updates -- not that I believe Microsoft would admit them or want to talk about them.
Microsoft's two-step, monthly process of Thursday warnings followed by the release on Tuesday of a collection of patches was unusually rigorous and open. It was created at a time when Microsoft owned more than 90 percent of the market for end user computing devices and when vulnerabilities in Microsoft software were the most serious security problem facing many organizations.
In other words, it's a relic from Microsoft's days at the center of the IT universe. Microsoft's exceptional power at the time carried with it an exceptional responsibility for communicating, over-communicating even, on security issues.
That time is behind us, for two reasons -- one a well-documented negative for Microsoft, the other a less frequently acknowledged positive.
The negative, from Microsoft's standpoint, would be that its 90 percent share has almost inverted. Having missed the rise of smartphones and tablets, Microsoft is left with a 14 percent share of the device market, according to Gartner. Put another way, your responsibility to follow exceptional procedures in communicating your software patches is substantially less when you have 14 percent share than when you enjoy 90 percent share. Granted, Microsoft retains substantial server share, and has a huge install base of desktop and laptop PCs. Nonetheless, having a patching process that offers parity with other major industry players rather than going above and beyond the competition's seems fair under those circumstances.
The positive for Microsoft is that their applications are no longer at the top of the list when it comes to vulnerabilities. Years of security efforts on Redmond's part, coupled with a slide in influence and usage, mean that more vulnerabilities are being disclosed in other programs than in Microsoft programs. In the Secunia Vulnerability Review for 2014 (covering 2013, which was not a particularly good year for Microsoft), only one Microsoft application was among the top eight applications with the most vulnerabilities. The programs with the most vulnerabilities were Mozilla Firefox (270), Google Chrome (245), Oracle Java JRE (181), Microsoft Internet Explorer (126), Adobe Reader (67), Apple iTunes (66), Adobe Flash Player (56), Adobe Air (51).*
In the new digital reality, it's time to worry less about Microsoft's transparency and vigilance and time to worry more about everyone else's.
* Note: For the record, No. 9 and No. 10 in the Secunia list were Microsoft products -- the .NET Framework (18) and Word (17). That means Microsoft had three of the top 10 vulnerabilities, but having only one in the top eight illustrates the point better that Microsoft is nowhere near the worst offender anymore when it comes to security vulnerabilities.
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 12, 20150 comments
Dell on Tuesday unveiled a bevy of portables at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), headlined by a light, thin XPS 13 intended to challenge the Apple MacBook Pro.
Dell was one of the last of the big PC makers to reveal its lineup for CES, the annual gathering in Las Vegas that serves as one of the biggest stages in the world for launching new computers. (See a gallery of major offerings unveiled in the run-up to CES here.)
The company teased the XPS launch in a pair of very short videos. One called "XPS -- A New Way to See the World" showed a beach scene quickly revealed to be the display of a device screen, which then turns to show off an extremely slim profile, and the message, "The new XPS from Dell." A link went to another video in which Dell Vice President of Design Ed Boyd hinted at a minimalist design.
Dell stopped playing coy Tuesday morning by unveiling the XPS 13, available immediately in the United States for prices starting at $800.
Dell XPS 13
By the numbers, the XPS 13 has a 13-inch screen, can weigh as little as 2.6 pounds, boasts fifth-generation Intel Core processors and has solid state drives. Dell markets the laptop as having a "borderless infinity display," which makes the screen appear larger while giving the device the feel of an 11-inch laptop. Dell also claims an impressive 15-hour life for the battery.
Dell isn't as blatant yet in going after Apple as Microsoft, which targets the lower end MacBook Air with its Surface Pro 3 TV ads and Web promotions.
Instead, Dell declared its intentions with the deployment of a customer testimonial in its news release, quoting Scott Stedman, founder of Northside Media Group in Brooklyn, as saying, "I recently switched from a MacBook Pro to Dell XPS 13 and couldn't be happier."
Other Windows 8.1 machines in the Dell CES lineup and their starting prices include:
- A big brother to the XPS 13, the XPS 15, with a 4K Ultra HD display, slated for U.S. availability "soon" for $2,350;
- Two Alienware gaming systems, both available immediately -- an Alienware 15 for $1,200 and an Alienware 17 for $1,500;
[Click on image for larger view.]
Left to right: Alienware 15, Dell XPS 15, Alienware 17
- A pair of Intel Real Sense 3-D camera-equipped models -- the Inspiron 15 5000 Series for $750 and the Inspiron 23 All-in-One desktop for $1,600, both available immediately;
- An Inspiron 15 7000 Series available immediately for $1,100; and
- An Inspiron 13 two-in-one model expected to be available in March.
[Click on image for larger view.]
Left to right: Inspiron 15 5000, Inspiron 23 All-in-One, Inspiron 15 7000 Series
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 06, 20150 comments
Bill Gates is supposed to be spending 30 percent of his time on Microsoft these days, meaning that his top priority remains the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This week, Gates provided an update on how things are progressing on the things that matter most to him.
In a post called "Good News You May Have Missed in 2014," Gates called out five positive trends in global health. For me, reading the list was a powerful corrective to the impression that wall-to-wall coverage of Ebola gave me about the state of the world's health.
Gates acknowledges problems, including Ebola, but writes of his list, "These are some of the most fundamental ways to measure the world's progress -- and by that measure, 2014 was definitely another good year." (Gates compiled a similar list at the end of 2013.)
The 2014 highlights, according to Gates:
- The number of deaths of under-5-year-olds is falling faster than projected.
- The number of annual new HIV infections fell below the annual increase in patients starting anti-retroviral therapies -- constituting a tipping point for AIDS.
- There have been big strides in the availability of vaccine for rotavirus, a diarrheal disease that kills hundreds of thousands of children a year.
- After efforts to improve tuberculosis treatments stalled for decades, scientists appear to be making progress with a new treatment regimen.
- Nigeria is on the brink of eliminating polio, and the infrastructure developed for the effort helped the country contain Ebola this year.
Check out the blog here.
Posted by Scott Bekker on December 16, 20140 comments
In its ongoing push to make backup of virtual systems smoother and more straightforward, StorageCraft on Tuesday released plug-ins for both Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager and VMware vCenter.
Officially called the StorageCraft Plug-in for Microsoft System Center and the StorageCraft Plug-in for VMware, the new tools are free downloads but require StorageCraft ShadowControl v2.5.1.
Primarily, the plug-ins allow IT administrators and MSPs to monitor and manage StorageCraft ShadowProtect backups from within the System Center or vCenter consoles. Main features of the plug-ins, according to StorageCraft, are:
- Virtual machine backup status monitoring.
- The ability to detect virtual machines that aren't protected by the ShadowProtect agent.
- One-click transition from vCenter of System Center to the ShadowControl Web console.
- Push installation of ShadowProtect agents to unprotected virtual machines.
Posted by Scott Bekker on December 16, 20140 comments
A handful of the biggest cloud service providers are making an outsized impact on the global server market.
In releasing third-quarter data for the worldwide server market last week, analysts at IDC said that investments in hyperscale datacenter capacity expansion are aggressively reshaping the core server market.
"Over the past year, the top four customers in the server market, all of them cloud service providers, have accounted for more than 20 percent of all servers shipped worldwide, and over 10 percent of worldwide server revenue," said Kuba Stolarski, research manager for enterprise servers at IDC, in a statement.
Those four customers are Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Alibaba, Stolarski said in an e-mail interview.
Hyperscale cloud service providers are using rack-optimized servers about 75 percent of the time and density-optimized servers about a quarter of the time, Stolarski said.
It's a trend that IDC doesn't expect will let up. "Public cloud demand for new servers will continue to outpace the general market over the next several years, as established enterprises and start-ups alike continue to ramp their usage of cloud services for infrastructure and application hosting," Stolarski said in the statement.
See here, here and here for previous coverage of the way trends toward cloud computing are concentrating and reshaping the server market.
Posted by Scott Bekker on December 08, 20140 comments
A year ago at this time, Microsoft's prospects in the smartphone market seemed, if not sunny, at least somewhat bright.
Windows Phone had overtaken BlackBerry for a solid but very distant third place in the market. What's more, Windows Phone was on a tear, having shipped 91 percent more units in 2013 than 2012.
Fast forward to today, and Microsoft has retained that third-place position. But that's the end of the good news for Redmond. Rather than continuing to punch above its weight at Google's Android platform and Apple, Windows Phone actually lost share through 2014.
According to a forecast released this week by IDC, Windows Phone will wind up 2014 with 35 million units shipped for a market share of 2.7 percent. If that forecast comes true (and IDC has steadily downgraded its Windows Phone shipment forecasts throughout the year), that will only be a 6 percent increase in shipments over 2013.
That's not good enough when Microsoft needs to have several years of near-triple-digit growth to be in the conversation with Apple, let alone Android. For comparison, IDC's Android forecast now calls for 33 percent shipment growth in 2014 to more than 1 billion units. That's billion, with a "b." Apple iPhone shipments are projected to reach 178 million, a growth rate of 16 percent. So the big two are growing at double-digit rates, and the little No. 3 is growing in the single digits. For consolation, Microsoft can look to BlackBerry, which went double-digit negative.
What happened to Microsoft in 2014? If we were talking sports, we could charitably call this a rebuilding year for Team Redmond.
The first part of the rebuilding was literally rebuilding Microsoft by integrating the Nokia devices and services unit that Microsoft agreed in September 2013 to acquire for $7.2 billion. The acquisition process dragged on for longer than Microsoft anticipated -- past the projected first quarter 2014 close and well into April. Next followed a massive wave of layoffs, heavily concentrated in the incoming Nokia unit. Credit that disruption for the lack of any really high-profile handsets out of Microsoft/Nokia this year, even as new Android devices and the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus made major splashes.
With Microsoft assuming ownership of the partner that had accounted for over 90 percent of Windows Phone sales, another rebuilding aspect of 2014 was the move to rebuild the channel. Microsoft, surprisingly, made headway with a number of device manufacturers, especially for low-priced devices in emerging markets. Some of those deals have fallen through, and others have seemed slow to develop.
A third major rebuild was the retooling of the platform. Although Microsoft only gave its latest release a dot-one numbering, Windows Phone 8.1 was a major release, with the notable additions of the Cortana digital assistant, the innovative swipe-typing feature, a calendar overhaul and a significant evolution of the start screen interface. That upgrade has rolled slowly out through carriers over the course of the year.
The other rebuild is in the executive suite, with Satya Nadella taking over as CEO from Steve Ballmer in the midst of the acquisition. Whether Nadella shares Ballmer's commitment to creating a third platform in smartphones is an open question.
I asked Ramon Llamas, one of the IDC analysts responsible for putting together the forecast, which factors played the biggest role in Microsoft's stagnant year. Llamas pointed to the acquisition and the slow partnerships.
"It's the Microsoft acquisition and the rationalization of that. I think behind the scenes there's a lot more going on than you and I are privy to. There have been fits and starts, like Nokia coming out with the Android-based smartphone. I'm not sure if these were managed in the way that both Microsoft and Nokia wanted," he said in a telephone interview.
Even with that acquisitional churn, Llamas said Microsoft has succeeded in going after the entry-level market and has seen its volumes increase in that segment every quarter. On the higher end, though, "there are some gaps over there that Microsoft left open," he said.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is still in a difficult balancing act with Android-heavy partner HTC and the new group of partners has been slow to develop actual devices. "We still haven't seen much of the fruit of those relationships. A lot of us had expected it's going to come, it's going to come," Llamas said.
From IDC's perch, there's not a question about Nadella's commitment to Windows Phone. "When CEO Nadella says, 'We are cloud-first, mobile-first company,' that's probably one first too many, but they're serious about being mobile," Llamas said. As evidence, he pointed to the way the Microsoft Band is optimized for use with a Windows Phone.
Officially, IDC expects Microsoft to up its game in smartphones over the next few years. "We're going to see better rationalization between Microsoft, Windows Phone and the smartphone business," Llamas said. For now, IDC is calling for Microsoft to jump to 5.6 percent market share in 2018.
Based on Microsoft's statements to investors at the time the Nokia acquisition was announced, however, there's no way to look at 2014 as anything other than a failure. Microsoft officials said the break-even point was 50 million phones a year, which looks further away this year than it did last year. They also expected to achieve a 15 percent share of the market by 2018, which now is almost triple what IDC expects them to reach.
According to industry analysts, 2014 may have been one of the last big growth years as the smartphone market approaches saturation. For Microsoft, 2014 was a lost year.
Posted by Scott Bekker on December 03, 20140 comments
GFI Software, the surprisingly fast-growing player in the managed services provider (MSP) market with a large community of channel partners for its more traditional software products, is in the process of splitting into two organizations.
When the split, first announced in September, is complete, GFI Software will become two different entities with different boards and different employees -- LogicNow and GFI. LogicNow will focus on cloud technologies under a subscription model and will include the MSP platform, which was previously known as GFI MAX but is being renamed MAXfocus. The GFI side will become an entity focused on private cloud solutions marketed to end user IT administrators. The two companies will have 350 to 400 employees each.
RCP caught up with Dr. Alistair Forbes, general manager of LogicNow, for an update on the corporate restructuring.
RCP: Why split?
Forbes: The reason for making that change is really reflected in the nature of the way those types of products are built and supported. With on-premise, [you have] one, maybe two major releases a year. Customers have to download and install these updates. With a cloud-based product, because we're applying those updates and all the customers are getting the benefits right away, it allows us to iterate on the product much more quickly. The two products have quite different support requirements.
Speaking from a LogicNow perspective, a large part of doing this is to reduce our cycle times and bring new versions of our cloud-based technology for MSPs to the market faster. [The LogicNow MSP products include MAXRemoteManagement, MAXMail, MAXServiceDesk and MAXBackup.]
Will the entities share a board of directors?
Up to now, there was one board for GFI Software, the whole entity. Going forward, there will be two completely separate corporate structures. Ownership will remain the same. Our majority investor is Insight Venture Partners. There will be some commonality in terms of the board. But the management team and all the people working on the products, they will be completely separate. Walter Scott is the CEO of both companies for now. We haven't completed the full legal separation as of yet. We've announced new brands. The legal separation process is moving forward. Walter will be CEO of LogicNow. Likely, there will be a new CEO for GFI.
What will change for current GFI Software partners?
In the short term, as far as partners are concerned, the changes will be largely cosmetic. There will be a substantial number of [LogicNow] partners who currently resell GFI products and will continue to do so. We've seen a migration into the managed services approach for running their organizations using our MAX products. Internally, we had separate field and support organizations for both sides, so that will not be different.
How many MSP partners are using LogicNow MAXfocus (formerly GFI MAX)?
We've currently got just over 11,000 MSPs who are using the MAX management platform. We're adding typically 200 net new customers every month. We're continuing to recruit partners through our hosted e-mail product and backup products, as well. In the aggregate, the number is getting close to 15,000. That, to our knowledge, is the biggest community of MSPs using a platform in the world.
We're seeing a continued move of resellers or consultant-type companies into the managed services space. Overall, I think the market growth is robust and still strong. There certainly was concern and consternation about the impact that the move toward cloud might have. Notwithstanding the fact that more companies are starting to use cloud-based services, they still do want to have an advisor or someone who manages those services on their behalf. They're used to dealing with a single contact. As for the concern that there was maybe 18 months, two years ago, about the threat to the managed services market, the market remains very strong and robust. We're seeing new partners and growth for existing ones.
Is there overlap of GFI and LogicNow partners?
The reseller base for GFI is somewhere in the region of 20,000 partners. It's still a very strong partner community that works with GFI. There's certainly an overlap. It's by no means the majority of either partner base that would also be using the other.
Within the MAX platform, we have some elements of technology that come from the GFI organization. We will have OEM agreements to use things like the patch management [GFI LanGuard]. In a commercial sense, the organizations will be pretty much completely separate. There will be technology that we license backwards and forwards.
What are LogicNow's plans geographically?
North America still remains a very strong growth market for us. The market is growing, and we're also seeing our market share continuing to grow. In certain European markets, they've been later to the party in terms of this move to managed services, particularly southern Europe -- France, Spain and Italy. There, percentage growth is quite high but from smaller numbers. In percentage terms, growth in South America is also high. Asia [is another opportunity] we might look at over the next year.
Posted by Scott Bekker on November 20, 20140 comments
SkyKick, the partner-focused Office 365 migration tools vendor, launched an individual component of its suite this week for times when customers only need their data migrated, as opposed to the usual start-to-finish migration project SkyKick's original tool was designed around.
The Seattle-area company's core product is SkyKick Application Suite, which started as a way for partners to automate and shorten what SkyKick positions as a 40-hour-process for partners to complete an SMB customer migration to an Office 365 environment from legacy platforms like Exchange, Windows Small Business Server, Google, IMAP or POP3. SkyKick also offers an Enterprise Migration Suite for more complex migrations.
The new release is called the SkyKick Data-Only application, and Co-Founder and Co-CEO Todd Schwartz described it as something existing partners asked for to help with a subset of their customers.
"Maybe 10 percent of customer migration scenarios are data-only," Schwartz estimated. Asked for examples, he provided three: "One is the deskless worker or kiosk worker, somebody who doesn't actually have Outlook and all that desktop setup. Another scenario is where sometimes customers have an IT staff and they want to do the project work themselves, but it's hard to move the data and they call the partner and ask them for help. Then there are always fringe scenarios -- maybe a customer has a lot of Macintoshes and project automation doesn't make sense."
Those data migration processes take up about 20 percent -- or eight hours -- of SkyKick's idealized 40-hour project. To rip out that component and package it as a separate offering, SkyKick had to make a few changes. For example, the standard migration suite uses a list of the old mailboxes to create new Office 365 user accounts. But the new data-only tool has to go back and match the customer-created Office 365 accounts with the old mailboxes, so SkyKick created a new engine for that purpose.
[Click on image for larger view.]
The SkyKick Data-Only application automatically matches old mailboxes to new Office 365 accounts, helping partners avoid the time-consuming process of mapping relationships between systems.
Other features of the Web-based e-mail migration product include Server Synch for full-fidelity replication, automated management of the migration and a Migration Manager for real-time reporting and management of the process.
One practical application of the automation is the ability to see that both sides of the migration are up and responsive before you start, explained Co-Founder and Co-CEO Evan Richman. "You don't want to start moving the data on a Friday night and realize on Monday morning that mailboxes were not synching. This makes it very, very easy for the partner to make sure it's connected on both sides," Richman said.
The tool also prompts the partner in advance for necessary passwords, such as those needed to migrate public folders, and allows for provisioning new users on the fly if the data migration process turns up users that the customer accidentally missed in the pre-data stage of the migration.
The pricing for the data-only tool is $12 per mailbox retail with discounts available from distributors. It's not clear how that compares to the main suite's cost because SkyKick keeps that price under wraps. Schwartz did say that billing for the data-only package, like the main suite, only occurs upon completion of the project.
Also this month, SkyKick and Ingram Micro U.K. Ltd. announced the addition of SkyKick to the U.K. Ingram Micro Cloud Portfolio. The move into the United Kingdom follows SkyKick's recent hiring of Eric Jewett from Microsoft to head up an international expansion.
Ed's Note: This article has been updated to clarify that SkyKick doesn't publicly disclose the price of the SkyKick Application Suite.
Posted by Scott Bekker on November 19, 20140 comments
As Windows 8/8.1 starts building some momentum and Microsoft prepares Windows 10 for release, small-business PC migration specialist Laplink Software is overhauling its partner program.
Bellevue, Wash.-based Laplink relaunched the program this month with more benefits and automation.
Laplink's core offering is PCmover Professional, which is PC migration software for automatic transfer of files, applications and settings from an old PC or operating system, including Windows XP, to a new one. Other products in the 30-year-old company's portfolio include PCmover Windows Upgrade Assistant; PCmover Image & Drive Assistant; Laplink Sync, which synchronizes folders and files between a Windows PC and an Android or iOS device; DiskImage; SafeErase, for wiping old PCs before selling or recycling them; Defrag; and the remote access programs Laplink Gold and Laplink Everywhere.
New benefits of the free partner program include internal use rights, standardized partner discounts of 20 percent off single license purchases and 30 percent off multi-license packs. Monthly discounts available exclusively to partners can cut up to 60 percent off regular prices, according to Laplink.
The overhaul includes a new partner portal, which can be used for the 24/7 direct purchase of physical or downloadable software. "We know our partners are busy -- they have a lot to get done," said Laplink CEO Thomas Koll in a statement. "We're trying to make this as easy as possible for them with all licenses, purchase history and other resources in one easily accessible location."
Other elements of the program include updated marketing materials and a white-label version of PCmover Enterprise for service provider partners.
Posted by Scott Bekker on November 17, 20140 comments
Microsoft reclaimed the silver medal Thursday in terms of market capitalization. Thanks largely to the massive slide in oil prices over the last few months, Microsoft's market cap surpassed that of Exxon Mobil Corp. when markets closed Thursday afternoon.
By the numbers, Microsoft is now at about $408.9 billion, while Exxon sits at $400.8 billion, according to Reuters. Microsoft still trails technology sector rival and overall most-valuable company Apple Inc. by a lot. Apple sits at $663 billion, and its share prices have increased faster than Microsoft's through 2014.
Google also briefly wrested the No. 2 spot from Exxon twice this year, for four days in February and two days in March. Google stock prices have declined slightly this year and its current value is $373 billion.
Nonetheless, Microsoft's stock performance under new CEO Satya Nadella has been none too shabby. Since Nadella took over on Feb. 4 of this year, Microsoft shares are up 36 percent to 49.61.
Lest you give all the credit to the new guy, Microsoft's stock has been on a pretty steady upward trajectory for a while now. Stretching back to a low in December 2012 before former CEO Steve Ballmer was even hinting at leaving, the stock is up nearly 90 percent.
With a price of 50 in range, is it crazy to wonder if MSFT could reclaim its 1999 (split-adjusted) peak of 58.72?
Posted by Scott Bekker on November 13, 20140 comments
Many organizations need to find another gear when it comes to zero-day vulnerabilities, according to a patching expert.
This week saw a huge Microsoft Patch Tuesday, with Microsoft releasing 14 patches, including four that fixed critical vulnerabilities. Sometimes those critical vulnerabilities can involve zero-days, which are vulnerabilities that are already being used in attacks before the vendor releases patches. The more usual order is that attackers develop exploits after a vendor issues a patch.
"With Microsoft Patch Tuesday, we see most people strive for 90 percent of their security patches applied within a week and a half. For zero days, it's a totally different story," says Rob Juncker, vice president of engineering at LANDesk Software. Juncker came to LANDesk via that company's acquisition of VMware's Shavlik unit.
According to Juncker, organizations need a separate, accelerated process to update systems threatened by zero-day vulnerabilities than they use for regular vulnerability patches.
"As soon as we release [a zero-day] patch, someone will pick up that patch, test it the next day and do some basic surface testing. After that's done they start pushing it out to critical systems, with awareness of how you would handle breakage. They take a little more risk on the upgrade with that testing," says Juncker. But he says that risk is balanced by the fact that attackers are already exploiting the vulnerability.
In the October Patch Tuesday, Microsoft patched three zero-day vulnerabilities. This month's patch collection was less severe, with just one zero-day, and even that one was somewhat loaded with caveats.
"The most important bulletin MS14-064 addresses a current zero-day vulnerability -- CVE-2014-6352 in the Windows OLE packager for Vista and newer OS versions," wrote Qualys CTO Wolfgang Kandek in a commentary about the November Patch Tuesday. "Attackers have been abusing the vulnerability to gain code execution by sending Powerpoint files to their targets. Microsoft had previously acknowledged the vulnerability in security advisory KB3010060 and offered a work-around using EMET and a temporary patch in the form of a FixIt. This is the final fix for OLE Packager (Microsoft had patched the same software in October already with MS14-060) that should address all known exploit vectors."
Juncker cautions that organizations need to be aware of how many more zero-day vulnerabilities are being discovered these days than in the recent past. He also warns against the outdated idea that Microsoft's systems are the most vulnerable, and therefor that keeping up with Microsoft patches equates with being generally up to date.
"I think a lot of us focus on Microsoft products," Juncker says. "That's where a lot of the exploits used to be. Now they lead out with Java, they lead out with Adobe. The operating system isn't enough anymore. Make sure that you have a patch process that emphasizes not just servers, but make sure you get the endpoints."
Posted by Scott Bekker on November 12, 20140 comments