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). More
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. More
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.) More
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. More
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. More
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. More
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. More
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. More
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. More
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. More
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. More
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.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on November 12, 20140 comments