One of the best ways to get attention from customers and from the key contacts within Microsoft who can really move the needle on your business is by winning a Microsoft Partner Award.
These are the big ones that Microsoft announces in July at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, bringing the partners across the stage in a long, multinational parade. Behind the scenes, Microsoft organizes press meet-and-greets with the winners and markets those winners to potential customers.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 27, 20140 comments
Reviewing Microsoft's quarterly results, one analyst is noting that Microsoft's entrenched position with customers and partners gives Microsoft the leeway to change its strategy to Devices and Services while comfortably raking in revenues.
But the analyst, Matthew Casey of Technology Business Research, wonders in a commentary if Microsoft's planned reduction in Office 365 referral payments, scheduled to take effect Jan. 25, marks the start of a new relationship with the channel overall:
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 24, 20140 comments
Looking to exit a commodity hardware business, IBM turned again to Lenovo.
The computer giants on Thursday said they'd reached a $2.3 billion deal for IBM's x86 server business, confirming reports from earlier this week that IBM and Lenovo were close to an agreement. Lenovo will pay about $2 billion in cash, with the balance consisting of Lenovo stock. The deal will face regulatory reviews before closing.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 23, 20140 comments
Over the last few quarters, Microsoft seemed to be solidifying its position as the third platform in the smartphone world.
All the action is at the top -- between Google's Android platform, with Samsung as the major handset maker, and Apple with its integrated iOS/iPhone combination. But Microsoft had slowly climbed its way past a badly stumbling BlackBerry to grasp the No. 3 platform mantle in terms of new device shipments per quarter -- although it was a distant third.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 23, 20140 comments
Intermedia is uncoupling cloud e-mail archiving from its own version of Hosted Exchange, allowing partners to offer archiving to customers running Microsoft Office 365, Google Mail, on-premises Exchange, IBM Notes, GroupWise and other mail platforms.
"With standalone Email Archiving, our partners have another path to capitalize on a multi-billion-dollar, high-growth market, while helping their customers reduce business, legal and compliance costs," said Michael Gold, CEO of Mountain View, Calif.-based Intermedia, in a statement announcing the offering this week.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 23, 20140 comments
Bill Gates is open to spending more time on the Microsoft campus to help the person who becomes the new CEO, but he will not devote 100 percent of his time to being chairman, he said in a wide-ranging interview late Tuesday night.
Gates appeared for the full hour on the "Charlie Rose Show" to discuss his new 25-page report and planned speech at the Davos conference predicting there will be almost no poor countries by 2035.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 22, 20140 comments
Did Microsoft just blink on security support for Windows XP?
Windows XP's extended support phase officially ends on April 8. The company has used a lot of tough talk over the last few years to make sure that all customers know that deadline is coming and that it means that from April 9 onward, keeping Windows XP PCs online is an invitation to cyberattacks because there will be no more security updates from Redmond.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 22, 20140 comments
IBM appears to be shopping its x86 server business again and could be within weeks of a deal with Lenovo, according to several reports.
Lenovo, which bought IBM's PC unit in 2005 and has since turned itself into the world's highest-volume PC manufacturer, is in talks with IBM about buying the x86 server unit, according to anonymously sourced reports by Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. A few days earlier, the WSJ also reported that Dell was in talks with IBM about the server business.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 22, 20140 comments
One of the largest managed services providers in the United States, mindSHIFT Technologies Inc., has passed hands again.
Ricoh, the Tokyo-based office equipment, printer and document management giant, on Tuesday announced an agreement to purchase mindSHIFT from Best Buy Co Inc. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed; Best Buy paid $167 million to buy mindSHIFT exactly two years ago.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 21, 20140 comments
One of Microsoft's biggest OEM partners has gone off the reservation when it comes to marketing Windows PCs to end users.
At least since this weekend, Hewlett-Packard has been pitching Windows 7, rather than Microsoft's officially encouraged Windows 8, to end users.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 21, 20140 comments
Back when Microsoft bought Nokia's device business in September, Steve Ballmer suggested that he thought other device manufacturers would come out with more, rather than fewer, Windows Phones in the future.
At the time, it struck me as delusional. Nokia was already producing between 80 percent and 90 percent of Windows Phones and the figure seemed likely to run up to 100 percent now that Microsoft had brought that manufacturing in-house. After all, who would want to compete with the Microsoft/Nokia integration on a platform that's struggled to get to the No. 3 position, anyway?
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 16, 20140 comments
Draper, Utah-based StorageCraft Technology Corp. this week released a pair of recovery tools for managed service providers (MSPs) who have responsibility for Microsoft Exchange Servers.
One of the tools, StorageCraft Granular Recovery for Exchange, is a new product for StorageCraft. The tool allows for quick recovery, search and migration of Exchange Server files, including mailboxes, e-mails, appointments, contacts, tasks and notes. While that function set isn't new for StorageCraft, the tool's differentiator in the product line is that it works with non-StorageCraft backup and recovery software.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 16, 20140 comments