A line of APC surge protectors that have been out of production for a decade just got recalled over fire safety concerns.
"The surge protectors can overheat, smoke and melt, posing a fire hazard," the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said in its recall statement issued earlier this month.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on October 08, 20130 comments
Steve Ballmer's replacement as Microsoft CEO is likely to take home a much bigger annual paycheck.
Ballmer, who has been CEO since 2000 and was under pressure to leave from activist investors, announced in August that he would retire within the next 12 months.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on October 07, 20130 comments
Microsoft is Bill Gates' company in the popular imagination.
After all, he co-founded the company 38 years ago and outlasted co-founder Paul Allen. Gates is also reported to be spending a lot more time on the Microsoft campus lately.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on October 07, 20130 comments
At the SMB Nation Fall Conference in October, Harry Brelsford and I will be presenting a session on why most partner programs fail. It's a (slightly) tongue-in-cheek approach to the topic of what makes a good channel program from a solution provider's perspective.
While Harry and I have lots of ideas of our own, we'd like to make sure the presentation is grounded in the reality that you're seeing out there every day. Help us out by taking this very brief, completely anonymous survey on what you value in a partner program these days.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on September 30, 20130 comments
When it comes to the value of global brands, Microsoft held steady in 2013 even as Google and Apple vaulted ahead, according to a widely watched report on brand value.
Brand consultancy Interbrand released its 14th annual Best Global Brands report on Monday. It valued Apple's brand at $98 billion for first place. It was the first time anyone displaced Coca-Cola for first place in the history of the report. But Apple wasn't the only company beating Coca-Cola this time around. Google, valued by Interbrand at $93 billion, also beat out the soft-drink maker, valued at $79 billion.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on September 30, 20130 comments
The Surface 2 launch this week drew legitimate fire for a number of things -- the focus on speeds and feeds as if we were still in the PC refresh era, the lack of a mini version, and the failure to acknowledge or address serious pricing problems.
Microsoft deserves credit for one thing, though -- continuing to provide leapfrog innovation in user input. The real jaw-dropping component of the first-generation Surface was the Touch Cover. Microsoft started with the brilliant idea of the Apple iPad 2's magnetic cover and took it an inspired step further by converting the cover into a keyboard.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on September 26, 20130 comments
In a brainstorming session about four months ago, Condusiv Technologies CEO Jerry Baldwin decided his company's partner program needed another tier.
Formerly known as Executive Software and then Diskeeper, Condusiv still sells the defragmentation software those brands were best known for. But Baldwin has steered the company's technology toward a heavier focus on I/O optimization for virtualized environments and the company's business toward a 100-percent channel model.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on September 23, 20130 comments
The 2013 hurricane season has been a bust so far -- to the relief of businesses up and down the East Coast.
AccuWeather.com reported earlier this week that when Humberto graduated to hurricane status on Sept. 11, the world was a few hours away from breaking the satellite-era record for the latest first hurricane. (That mark is still held by 2002.)
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Posted by Scott Bekker on September 19, 20130 comments
Ross Brown has been out of Microsoft for about a year. He marked that anniversary this week with a blog entry about pitfalls in channel sales that's interesting in light of the senior channel role he held in Redmond.
Brown now works at The Spur Group, a consultancy based a block away from the Microsoft campus in Redmond. When he was at Microsoft he managed incentives, among other things, as the vice president of Worldwide Partner Strategy.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on September 18, 20130 comments
The plan to acquire close smartphone partner Nokia's devices and service business for $7.2 billion reveals a lot about Microsoft.
1. Devices & Services Just Got Real
Microsoft's "Devices & Services" strategy is Steve Ballmer's baby. The idea is to grow beyond Microsoft's roots as a software company and use those software skills to support two new branches -- devices like convertibles and smartphones, and services, or in other words, cloud. Ballmer introduced the phrase in October 2012 and seemed to put the finishing touches on it with his "One Microsoft" reorganization with him at the center in July.
Just when it seemed he'd cemented Microsoft's direction, however, came the surprise announcement that he would retire within 12 months, and lots and lots of hints that retirement wasn't his choice. The Microsoft Board of Directors issued a statement confirming that Devices & Services would still be the company's strategic direction, but Ballmer's apparent ouster made that seem highly questionable.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on September 04, 20130 comments
It's been obvious since the PRISM revelations came to light earlier this summer that they could hurt the momentum of public cloud services.
PRISM is the reported, wide-ranging U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) data collection program revealed by Edward Snowden that allegedly operates with the cooperation of major technology companies, including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and others. Whether that cooperation is voluntary and broad or forced and narrow is a matter of heated debate.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on August 19, 20130 comments
Each year at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), Microsoft sends out COO Kevin Turner for a closing keynote that gives partner attendees an entertaining but forceful kick in the pants to go home and redouble their sales efforts.
In Houston, Turner was a little less incendiary than in years past, with fewer disparaging things to say about competitors and with less of his presentation time dedicated to making fun of others in the industry.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on August 05, 20130 comments