It's way too early to draw conclusions about PRISM, the supposed, wide-ranging U.S. National Security Agency data collection program revealed by Edward Snowden that allegedly operates with the cooperation of major technology companies, including Microsoft. (The companies, including Microsoft, publicly and vigorously deny having voluntary or knowingly participated.)
With secret government programs, the details, and even the major structural elements, often don't come to light for decades. No matter what Microsoft partners feel about the legitimacy of the program or the reliability of the facts so far, it's hard to see the existence of the rumors about a secret U.S. government backdoor to customers' data as anything other than a stumbling block for trust in public cloud computing. The idea that the big public cloud vendors might have standing agreements with the U.S. government to share customer data runs counter to the spirit, if not the legalistic language, of any privacy policy. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 20, 20130 comments
Microsoft's channel chief Jon Roskill has contended for more than two years that Microsoft and its partners are grossly underestimated when it comes to cloud computing.
Roskill's latest version of the argument is that a company with more than $1 billion in annual revenue run rates each for Office 365, Azure and Service Provider License Agreements (SPLAs) is hard to classify as anything but a cloud leader. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 19, 20130 comments
Microsoft partners looking for a little beach reading just got access to a treasure chest's worth.
Eric Ligman, formerly the Microsoft Partner Experience Lead and now a sales excellence program manager at Microsoft, this week posted links to the complete text of 64 books about Microsoft technical topics. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 18, 20130 comments
In case you missed it, we posted a cheat sheet this week of some of the most interesting-looking sessions on the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference agenda. Meanwhile, RCP isn't the only organization curating lists of intriguing sessions for the upcoming partner confab. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 18, 20130 comments
Microsoft, its partners and consultants will expound on literally thousands of topics during hundreds of sessions at the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Houston next month. Here are some of the sessions, outside of the main keynotes, that promise to be especially interesting:
WINVK01
Windows: The Next Wave of Innovation and Partner Opportunity
Microsoft is promising an update to its flagship client OS called Windows 8.1 later this year. This session promises to cover why the new version will be better for business and the enterprise than Windows 8. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 17, 20130 comments
Business continuity is typically an add-on sale for partners, a way to garner some extra revenue on top of their main solution. Done properly, it's good protection for the customer's business and good money for the partner. Done poorly, it's a, well, disaster.
Many partners focus on the technical questions comparing one solution to another. But properly setting up a customer for a solid business continuity solution requires that the partner engage in important non-technical discussions with the customer, as well. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 12, 20130 comments
The June issue of RCP featured a detailed gallery of interesting new Windows 8 PCs. We highlighted the Acer Aspire R7, P3 and V Series; the Dell XPS 18; the Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon and ThinkPad S431; the Sony VAIO Fit; HP 400 ProBook and 200 series; the ASUS VivoBook S500; the VIZIO Thin +Light Touch and All-in-One Touch PC; and the Toshiba KIRAbook.
The reason for running the gallery in this latest issue is that with Windows 8 passing the six-month mark, PC OEMs seemed to be doubling down with a raft of new systems built to exploit the platform. The wave of new systems announced through early May also supported some Microsoft executives' recent statements about how many touch-enabled systems were starting to become available for Windows 8, a necessary precursor to spurring sales. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 06, 20130 comments
- Read Scott's original column here.
There was a lot of response to my column, posted yesterday, posing the question of whether the precipitous declines in PC shipments mean we've passed Peak PC or we're at some sort of PC Pause.
Check out the article itself for some insightful commentary in the discussion session at the bottom. I've also gotten a few thoughtful e-mails. From the mailbag, Bill argues for option 2: More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 30, 20130 comments
The worldwide server market suffered another ugly quarter, according to reports issued this week by IDC and Gartner.
IDC's report, released Wednesday, was the grimmer of the two. The Framingham, Mass.-based research firm found server revenues fell by 7.7 percent in the first quarter of 2013 compared to the same period in 2012. In all, server sales amounted to $10.9 billion, down from $11.8 billion. IDC also reported that server unit shipments fell by nearly 4 percent to 1.9 million units. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 30, 20130 comments
For partners with practices in more than one country, Microsoft is making a significant change to its partner program qualifications.
Called "Country Qualification," the central idea is that for every country that a partner wants to brand itself as having a Microsoft Competency, the partner organization must meet all Competency requirements in that country. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 23, 20130 comments
Enterprise IT management vendor SolarWinds on Tuesday announced plans to acquire MSP vendor N-Able Technologies for $120 million.
Executives for Austin, Texas-based SolarWinds said they expected the deal would close by the end of the month. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 22, 20130 comments