The 3-D-printed bust at Jon Roskill's house is an example of the uneven distribution of the future.
Created last summer for the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, the tiny likeness of Microsoft's channel chief was part of a presentation on near-future technologies. The session, designed to inspire the thousands of partners in the Toronto arena, included a camera/projector combination that allowed pen and paper sketches on one desk to be displayed on another and the 3-D printer that produced the mini-Roskill from a Kinect scan of his head and shoulders.
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| Image courtesy of Olivia Roskill. |
Because forms of 3-D printing emerged in the 1970s and most devices in subsequent decades were large and expensive with limited capabilities and lots of hype, it might not be apparent how close the technology is and how cheap it is getting.
That Microsoft could produce a demo in July 2012 didn't shed much more light on the price-performance progress, given the company's multibillion-dollar research budget.
A Gartner report this week, however, spotlights the rapid spread of the technology and the rapid fall in prices of 3-D, or additive, printers.
Gartner research director Pete Basiliere argues the technology is accelerating from niche to mainstream adoption in his report, "How 3D Printing Disrupts Business and Creates New Opportunities." The technology is already entrenched in automotive and other manufacturing, consumer goods, the military, medical equipment and the pharmaceutical industry, Gartner notes in a news release about its $195, six-page report.
Basiliere encourages enterprises of almost all types to buy 3-D printers now and start experimenting with personalized products, components, working prototypes and architectural models. The exercise is partly for immediate business benefit and partly to build a better institutional understanding of the technology and its possibilities. He says the printers are affordable now for any size business but predicts that what he calls "enterprise-class" 3-D printers will cost less than $2,000 by 2016.
As with drones and robots, a vibrant hobbyist community exists around 3-D printing. Looking at what hobbyists pay for do-it-yourself kits and fully assembled systems, it's easy to see that Gartner's price targets seem reasonable, maybe even a bit conservative.
Gartner's Basiliere points to the disruptive opportunities businesses could realize through 3-D printing, and highlights some positive social potential. He notes, for example, life-changing parts and products for struggling countries, ways to help rebuild crisis-hit areas and a democratization of manufacturing.
There's a darker side to 3-D printing, too. Individuals and organizations are already working on manufacturing printed firearms. Success would provide a way to pass metal detectors and to circumvent gun laws and international arms bans. Even without malice, sufficient progress on the speed and capability of 3-D printing might one day present a serious threat to the millions of jobs in transportation if local manufacturing through 3-D printing takes off.
For now, 3-D-printed objects like the Roskill bust are mostly scattered and widely separated. Soon they'll be everywhere. Time to get ready for 3-D printing in your face.
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 28, 20130 comments
Veeam Software is promising to release software that will make it possible to quickly recover individual items from Microsoft SharePoint backups.
Other tools exist to do the similar things, but Veeam's plan is to release its tool, Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SharePoint, for free.
The SharePoint Explorer comes at the problem from Veeam's corner of the market. Veeam specializes in virtualization solutions and will offer the Explorer as a free add-on in the next editions of Veeam Backup Free Edition and Veeam Backup & Replication v7. That means the product works only if SharePoint is running on top of a virtual machine.
The many limitations of the free version of Veeam Backup make the possibility of running the SharePoint Explorer for free a caveat-filled affair. But for those customers backing up their virtual environments with the full product, granular SharePoint file recovery comes without additional cost.
At this point, the product is little more than vaporware. Veeam this week announced only that it was taking signups for a free public beta, which isn't available yet. The final version will ship with Backup & Replication v7 in the second half of this year.
Nonetheless, Veeam has delivered similar products before in the Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange. The company's management has a solid track record of identifying important problems for IT administrators and coming up with solutions.
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 27, 20131 comments
In the coverage of T-Mobile's plans to blow up the wireless industry, most of the focus, rightly, is on a handful of things. The company is adding the Apple iPhone to its lineup, eliminating contracts, rolling out an LTE network and revealing the true consumer cost of devices. (CEO John Legere's potty mouth also achieved some notice.)
Windows Phone got zero attention in the announcements (less than BlackBerry even), but the changes have interesting implications for current and future Windows Phone customers.
The self-branded "un-carrier" is offering phones without contracts. Customers can pay for the phone upfront or pay some or no money down and pay out the rest over two years. Meanwhile, the cancel-anytime, unlimited phone, unlimited text and data plan costs $50, $60 or $70 a month for 500 MB, 2 GB or unlimited data, respectively.
For the iPhone 5 coming April 12, the phone cost is $100 down and $20 a month for 24 months.
T-Mobile immediately updated its Web site prices yesterday, and the carrier's two Windows Phones reflected the new pricing. The flagship Windows Phone is the HTC 8X. Buying one of those now will cost $0 up front and $18 a month for two years, with the option to pay the full $432 up front.
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| HTC 8X |
The other phone, the Nokia Lumia 810 sells for $0 down and $15 a month for two years or $360 at checkout.
Here's where things get, um, surprising for customers who paid more for that HTC device. The 8X by HTC will not support T-Mobile's new LTE network, even though other carriers' HTC 8X devices are LTE-capable. (To make things more confusing, T-Mobile does show a 4G badge next to the HTC phone in its online store. Maybe T-Mobile isn't such an "un-carrier" after all.) The less expensive Lumia 810, however, will support LTE soon.
Windows Phone Daily tracked down a statement from T-Mobile:
"The Lumia 810 is the only other LTE-capable device on T-Mobile aside from the [Samsung Galaxy] Note II, and we will share timing of that LTE [maintenance release] at a later time. Please stay tuned."
In the near term, the difference will only matter in a handful of places as T-Mobile upgrades its infrastructure. Sprint launched its LTE network in seven metro areas Tuesday: Baltimore, Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Jose and Washington, D.C. The company is promising to cover 100 million Americans by the middle of the year, including New York in June. By the end of the year, T-Mobile's network is supposed to cover 200 million Americans.
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 27, 20131 comments
In an effort to expand SMB sales, Citrix Solutions is introducing two new SMB editions that it will sell primarily through partners.
Mike Fouts, Citrix Americas channel chief, announced the editions in a blog post Tuesday:
"It bundles VDI-in-a-Box, XenDesktop, NetScaler, ShareFile and support for companies with 25+ and 50+ users. For those who purchase the bundle designated for more than 25 but fewer than 50 users, XenDesktop will be replaced by the simpler to manage VDI-in-a-Box solution. The price for each package is $6,600 for the 25-user bundle and $21,000 for the 50-user bundle."
At the same time as the product releases, Citrix is introducing two changes to partner margins and incentives to make selling the packages more attractive. Fouts says the SMB suite will carry additional margin for partners and the Citrix Advisor Rewards threshold will fall from $10,000 to $2,500.
The product bundles and program changes follow Fouts' effort last July to reduce concerns about channel conflict in the SMB business by making clear that no Citrix field employees would be compensated for SMB sales.
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 26, 20130 comments
Microsoft nabbed the face of the Oracle channel.
Judson Althoff will become Microsoft's president of North America Sales and Marketing on March 29, Microsoft announced Monday.
For the last few years, Althoff was Oracle's senior vice president of Worldwide Alliances and Channels. He had been at Oracle for 14 years. Althoff played a high-profile channel role for Oracle, including as the master of ceremonies at partner events and as a spokesman to the media. He was named to the prestigious CRN Channel Chiefs list for five years running through this year.
Althoff had reported to Mark Hurd, president of Worldwide Sales, Consulting, Marketing and Support at Oracle. At Microsoft he will report to COO Kevin Turner.
While Althoff's position is not within Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Group, any field role involves significant interaction with the channel, which accounts for 95 percent of Microsoft's sales. The North America president-level role at Microsoft was most recently held by Robert Youngjohns, who left Microsoft in September 2012 to take over HP's Autonomy unit.
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 26, 20130 comments
Hosted Exchange giant Intermedia is releasing a proprietary mailbox migration tool for its partners.
Intermedia calls the tool the Cloud Concierge Onboarding Tool. The company says it has been using the tool internally since 2010 to migrate more than 300,000 users onto its Hosted Exchange platform. (In all, Intermedia currently claims about 550,000 premium Hosted Exchange mailboxes.)
The tool is designed for Hosted Exchange setup and migration from in-house systems, third-party systems and IMAP. According to Intermedia's description, the onboarding tool can export Exchange Global Address Lists or Active Directory objects, fix e-mail addresses, migrate data and execute the cutover to Hosted Exchange, among other functions. Partners who use the tool will also be able to tap Intermedia for free, round-the-clock support.
Along with Hosted Exchange, Intermedia offers Hosted PBX and Cloud Server, a hosted application infrastructure packaged for small businesses. For now, the tool only works for Hosted Exchange.
The company has several thousand reseller partners, who can white-label Intermedia's offering and build in their own margin when they bill the customer, resell the products and receive an advisor fee from Intermedia or switch between the two models on a customer-by-customer basis.
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 26, 20130 comments
The latest open secret in the Microsoft ecosystem was "Windows Blue," the alleged code name for a series of relatively rapid releases of Windows, Windows Server and Windows Phone.
Now Microsoft has given its first public confirmation of the code name this week in a state-of-the-company blog post by top Microsoft spokesman Frank X. Shaw. "With a remarkable foundation of products in market and a clear view of how we will evolve the company, product leaders across Microsoft are working together on plans to advance our devices and services, a set of plans referred to internally as 'Blue,'" Shaw wrote.
He called the "continuous development cycle" and "ongoing rhythm of updates" the "new normal" at Microsoft. As we've said here recently, a quicker release cadence from Microsoft is a good thing for all concerned.
Partners, especially those with development shops, looking to find out more about Blue should mark June 26-28 on their calendars. Microsoft's Chief Evangelist Steve Guggenheimer announced during a Visual Studio Live! keynote that Microsoft will hold its next BUILD conference then in San Francisco.
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 26, 20131 comments
The go-shop period on Michael Dell's bid to take Dell private ended quietly on Friday. Turns out the drama wasn't over, and probably won't be for a long time.
This morning, the special committee of Dell's board of directors announced that there are two new offers to compete with Michael Dell's proposal (in partnership with Silver Lake Partners and with Microsoft's backing) to pay $13.65 a share, valuing the company at $24.4 billion.
The Blackstone Group is behind one new proposal that would offer $14.25 a share. Activist investor Carl Icahn, who had already publicly complained about Michael Dell's original offer, is behind the other offer. Icahn's proposal is a complex arrangement involving his current 4.6 percent stake in Dell, equity commitments, an offer of $15 a share up to $2 billion, cash equity financing and other elements.
According to Dell's special committee, either of the proposals could be superior to Michael Dell's offer, but it's too soon to tell. "The Special Committee has not determined that either the Blackstone proposal or the Icahn proposal in fact constitutes a superior proposal under the existing merger agreement and neither is at this stage sufficiently detailed or definitive for such a determination to be appropriate," the committee noted in a statement this morning.
Given the amount of money involved, and the participation of the tactically vocal Carl Icahn, we could be looking at a long period of uncertainty around Dell.
Related:
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 25, 20130 comments
"Begin to explore the potential benefits and risks that [Software-Defined Networking] will bring to your organization, but beware of SDN-washing which simply re-labels legacy approaches with the latest buzzwords."
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Joe Skorupa, vice president and distinguished analyst, Gartner, in a Gartner Q&A about SDN.
Replace "SDN" in the concept "SDN-washing" and you've got a good framework for critically evaluating any buzz-heavy technology.
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 25, 20130 comments
Leaked screenshots of "Windows Blue" suggest the update to Windows 8 could include new snap-view sizing options, new tile sizes, a browser update, more personalization colors and settings changes.
Windows Blue is a rumored coming wave of updates to Windows 8 and Windows RT, as well as Window Phone and Windows Server. Some elements of Blue could arrive as early as this summer.
The 20 screenshots posted on Sunday by The Verge focused on the Windows 8/RT client interface, exclusively showing the modern UI. The Verge characterized the leaked version as an early build that was released on March 15 for partners only.
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| Image source: Winforum, via The Verge. |
Windows 8/RT currently allows two tile sizes on its Start screen. The small type is a square and the large type is a rectangle two squares wide. The leaked screenshots show two new tile sizes. A new tiny square fits four into a current square. A new large square is the size of two current rectangles stacked on top of each other. In the screenshots, the only large square is the Desktop icon. It's unclear whether the Desktop will be the only icon that can display at that size.
The screenshots also show new options for snapping apps. In the current Windows 8/RT interface, you can view two apps at once, with one taking up two-thirds of the screen and the other taking up one-third. The Blue version apparently will allow apps to each take up half of the screen, or for apps to take up as many as four side-by-side positions.
Other views in the screenshots show an Internet Explorer 11 "About" page, multiple settings and Charms changes and more personalization colors.
Check out The Verge's gallery here.
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 25, 20131 comments
While a big update for Windows may be coming this summer, small-bore improvements for Windows 8/RT are coming tomorrow.
Brandon LeBlanc posted Monday in the Windows Experience Blog about changes coming to the Mail, Calendar and People apps. The updates to the apps will be available for free from the Microsoft Store.
One element in the Mail app I'm eager to try is the ability to search the server, not just the default two-week local cache, for an item.
Other changes LeBlanc describes include:
- Users can flag e-mails and find the items in a new "Flagged" folder.
- Draft e-mails show up automatically at the top of the Inbox.
- It's possible to add, edit and delete hyperlinks when composing messages.
- Editing and deleting bulleted and numbered lists are supposed to be easier.
- Effort has been put into maintaining formatting for content posted into Mail from Word or other sources.
- Solid blocks of colors have been removed to make the Calendar app more readable.
- There's a new "work week" view in the Calendar.
- Appointment scheduling is getting more robust.
- The People app "What's New" feed can be filtered by social network.
These aren't groundbreaking changes by any means, but it's good to see Microsoft attempting a faster cadence of improvements to the built-in apps.
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 25, 20131 comments
Longtime readers of RCP will remember Lee Pender, our inimitable and polemically-inclined original blogger. Lee's since moved on to a custom publishing role in the company, by way of our sister publication Redmond magazine. But many of his posts live on.
He wrote one in 2011 called "5 Reasons Why I Hate Twitter," which still attracts visitors. One recent reader was a BBC radio producer working on a segment about the seventh anniversary of Twitter. BBC reached out to Lee, and he got on Skype to join a panel discussing Twitter.
The archive of the BBC program is here. The part about Twitter starts at about 37:10, and Lee starts bringing it at about 44 minutes. It's worth a listen. In case you were wondering, he still hates Twitter.
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 24, 20130 comments