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. More
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. More
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. More
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: More
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. More
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.) More
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. More
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. More
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.
More
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. More
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. More
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. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 24, 20130 comments