Notice how heavily Microsoft's been advertising lately to raise awareness about Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and the Microsoft Surface? You'd have to be boycotting TV and the Web not to see the campaigns.
Microsoft's bean counters certainly noticed. In the investor call on Thursday to discuss earnings for the three months that ended in December, the new general manager of investor relations, Chris Suh, made clear how significant those ad buys and other marketing investments are to Microsoft's balance sheet. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 28, 20130 comments
As Microsoft experiments with broader routes to market for the channel with Office 365, one Microsoft National Systems Integrator (NSI) is trying out a new licensing agreement model for government clients and their partners.
Planet Technologies announced this month that it is the first Microsoft partner authorized under a new licensing model called the Microsoft Office 365 Agreement for Online Services for Government (AOS-G). More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 23, 20130 comments
As PC sales continue to decline, some analysts are revising their working hypothesis for how tablets will affect the PC market.
Earlier this week, Gartner released preliminary results for worldwide PC sales in the fourth quarter. The results were bracing for the PC industry. Overall shipments were down 5 percent to 90 million units. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 18, 20132 comments
Red Hat Inc. highlighted its channel momentum during its North America Partner Conference this week.
The open source solution provider says channel bookings have increased from 53 percent of total bookings in fiscal year 2008 to 60 percent in fiscal year 2012. The company also suggested that its channel momentum is increasing, with a 65 percent booking percentage from the channel in Red Hat's third quarter of fiscal year 2013.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 17, 20130 comments
Nokia, Microsoft's all-in Windows Phone partner, today announced it will lay off 300 employees.
The move is part of a streamlining of Nokia's global IT organization to fit the company's smaller global scale and will also involve transferring IT activities and about 820 employees to HCL Technologies and TATA Consultancy Services. Most of the affected employees are in Nokia's home country of Finland. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 17, 20130 comments
A boutique telephony distributor is launching an affiliate program for Microsoft partners who sell and deploy Lync solutions, but who generally stay away from the handset and telephony side.
Novus LLC on Wednesday announced the Novus Endpoint Affiliate Program. The program is designed for Microsoft partners who sell Lync but who lack the expertise to push the enterprise voice component of Lync solutions that involve full-fledged telephony along with handsets. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 16, 20130 comments
Microsoft always plays long games, and the Microsoft Surface is no exception. But a recent analyst's credible downgrade of Microsoft Surface RT sales for the fourth quarter suggests the long game is getting even longer.
I argued recently that with the pricing of the original Microsoft Surface, Microsoft wasn't aiming for a blockbuster success. Instead it just probably wanted to stay in the consumer conversation and keep a place in line for the Microsoft Surface Pro, which is Microsoft's best chance for beating Apple back from the enterprise. (The full column, along with a lively thread, in which readers alternately make good points and/or tell me I'm completely wrong, is available here.) More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 16, 20139 comments
Kaseya began shipping a major update of its core management framework this week for managed service providers and corporate IT departments.
The Kaseya 6.3 Framework and several new and updated modules make hundreds of improvements across the IT automation platform. Some of the most noteworthy enhancements are: More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 16, 20130 comments
As he embarks on his post-Microsoft career, the executive force behind Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface took 15 hours to cruise the Consumer Electronics Show floor in Vegas.
Upon his return from CES this week, Steven Sinofsky wrote up his observations in a massive blog post called "Learning by Sharing: Snark-free CES observations." The whole thing is worth reading for observations on mobile computing, design trends, product quality and other topics from an ultimate tech industry mover and shaker. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 15, 20130 comments
Continuum is opening up its network operations center to provide custom projects on behalf of its MSPs.
The Boston-based company announced the program, called Continuum Tech Advantage, this week as an addition to its SaaS-based managed services platform that currently serves 3,300 MSPs and around 500,000 endpoints. In short, Continuum MSPs can now take advantage of the expertise of 200 of Continuum's certified engineers and technicians who will offer a menu of about 80 server and desktop projects. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 15, 20130 comments
Juniper Networks used its partner conference in Las Vegas this week to make two big, public bets. One is to realign the company's products around Software Defined Networks (SDN). The other is to go deeper with the channel.
"SDN is a major shift in the networking industry. At Juniper, we think the impact of SDN will be much broader than others have suggested. It will redefine networking and create new winners and losers," Bob Muglia, executive vice president of the Software Solutions Division at Juniper, said in a statement. Muglia, who like many on Juniper's executive management team was a longtime Microsoft executive, also detailed Juniper's vision for SDN in a whitepaper-like blog post this week. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 15, 20130 comments
If you're looking for a quick visual tour of some of the Windows 8 hardware options for yourself or your customers, Microsoft put a nice one online this month.
Microsoft's U.S. OEM chief Peter Han leads the five-minute walkthrough in a showroom on the Microsoft corporate campus. He runs through some of the best features of some convertibles, tablets and all-in-ones. Models include the Sony VAIO Duo 11, Dell XPS 13, Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13, Toshiba Satellite U945, ASUS VivoBook, ASUS VivoTab RT and HP TouchSmart. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 14, 20130 comments