Quest Software, which delved into the managed service provider market a little over two years ago with the acquisition of PacketTrap Networks, is bolstering that MSP portfolio.
The Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based software company on Thursday announced it acquired BlueFolder Inc., which makes a professional services automation (PSA) system. Between the remote monitoring and management (RMM) functionality of PacketTrap MSP and the PSA capability of BlueFolder, Quest now owns an end-to-end MSP package, company officials say. Terms of the BlueFolder deal weren't disclosed. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on February 16, 20120 comments
Put the terms Microsoft, Amazon and cloud computing together, and the word "deathmatch" comes to mind.
After all, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is in direct competition with the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform. The approaches and capabilities are different, but the intent of the two companies to provide computing infrastructure in the cloud is similar. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on February 15, 20120 comments
The Windows Phone 8, or "Apollo," release of Microsoft's smartphone OS will integrate the phone with the core Windows 8 OS and restore enterprise-focused features to Microsoft's mobility platform, according to details obtained by an online news site.
A Microsoft spokesperson declined comment on reporting Thursday by Pocketnow.com about details in an allegedly leaked video that Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president for Windows Phone Program Management, reportedly created for Microsoft's phone partners at Nokia. However, another prominent news outlet vouched for the report's authenticity and SuperSite for Windows' Paul Thurrott used the occasion of the leak to release similar information that he implied he had been sitting on from other sources. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on February 03, 20121 comments
Research In Motion today announced general availability of free cloud services for using and managing BlackBerry devices with the Microsoft Office 365 suite.
The struggling business smartphone manufacturer released a beta of the service in October and had promised to make it available in January. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 30, 20120 comments
Canalys, the market research firm that counts tablet shipments alongside desktops and laptops when sizing the PC market, reported today that Apple became the leading PC vendor in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Using the figures Apple released with its quarterly earnings last week, Canalys noted that Apple shipped 15 million iPads and 5 million Macs, for 17 percent of the total 120 million total PCs that shipped in the quarter.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 30, 20120 comments
It was a day of reckoning for Nokia Inc., which is arguably Microsoft's most important strategic partner. By the numbers, the Espoo, Finland-based mobile phone maker's Symbian business is collapsing faster than expected while the nascent Windows Phone business is starting to boom -- also faster than expected but not fast enough to offset the Symbian shortfall.
Nokia reported its quarterly and full-year earnings on Thursday. The quarterly results showed a 21 percent drop in net sales and a 73 percent decline in earnings per share. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 26, 20122 comments
Polycom, which has a strategic partnership with Microsoft around the Lync unified communication product, saw its Lync-related revenues increase by 135 percent in 2011 compared to the year before.
Company executives shared the figure this week while discussing quarterly and year-end earnings with financial analysts. Overall, Polycom reported fourth quarter revenues of $407 million, up 20 percent from the year-ago period, and net income of $50 million, up 52 percent. For the full year, revenues were $1.5 billion, with net income of $136 million.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 25, 20120 comments
Looking to make a splash with a mobile app? Some customers are better than others.
A study released this week by IDC, based on a survey of 50,000 consumers in 25 countries, segmented app buyers into six groups. IDC's segments include Tech Evangelists, Impulse Buyers, Experimental Adopters, Pragmatic Purchasers, Green Buyers and Disengaged Functionalists. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 24, 20120 comments
A few rare beams of light are shining into the always murky closet of Windows OEM pricing.
Per Redmond magazine columnist Mary Jo Foley's ZDNet blog, an executive with ZTE told TrustedReviews.com that the Chinese phone maker must pay Microsoft $23 to $31 per copy to license the Windows Phone OS. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 20, 20120 comments
It's natural to assume that the Metro UI popping up on nearly all of Microsoft's screens -- from Windows Phone to Windows 8 to Xbox -- is being pushed down to the product groups from on high. More ammunition for that point of view came from the Microsoft keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show this month, when CEO Steve Ballmer and others mentioned "Metro" 27 times (you can count them in the transcript).
Nonetheless, that impression would be wrong, according to Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of Windows Phone Management. In an interesting interview posted today on Fast Company's Co. Design site, Belfiore told writer Austin Carr: More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 19, 20122 comments
Datto Inc., the Norwalk, Conn.-based provider of hardware-based backup, disaster recovery and business continuity solutions, on Wednesday announced another year of triple-digit growth in revenues.
In a statement, which did not disclose the actual revenue figures, Datto said it had 300 percent revenue growth in 2011. According to the company, it's the third straight year Datto has achieved that growth rate. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 18, 20120 comments
The System Center 2012 family will put Microsoft partners in a "prime position" to meet the emerging demand for private cloud solutions, Microsoft's top partner executive said this week.
Microsoft on Tuesday put out release candidates for all eight products in the System Center 2012 family, as reported in great detail by my colleague Kurt Mackie. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 18, 20120 comments