On their own merits, Gartner Inc.'s forecasts this week were interesting: Windows 7 will 1) run on 42 percent of the global PC installed base by year end, 2) account for 94 percent of OSes shipped on new PCs in all of 2011, and 3) be the shipping OS for 635 million new PCs by the end of this year.
Even more interesting was an assumption included in the analyst firm's news release announcing the research. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on August 12, 20110 comments
When RCP covers the way Microsoft handles billing in the cloud, most of the responses from partners are pretty negative about Microsoft's approach. Partners motivated to write usually want to handle customer billing themselves, and they say they aren't considering Microsoft's offerings because of the direct billing issue. But my last column about it, "With Office 365, Microsoft's Direct Billing Drama Continues," prompted an e-mail from a reader who asked to be identified only as J. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on August 11, 20110 comments
Cross-country flights have often been lost time for me from a work perspective. I've bought a lot of overpriced books in airport bookstores and read them rather than endure the hassles: opening a too-big laptop in a too-small space, monitoring the nauseously quick deterioration of battery life, reaching a productivity cul-de-sac because some key detail -- a 20-second Internet search away -- is unavailable at 30,000 feet.
I was pleasantly surprised to find recently that my $370 AirTran roundtrip flight from Baltimore to Los Angeles offered in-flight Wi-Fi. It was my first experience with wireless in the sky. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on August 08, 20111 comments
Microsoft's hotly anticipated Build conference, during which much more is expected to be revealed about Windows "8" and Windows Server "8," is sold out.
Buzz around the show, which is something of a combination between the Professional Developers Conference and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, intensified after the early June previews of Windows 8. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on August 03, 20112 comments
David in Ireland was motivated by a recent RCPU link to an April blog entry I wrote about partner branding in Windows Intune to e-mail about his trials in selling Microsoft's cloud-based systems management solution.
Here's what David had to say:
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Posted by Scott Bekker on August 03, 20111 comments
Need a kickstart of adrenaline to recharge you for the nonstop meetings and sessions of a Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference? Toronto, the site of the July 2012 WPC, may have just the thing.
The Toronto EdgeWalk opened on Monday. To quote MSNBC, "For $175 Canadian dollars, you, too, can strap yourself into a harness to walk 'hands free' atop the 5-foot-wide ledge on the CN Tower, which rises 1,168 feet in the sky."
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Posted by Scott Bekker on August 02, 20111 comments
Datacenters aren't turning out to be quite the power hogs they were supposed to be.
A 2007 forecast by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency predicted that power consumed by datacenters would double between 2005 and 2010. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on August 01, 20110 comments
Ever wonder where Microsoft's much-touted billions in R&D spending goes?
At least part of the money funded what's emerging to be an influential research paper that projects a radical slowdown on progress in Moore's Law, the idea that the number of transistors that can be inexpensively fit on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on August 01, 20110 comments
One of the most-quoted statements from Andy Lees' keynote earlier this month at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference came when he said a Microsoft tablet wouldn't be based on Windows Phone.
The president of Microsoft's Windows Phone division said, "Now, a lot of people have asked me, are we going to produce a phone that is a tablet? You know, are we going to use Windows Phone 7 to produce tablets? Well, that is in conflict with this strategy." More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 27, 20110 comments
ClearPointe, a Little Rock, Ark.-based provider of cloud systems management solutions, on Tuesday added Microsoft System Center-based cloud management of IBM iSeries systems through a partnership with Raleigh, N.C.-based EView Technology.
IBM iSeries systems, commonly known by their old name AS/400, continue to run business-critical applications in many organizations, especially enterprises. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 26, 20110 comments
A few days ago, I posted a call for your stories about why you did or didn't chose Windows Phone 7 as a platform. The e-mails have been flooding in. Thanks to all of you who've sent in your stories already. If you haven't sent one yet, there's still time -- send it to [email protected].
At the same time, we're backing up the anecdotes with a poll of Microsoft partners. It's a quick, 12-question poll about the smartphone platform you're using and the apps you find most helpful for your partner business and for your customers' businesses. (There's also a question where you can profile any cool apps your company is working on for possible future stories.) We're giving away some RCP T-shirts to a few lucky survey-takers, as well. Got a few minutes? Help us get the full story by taking the survey here.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on July 25, 20110 comments
- Read an in-depth feature on the Master VAR pilot program here.
A few months after publicly deflating a trial balloon for a plan to introduce a franchising concept to the Dynamics channel, Microsoft is back with a related idea.
On Sept. 1, Microsoft plans to launch a pilot of a "Master VAR" program for Dynamics partners. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 25, 201112 comments