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.
"Gartner's forecast assumes that Windows 7 is likely to be the last version of Microsoft OS that gets deployed to everybody through big corporatewide migration," the release stated.
It's not the first time analysts and other industry pundits have suggested that the current massive Windows rollout will be the last. We heard this idea surface fairly often when Windows Vista shipped.
But Gartner has three interesting points of support that probably make the statement more likely to be true this time.
"In the future, many organizations will also use alternative client computing architectures for standard PCs with Windows OS," Gartner wrote. I'm reading iPads (err, tablets) here for alternative architectures. Microsoft's next OS release should contribute to this trend with its simultaneous tablet/ARM version (see "New Windows 8 Leaks Show Focus on Tablets").
Gartner also cited the moves toward both virtualization and cloud computing as reasons there may not be a next major migration season.
Unmentioned by Gartner is a fourth point that supports the view. Windows XP's share is huge, Vista's is small and Windows 8 looks, thus far, potentially disruptive. That could amplify Windows 7's attractiveness as a corporate OS, extending its life in the enterprise and giving the other three trends time to gather steam.
My gut feeling is that Gartner's probably still a little early on this assumption, though. There's a lot of corporate inertia and business justifications behind mass migrations, and many trends have to continue on their current trajectories for this assumption to become reality.
Related:
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.
"Just saw your article. First, I want to point out that syndication is nothing new for BPOS/O365. In fact, it's the primary model in place for partners in countries like Australia.
"Second, I hear the argument other partners are making, but I can see both sides of this. I work for a large partner with many hundreds of customers and just seeing a fraction of the escalations makes me grateful I'm not dealing with billing issues overall. In doing so, there would be cash-flow issues, not to mention how would Microsoft manage the service if they were disconnected from the revenue stream -- would partners want to pay Microsoft directly and then collect money from their customers? Who would decide when a customer gets cut off for non-payment? To some extent, partners that are focused on this piece may be overly focused on a small piece of the business, and, frankly, one that would add very marginal value if it were to change, and at great cost to the partners.
"On the flip side, as a partner I do want to own that relationship with the customer, and I think Microsoft could do more to support its partners, for example, opening up the e-commerce platform, putting partner logos on the invoice, etc. I'm hopeful that Microsoft will get to these possibilities in time and are focused now on the core pieces of the platform. I don't think that many partners, and in articles such as yours, Microsoft gets enough credit for accomplishing what they have been able to in such a short period of time (and I think this is important and applies equally to other technologies in the Microsoft stack), while supporting legacy customers as well as partners."
Thanks for the feedback, J. Especially good points about the escalations and for the perspective on how far Microsoft has come.
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.
Going out, I actually did go through the hassle of using my laptop on the plane. I had a magazine feature story to write and all the notes necessary to get it done. But coming back, a combination of in-flight Wi-Fi, an Apple iPhone 4, a Microsoft Word-compatible app called Office2 Plus and a Bluetooth keyboard gave me a way to work in comfort with near back-in-the-office speed and productivity.
Signing up for in-flight Wi-Fi was relatively painless. AirTran uses a provider called GoGo, which charges $7.95 to hook up a Wi-Fi-enabled mobile device to the Internet for a flight longer than 1.5 hours. (Connecting with a laptop would have cost $12.95 on the same flight.) After turning on Wi-Fi from the iPhone's Airplane Mode, opening the Safari browser and entering some credit card info, I was online.
The next step was figuring out if Bluetooth use was allowed. Gogo's FAQ didn't mention Bluetooth, but an online chat with a Gogo helpdesk employee revealed that I'd need to ask the flight crew. The AirTran attendants hadn't fielded the question before. After discussing it over the beverage cart, one told me, "Try it, it might work."
Permission secured, I turned Bluetooth on from Airplane Mode and connected with an Apple Wireless Keyboard. Although sold as an accessory for Macs and iPads, the keyboard works just as well as an input device for the iPhone. It's a great little keyboard. It reminds me of my first computer, a Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer, with its metal body and white plastic keys. While the keyboard is very small, the keys are comfortably sized and spaced for rapid typing. It fit nicely on the airplane tray table.
With an OtterBox case providing traction, the iPhone propped nicely against the seatback, leaving plenty of space for the keyboard and some notes. (See the below photo for a re-enactment of the in-flight workspace from back in the home office.)
The point of the whole exercise was to write up some blog entries and get them posted to RCPmag.com. The next step was to open Office2 Plus to create Word documents from scratch. To write the blog entries, I was referring to my written notes on the tray table, using Safari to look up various facts and using multi-tasking to copy and paste quotes from speech transcripts on the Web into my documents.
Once finished, the docs saved easily on the device in the Office2 Plus interface. The app also provided the option to e-mail the docs, making it easy to send each doc to other editors for editing and posting. When it came time to shut down this mobile office 3.5 hours later as the flight approached 10,000 feet, three new blog entries had popped up on RCPmag.com and the iPhone battery was still at 50 percent.
To quote the old Philips TV ad quoting the Beatles, "I have to admit it's getting better. It's getting better all the time."
Have an unusual in-flight productivity combination of your own? Share it below or at [email protected].
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.
The Sept. 12-16 show in Anaheim, Calif. seems to have sold out despite a complete lack of detail about its content. The agenda page has time slots with entries like, "9:00am-11:00am Keynote," and, "11:30am-6:00pm Sessions."
According to the show home page, Build will be "the first place to dive deep into the future of Windows."
The description promises attendees will get details about the touch-centric user experience, a new app model, the special role of HTML5 and JavaScript and Internet Explorer 10.
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:
Regarding your article about branding of Intune I thought I'd share some of my experiences.
- Pricing. At €11 per client per month, any prospective customers we demo'ed it to thought it was pricey. It works out over €2 cheaper per client if calculated at the worst ever Euro-British Sterling exchange rate. €1 = £0.80p. That's an extreme example, and similar too if compared to the U.S. dollar. Also, if you benchmark its price against WSUS and a third-party antivirus suite like Symantec Endpoint protection, it ain't competitive. The free Windows 7 upgrade has a hidden cost of upgrade labour. After all, Windows 7 is just a nice eye candy o/s platform, and a customer will already have a secure firewall and antivirus in place to bulletproof their LAN.
- Have spent the guts of a day on the phone to various Microsoft departments to try resolve a customer who switched from credit card billing to direct invoicing. However, once you switch from credit card billing to invoicing, you are not allowed switch back. Also, the customer only gets an e-mail notification addressed only to the network administrator and not the person who writes the cheques. So I had to set up a forwarder rule. However, back to the person who writes the cheques: They find the Intune billing portal not very user friendly and have to "dig" to find what they are looking for. My odyssey to get Microsoft to e-mail them direct with attached invoice continues. So far any representative I've spoken to seems either too frightened to use initiative and give me straight frank answers or they speak "export English" and don't really grasp the issue.
- Easy-Assist is not as easy to set up as you would imagine. I still find "Log Me In" or "Mikogo" far more end-user friendly and faster to implement sessions than Easy-Assist.
Thus far we have only been able to implement one of our customer sites with Intune. But if the price came down we could sell it to more clients. Microsoft still demonstrates massive contradictions in giving administrators control over their cloud-based apps; I've had similar ridiculous incidents with them over BPOS. Contradiction because they claim that they give you, the administrator, more control because everything is now in the cloud. The way they want you to work is one-dimensional and this does not reflect real-world computing. At least over time they seem to have revised and eased restrictions, like recently allowing administrators to set passwords to never expire. Could they not also restrict administrative access to public IP address?
Anyway these are my thoughts and experiences with Microsoft Intune...and I snuck in BPOS (Office 365) in there too.
Thanks for writing, David. As Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said of partners last month at the Worldwide Partner Conference, "You're always pushing us, pushing us, pushing us" to be better. Well, here's some pushing. Sounds like international pricing could use more thought in some subsidiaries and Microsoft's billing infrastructure, touted as a function that's too complicated for partners to handle directly themselves, isn't quite the well-oiled machine it's supposed to be.
More Windows Intune Coverage on RCPmag.com:
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."
I'll pass. But if you do the EdgeWalk next July, tell me all about it.
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.
Instead, a new study prepared by a Stanford engineering professor at the request of The New York Times found that the increase was actually closer to 56 percent over that period.
"Mostly because of the recession, but also because of a few changes in the way these facilities are designed and operated, data center electricity consumption is clearly much lower than what was expected, and that's really the big story," the professor, Jonathan G. Koomey, told the Times.
Koomey wasn't able to separate how much of the difference between his finding and the EPA numbers was due to the recession versus increased hardware efficiency and more use of virtualization.
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.
Doug Burger, a computer scientist at Microsoft Research, co-wrote the paper called, "Dark Silicon and the End of Multicore Scaling" (PDF). Burger and the other authors postulate that chipmakers are reaching limits on getting electrical power to all of the ever-smaller transistors that are getting jammed onto chips.
According to an account in The New York Times today:
"In their paper, Dr. Burger and fellow researchers simulated the electricity used by more than 150 popular microprocessors and estimated that by 2024 computing speed would increase only 7.9 times, on average. By contrast, if there were no limits on the capabilities of the transistors, the maximum potential speedup would be nearly 47 times, the researchers said."
Not all experts are as pessimistic that the technical challenges won't be overcome, but the research paper seems to have struck a nerve.
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."
When he refers to "this strategy," Lees is talking about bringing devices together into a "unified ecosystem."
"At the core of the device itself, it's possible to be common across phones, PCs and TVs, and even other things, because the price drops dramatically. Then it will be a single ecosystem. We won't have an ecosystem for PCs, and an ecosystem for phones, one for tablets. They'll all come together," Lees said.
Those of us who have watched Microsoft for a long time are familiar with this argument from Redmond. Microsoft has talked up the benefits of a unified ecosystem ever since it started putting Windows on servers, phones and purpose-built tablets.
What's new is what this argument comes in service of. In the past, the argument was rather baldly in the service of Windows everywhere. Whether or not the traditional Windows interface met the need of the device (such as a phone), it met Microsoft's need to have its operating system on all devices to support Microsoft's own business goals.
Now, with the Windows "8" previews of early June, the re-imagined Windows looks like it will actually meet the needs of tablet users, the Windows Phone 7 and "Mango" interfaces arguably meet the needs of phone users, and the strongly-hinted-at-Windows 7-legacy option within Windows "8" would meet the needs of mouse-and-keyboard PC users even as the more tablet-like aspects make it intriguing for next-generation PC form factors.
Rather than a unified interface to meet Microsoft's own needs, it's a varied interface to meet actual users' needs. Suddenly, the idea that a common architecture would also support development across different platforms is more compelling, as well. For example, the fact that the version of Internet Explorer 9 on "Mango" will be the same as the one on the PC will make things easier on Web developers.
If I'd heard Lees' talking about unifying the ecosystem two months ago, I might have expected something like the Fujitsu Windows 7 F-07C device launched last week, about which Microsoft observer Ed Bott hilariously Tweeted, "Microsoft should pay Fujitsu not to release this."
Following the Windows 8 demos, however, I'm actually inclined to trust Microsoft to come out with compelling reasons for why a unified ecosystem could actually work for those of us who don't work for Microsoft. It's amazing what some real competition can do to focus the mind on real users' needs.
[Click on image for larger view.]
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Despite this new Fujitsu device, Microsoft actually seems to be on the right track for unifying the ecosystem.
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Related:
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.
"Having silos inside your enterprise is no longer effective; enterprise operations must be seamless," said Ellis Gregory, president of EView Technology, in a statement. "By partnering with EView, ClearPointe can now offer a cloud-based solution that breaks down the internal IT silos and provides a comprehensive view and management of enterprise operations under System Center Operations Manager."
The solution from the two companies is called EView/400i Management for System Center Operations Manager. It will allow customers to monitor, correlate, control and report on iSeries systems from within the System Center Operations Manager interface.
ClearPointe and EView are both Microsoft System Center Alliance Partners.
Related:
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.
Admit it, you talk about your smartphone all the time. We're inviting you to brag about what you have and how you use it!
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.
The plan addresses Microsoft's stated goal of giving some of the smaller Dynamics partners who are being crowded out of the market by economic trends, by customer preferences and by Microsoft channel program changes a way to stay in the Dynamics business without having to engage in mergers and acquisitions.
Jeff Edwards, who as director of Microsoft Dynamics Partner Strategy steered Microsoft's evaluations of both the franchising and Master VAR approaches, explained the thinking behind the decision to go with a Master VAR concept rather than franchising to RCP at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference earlier this month in Los Angeles.
"I think the word franchising has connotations around fast food," said Edwards. (We couldn't agree more; the cover illustration for Jeff Schwartz's article about the franchising idea in the April RCP issue showed a McDonald's motif.)
Aside from potentially negative associations, there were other factors that proved more problematic in a franchising model. Edwards said the business filing, tax and legal requirements for setting up a formal franchising system were all fairly daunting.
That aside, Edwards said there was one main element to franchising that Microsoft wanted to keep: "What we did like about it is you did have consistency with national brands."
Enter the Master VAR approach. Under the model, a Master VAR would recruit smaller partners, known as affiliates, who would sell Dynamics ERP and CRM under the Master VAR's brand.
One of the most difficult aspects of the transition to the Microsoft Partner Network structure over the last year for Dynamics partners has been the much higher bar for membership at the gold level, and a similarly high bar for the new silver level, as well. For Dynamics partner companies with fewer than six employees, the requirements are nearly mathematically impossible to meet. Even for slightly larger organizations, the gold and silver hurdles are much more difficult to clear than the Gold Certified Partner status of the past.
Under the Master VAR setup, Edwards said, "We would hold [only] the Master VAR to the MPN gold requirements, like any large partner."
While that requirement would allow smaller partners to continue to sell and deliver Dynamics solutions as a gold-branded partner, it would have to be under the Master VAR's brand and on the Master VAR's terms. "The Master VAR would decide the financial relationship," said Edwards, adding that most agreements would probably involve the affiliates being able to take back their customers if the master-affiliate relationship didn't work out.
In addition to the MPN certification requirements, Microsoft would expect its Master VARs to centralize marketing, search engine optimization, support, billing and other operations.
For small partners considering an alliance with other small partners in other regions, the Master VAR pilot won't support that particular arrangement, Edwards said. "We require a unified brand," he said. "We don't want it to be that lightweight."
To be considered as a Master VAR, a nationally focused Dynamics partner will need to meet several requirements. The company will need to:
- have $1 million in operating capital,
- assume legal liability for the work done under its brand by its affiliates,
- drive the certification, operations, support, marketing and SEO for its national brand, and
- require affiliates to operate under a common brand.
Edwards declined to identify the national partners that Microsoft is in discussions with about participating in the Master VAR pilot this fall, but he did share some characteristics.
"We're going out largely to existing large partners," he said and added that four to five companies are interested. "We only want two or three," he said.
Edwards said Microsoft does have a sweet spot in mind for the Master VAR program: "You'll find it more in the lower midmarket and core midmarket."
The Master VAR pilot starts just a few months before the Jan. 1 launch of a new Dynamics Incentives Program that will increase product margins for partners that are meeting growth targets and decrease margins for partners that miss the targets.
Edwards said the Master VAR program could give both Master VARs and especially their affiliates an opportunity to realize those growth incentives, which can add up to 20 percentage points to Dynamics margins.
If you're a Dynamics VAR who won't be qualifying for a gold competency under the MPN, is an affiliate relationship with a Master VAR appealing to you? Let me know either way at [email protected] or leave a comment below.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 25, 201112 comments