Looks like Microsoft is committed to improving the Microsoft Partner Info mobile app.
Within a week of launching the app for partners with devices running Windows Phone 7 or Google Android, Microsoft released a version 1.2. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 01, 20110 comments
It's a truism that small business spending leads the country out of recessions.
Market researchers at Framingham, Mass.-based IDC are forecasting that a spending rebound by small and medium businesses is happening. On a morning when the Dow Jones Industrial Average is plunging and markets are fixated on the continuing fall in housing prices, IDC's forecast is welcome news indeed. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 01, 20110 comments
In the midst of a "meaningful enterprise infrastructure refresh," server sales were up across all geographies in the first quarter of 2011, according to the latest server numbers from IDC this week.
Server factory revenues rose 12.1 percent year over year to $11.9 billion in the January-through-March period, marking the fifth consecutive quarter that IDC has recorded server revenue growth. Unit shipments also increased 2.5 percent to 1.9 million units, the second-highest total yet for a calendar Q1. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 26, 20110 comments
In one of the first major changes to the competency setup since fully launching the Microsoft Partner Network in November, Microsoft will split the Unified Communications competency into two this October.
The new competencies will be a Messaging competency focused on Microsoft Exchange and a Communications competency focused on Microsoft Lync, according to a blog post Wednesday that unveiled the change. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 26, 20110 comments
In the Wild West days when a technology market is emerging and expanding, everyone wants a guess at how big the market could be before getting involved.
That's the case now with the opportunity for tablet apps. More than a year ago, around the time of the first Apple iPad launch, researcher Michael Wolf at GigaOm Pro estimated that tablet apps would be an $8 billion market by 2015. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 26, 20110 comments
One of the few real consumer stars at Microsoft submitted his resignation this week, according to Seattle Times blogger Brier Dudley.
To review Otto Berkes' career at Microsoft is to tour the company's great consumer successes and its most promising scuttled consumer projects. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 26, 20111 comments
Two months after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recapped some of the efforts by Microsoft and its partners to help, and he detailed the role cloud computing could play in rebuilding.
Ballmer's comments came during the Nikkei Symposium in Tokyo on Monday. Nihon Microsoft became Microsoft's first country subsidiary outside the United States 25 years ago, and remains Microsoft's largest subsidiary with 2,500 employees. Microsoft's partner community in Japan encompasses 8,000 companies. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 24, 20111 comments
A Microsoft executive outlined an approach that Microsoft will probably pursue alongside partners in trying to persuade SMBs to pay for the forthcoming Office 365 cloud productivity and collaboration suite.
In a blog posting on Monday titled "Small Businesses -- Are your Mobile Workers Compromising your Security," Cindy Bates, vice president of U.S. Small and Medium Business & Distribution, described the dangers of doing business collaboration on free public social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 24, 20111 comments
Microsoft on Monday launched a new app for Microsoft partners using Windows Phone 7 or Google Android devices that aggregates Microsoft Partner Network-related Twitter feeds, blogs, technical resources and partner and Microsoft MVP conversation threads.
The Microsoft Partner Info mobile app pulls together information from the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group and can include feeds from Microsoft subsidiary partner teams in several countries including Australia, Austria, Denmark, Italy, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 24, 20110 comments
For the record, the first Microsoft partner to achieve a gold competency under the revamped Microsoft Partner Network was IQ GmbH of Munich, Germany.
Microsoft rolled out the last piece of the overhauled MPN on Nov. 1, with the formal launch of the gold versions of each of the nearly 30 competencies. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 24, 20110 comments
A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the latest Millward Brown brand value rankings. I'd lost track of the metric and was surprised to find that IBM had surpassed Microsoft in brand value last year.
Now IBM, which Microsoft so famously left in the dust in several ways on the strength of its PC offerings, has retaken Microsoft on a more widely watched measure. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 23, 20110 comments
Windows Phone 7 this week will come to Verizon, the largest mobile operator in the United States with 104 million "wireless connections," which include 88 million retail customers. (AT&T would be larger if the T-Mobile acquisition goes through.)
Verizon will start selling the HTC Trophy as its first Windows Phone 7 device online on May 26. The device will hit Verizon stores on June 2, according to a post on Microsoft's Windows Phone Blog by Michael Stroh. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 23, 20110 comments