News
2015 Wrap-Up: The Top Articles of the Year
From Windows 10's impact, to Microsoft's roadmap changes, to the never-ending debate about whether Windows Phone is good enough, here are the most popular articles of 2015.
Features
5. Retiring Windows Server 2003: Lessons from Windows XP's End-of-Life
READER COMMENT: "Most of Microsoft's patches break more than they fix so I don't see that this hype is anything but the same hype that came from Y2K. Upgrade or face the doom! Yea, right." [Read here]
4. Microsoft Throws Hardware Roadmap for Loop with Windows 10 as a Service
FROM THE ARTICLE: "Will free upgrades uncouple Windows releases from the PC refresh cycle?" [Read here]
3. How Containers Fit into the Microsoft Stack: A Visual Guide
READER COMMENT: "You explained the comparison between VMs and containers in a very interesting and informative way." [Read here]
2. Is It Time for Microsoft To Open Source Windows?
READER COMMENT: "Why? That's the big question. The FOSS community would fracture it 1,000 times, you'd have 50 different methods of installing (depending on what 'flavor' you got), and programming for one desktop environment would be completely different for another." [Read here]
1. How Good Can a $60 Windows 8.1 Tablet Be?
READER COMMENT: "I picked one up two weeks ago, and would agree with most of your points -- only adding that it is hard to believe that Microsoft will be able to keep Windows 8.1 secure for the next year in the limited C: drive space this tablet provides." [Read here]
Columns
5. The Partner Opportunity in Packaging Microsoft's Power BI
FROM THE ARTICLE: "As much as business intelligence has gone mainstream, it's still not a simple conversation. One Microsoft partner has found a solution to reduce customer confusion." [Read here]
4. Breaking Up with Windows Phone: It's Not You, Microsoft, It's the Apps
READER COMMENT: "I suspect that Windows Phone/10 Mobile will probably be relegated to the business marketplace forever, despite the fact that in many ways it is a superior platform." [Read here]
3. Getting To Know Microsoft Cortana
READER COMMENT: "Appreciate your observations about Cortana, because it does reflect the need by all types of end users to have personalized, real-time assistance in interacting with both people and automated business processes." [Read here]
2. How To Speak Microsoft: Use These Acronyms
FROM THE ARTICLE: "A brief glossary of the two-, three- and four-letter terms that Microsoft loves and partners should know." [Read here]
1. IAMCP Program Gives Microsoft Partners a Leg Up on Training
FROM THE ARTICLE: "For the first time, Microsoft partners who are members of the IAMCP may purchase the same Microsoft curriculum and online labs that partner training centers use." [Read here]
Blogs
5. 10 Big Questions About Windows 10 (Jan. 23)
FROM THE ARTICLE: "We know way more now about Microsoft's plans for Windows 10 than we did before the big news conference this week -- the Project Spartan browser is real, Cortana is fully integrated, unified applications are a reality, some upgrades will be free, Windows will be updated as a service, holographic computing is coming, et cetera." [Read here]
4. What VMware's CEO Thinks of Microsoft (Aug. 20)
FROM THE ARTICLE: "Here at RCP, we've often covered the inflammatory things Microsoft executives have to say about VMware. (Mostly COO Kevin Turner in his annual Worldwide Partner Conference keynote.)" [Read here]
3. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Unveils New Logo (April 16)
FROM THE ARTICLE: "Meg Whitman rolled out a new logo for Hewlett Packard Enterprise on Wednesday, and her blog post revealed that she's sweating the smallest details." [Read here]
2. How To Market to Millennials (April 9)
FROM THE ARTICLE: "It's not your imagination. Your buyers are getting younger. By the time 2020 rolls around (yes, only five years from now) millennials will make up half of the workforce." [Read here]
1. How Trustworthy Is Microsoft BitLocker Disk Encryption? (June 4)
READER COMMENT: "I see businesses spending millions of dollars to chase the security hole that some researcher finds that is almost never exploited, only to succumb to a simple e-mail threat and infection where the person in the chair clicked yes, and the computer did what it was told." [Read here]
News
5. Microsoft Pushes Back SharePoint 2016 Release to Next Year (April 17)
FROM THE ARTICLE: "Microsoft's forthcoming SharePoint Server 2016 product will hit general availability in the second quarter of 2016 instead of in the second half of 2015, as Microsoft had previously projected." [Read here]
4. With Windows 10, Microsoft Evolves Its Mobile Device Management Efforts (Jan. 14)
FROM THE ARTICLE: "The Windows 10 operating system will bring mobile device management (MDM) improvements to Microsoft's enterprise offerings, according to a top Microsoft executive." [Read here]
3. Microsoft Pushes Next Windows Server, System Center Releases to 2016 (Jan. 31)
FROM THE ARTICLE: "The next releases of Microsoft's Windows Server and System Center products will not appear until 2016, Microsoft said on Friday." [Read here]
2. Windows 10 Gets Enterprise-Ready with 'Threshold 2' Release (Nov. 12)
FROM THE ARTICLE: "Windows 10's first major update, code-named 'Threshold 2,' began rolling out on Thursday." [Read here]
1. Microsoft Rolls Out Skype for Business to Office 2013 (April 14)
FROM THE ARTICLE: "As it promised earlier this month, Microsoft on Tuesday released its new Skype for Business client to Office 2013 users as part of its April Patch Tuesday update." [Read here]