Welcome to summer. Tech-Ed is over, and the E3 consumer-electronics show has left us with a dearth of enterprise-technology news. So, we're going to take this opportunity to talk about some vendors and subjects we don't often cover.
First up this week is Viewfinity, a systems management company that's taking on the likes of BeyondTrust with a cloud-based package that offers privilege management, patch management and operating-system deployment, among other functions.
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 14, 20101 comments
There's a problem with the iPad, but it's not Apple's fault. Or there was a problem, anyway, when a hack targeted at service provider AT&T exposed users' e-mail addresses last week. Folks as famous as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had their e-mails exposed, and the FBI is now involved. So, this is kind of a big deal -- but as for the folks at AT&T, they're just so, so sorry that it happened. Really.
Posted by Lee Pender on June 14, 20100 comments
More specifically, the magnificent Mary Jo Foley tells us that Microsoft could be running 85 to 90 percent of its own applications in the cloud within five to 10 years. (That's according to Microsoft, naturally.) It's an ambitious plan…but we'll believe it when we see it.
Posted by Lee Pender on June 10, 20103 comments
Riverbed Technology, in case you haven't heard of it, is a pretty darn interesting company that produces applications for improving IT performance, specifically network performance. Riverbed this week launched RiOS 6.1, the latest version of its Wide Area Network performance booster.
One of the grande benefits of RiOS (thank you, thank you) is the ability to deploy Exchange over a WAN without the messaging software running like a river of molasses. It also boosts upgrades to Exchange 2010, Joe Ghory, senior product marketing manager at Riverbed, told RCPU over lunch in Framingham recently. "It gives you the ability to upgrade without performance being a concern," Ghory said.
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 10, 20100 comments
When the news hole is gaping, journalists and pundits start filling it with whatever they can find. (Believe us, we know.) So, with iPhone 4 registering a solid "meh" on the excitement scale and Tech-Ed producing not a whole lot of news this week, the rumor mill sputtered back into action.
That's always bad news for poor Steve Ballmer, whose job always seems to be at risk (although we really don't think that it is) whenever there's nothing more high-profile to discuss. So, this week, like clockwork, the speculation about the possible end of Ballmer's reign as Microsoft CEO has cranked itself up again.
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 10, 20100 comments
Shouldn't this be a bigger deal? Microsoft, all in for the cloud these days and all that, finally flips the switch on a free, Web-based version of Office, and it gets the same treatment news-wise as tomorrow's elementary-school lunch menu. (We're hearing hot dogs and tater tots, by the way. But that's unconfirmed.)
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 09, 20100 comments
So, we've complained that Tech-Ed hasn't brought much out in the way of news, but it really is a show about education (supposedly) and not so much about new stuff. Still, Tech-Ed hasn't passed this week completely news-free. RCPU officemate and superb journalist Kathleen Richards offers some information on Microsoft's cloud related announcements from the show for us.
Posted by Lee Pender on June 09, 20100 comments
Redmond magazine columnist Mary Jo Foley has a pretty darn comprehensive look at what Microsoft is talking about including in OCS 14, its PBX alternative.
Posted by Lee Pender on June 09, 20100 comments
Just as the creative force behind most international soccer teams wears the number 10, so will Microsoft release 10 patches tomorrow, perhaps in honor of the World Cup, which starts later this week. Yes, that was all one sentence.
Posted by Lee Pender on June 07, 20100 comments
Finally, some news from a conference. But it's not from Tech-Ed; Microsoft released the latest version of its Web-design tool at a show in New York today.
Posted by Lee Pender on June 07, 20100 comments
Maybe we media types really don't have anything better to do with our time. This week, two of the biggest vendors in the technology industry are going head to head with conferences, leading us to produce tons of articles about…not much, really.
Oh, sure, there's the new iPhone. Apple, the new king of technology, unveiled it today at its Worldwide Developers Conference. The new wonder device is smaller, faster...and a bit underwhelming, apparently. iPhone 4 didn't really surprise anybody -- although it looks impressive enough -- and Apple's share price actually fell almost two percent today. Welcome to the world of high expectations, Apple. It's not enough to impress anymore. You have to blow people away.
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 07, 20100 comments
The PC era is over. Didn't you know? The smartphone, the tablet computer and various other touch-screen devices have made it obsolete -- or they will soon, anyway. So says Steve Jobs, and Steve Jobs is never wrong…is he?
Maybe he isn't. He said this week that PCs would soon be like trucks. Check out this passage from the Seattle PI blog linked above: "The PC, Jobs suggested, will assume the role of niche workhorse as the touch-screen user interface -- best illustrated, so far, by the iPhone and iPad -- grows in maturity and usefulness."
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Posted on June 03, 20106 comments