No surprise here. Intel isn't exactly happy with the European Union's antitrust ruling. Lawyers, please.
Posted by Lee Pender on July 23, 20090 comments
The other day, while lounging in a hammock on his back porch, your editor spotted a hawk circling overhead. He was probably using that super hawk vision to try to pick out a field mouse or a rabbit or something to snatch away...or he could have been working for Microsoft.
A couple of weeks ago, enterprise resource planning vendor Sage Software's biggest U.S. reseller, MIS Group, just shut down, and somewhat unexpectedly at that. Here's where that hawk -- or maybe more of a vulture -- comes into play.
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Posted by Lee Pender on July 22, 20092 comments
Yes, this Microsoft store thing is serious...and Redmond has hired a former retail guru from Apple to really get the thing rolling. Of course, this sort of thing is of little concern to enterprise partners, but it's not the greatest news for smaller Microsoft channel members who might actually have to compete with these stores to some extent. We don't think Microsoft will abandon its channel, but the Microsoft shop could be a hassle at the low end. We'll see how Microsoft's little effort goes over in comparison to Apple's super-cool retail outlets.
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Posted by Lee Pender on July 22, 20090 comments
So, Microsoft is contributing to the Linux kernel with 20,000 lines of Hyper-V code. The headline glut about this story basically boils down to one thing: both Linux and Microsoft have finally arrived. Obviously, it's a victory of sorts for the Linux folks to have Microsoft acknowledge that it can't beat them down with lawsuits and saber-rattling.
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Posted by Lee Pender on July 22, 20090 comments
When you see the folks from Redmond and some EU competition wonks hoisting big goblets of Belgian beer, you'll know they've reached some sort of agreement. Until then, discussions continue.
Posted by Lee Pender on July 09, 20090 comments
If you're anywhere near Greater Boston, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this week is the storm before the calm, given the rain we've had lately. But, in truth, it's the calm before the storm.
That's because Microsoft will hold its Worldwide Partner Conference next week in New Orleans. And while storms are still (understandably) a sensitive subject on the banks of the Mississippi, we're only talking here about a metaphorical storm. This one will bring partners, not rain, pouring into NOLA. (By the way, we say well-done to Microsoft for selecting New Orleans for both Convergence and the Partner Conference this year. RCPU is officially a big fan of the Big Easy.)
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Posted by Lee Pender on July 08, 20090 comments
Better together? Not when one Microsoft application starts deleting data from another, as can happen, apparently, with Forefront and SharePoint due to a bug in the security suite.
Posted by Lee Pender on July 08, 20090 comments
This is the kind of news that makes those of us who are fans of cloud computing cringe. No, we're not talking about Microsoft finally putting a price on Azure, which should happen later this month at the Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.
We're talking about a relative slew of datacenter outages that took place worldwide last week, including an outage, caused by a fire, which brought Microsoft's Bing Travel site down for hours and took out payment system Authorize.net for a solid 12 hours.
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Posted by Lee Pender on July 07, 20090 comments