In the year 2014, according to analysts at Gartner, the tech world can look forward to Android devices passing 1 billion units shipped in a year -- the first time any platform has reached that kind of volume.
Yet despite Android bounding by 74 percent in unit shipments from 2012 to 2013 and Apple climbing 25 percent in that same period as Windows fell by 5 percent, Gartner seems to see reasons for optimism about Microsoft's future.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 08, 20140 comments
Continuum this week unveiled a multimillion-dollar investment in upgrading its datacenter capacity to position the company for unspecified future offerings for its managed service provider (MSP) partners, according to the company's CEO.
"This was a pretty substantial investment that has to do with the underlying infrastructure of our fundamental platform," said Michael George, CEO of Continuum, in a telephone interview. Continuum's core products for its 3,300 MSPs are the Continuum RMM and Continuum Vault, which are backup and disaster recovery services built around an appliance manufactured by Datto.
The Software as a Service (SaaS) nature of Continuum's offerings is a key product differentiator, making its datacenter infrastructure mission-critical.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on December 19, 20130 comments
Five months after acquiring Rover Apps, Kaseya has released a rebranded version of Rover's bring-your-own-device (BYOD) management technology for Kaseya's managed service provider and enterprise IT customers.
Kaseya bought Rover Apps in a burst of acquisition activity this summer. Insight Venture Partners announced a significant investment in Kaseya on June 24, bringing in new CEO Yogesh Gupta. A few weeks later on July 9, Kaseya acquired cloud and network monitoring solution vendor Zyrion Inc., with the Rover Apps acquisition coming July 16.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on December 16, 20130 comments
In a move to build a channel presence behind its emerging "Cloud OS" strategy, Microsoft on Thursday launched a consortium of about two dozen cloud service providers worldwide that can provide and support hybrid clouds for customers.
Cloud OS is Microsoft's attempt to build a unified platform for customers that allows them to move workloads and services among on-premise facilities, Microsoft public cloud services and service provider-hosted clouds. Microsoft formally launched what senior Microsoft executive Satya Nadella called its "cloud operating system era" in September 2012 with the availability of Windows Server 2012.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on December 12, 20130 comments
Nearly a third. That's how much of Yahoo Inc.'s revenue comes from its Microsoft partnership.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been pestering Yahoo with inquiries on the matter dating back several months and finally got an answer, the Reuters news service reported Tuesday.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on December 11, 20130 comments
In the final weeks of a year in which the inability of major U.S.-based technology companies to protect their customers' data from U.S. government snooping became apparent, those companies are making a public stand.
Microsoft and its peers launched an aggressive public relations campaign on Monday with an open letter to President Barack Obama and to the U.S. Congress.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on December 09, 20130 comments
Microsoft partners who haven't yet started retooling their businesses for a future with fewer new PC deployments are getting more warnings from industry analysts that it may be time.
Witness this week's recalibration by IDC of its PC sales estimate for all of 2013. The Framingham, Mass.-based market research firm downgraded its previous estimate of a 9.7 percent decline in worldwide PC shipments to a forecast of a 10.1 percent drop, now that more data is in.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on December 05, 20130 comments
In mid-November, Microsoft's new channel chief Phil Sorgen e-mailed partners with a surprise delay in many of the planned updates to the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN). A host of changes to Microsoft's core partner program had been scheduled to go into effect in January.
Now many of the changes are being delayed until February and more are being held back until an unspecified date in the third calendar quarter of 2014. After Sorgen's e-mail, MPN General Manager Julie Bennani revealed in a blog post that Microsoft had rethought its plans to create cloud tracks for many of the competencies.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on December 02, 20130 comments
Microsoft is putting the brakes on a number of substantial changes to its partner program that had been set to take effect early next year.
"Following compelling partner feedback and a thorough review of our planned roadmap, we've decided to prioritize the timing of certain program updates communicated at the Worldwide Partner Conference in July 2013," wrote Phil Sorgen, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group, in an e-mail sent to partners Thursday night.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on November 22, 20130 comments
Migration project automation startup SkyKick on Tuesday released an update of the SkyKick Automation Suite to bring support for Microsoft Exchange Public Folder migrations into Office 365 and deliver a more robust dashboard for partners.
Earlier this year, Microsoft expanded Office 365 to support migration of Exchange Public Folders into its cloud productivity suite.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on November 19, 20130 comments
The executive most closely associated with Dell's current channel approach is moving on.
Greg Davis was the public face of Dell's partner program, helping to launch Dell PartnerDirect in December 2007, to sell the program to a skeptical channel and to advocate for it for the ensuing six years.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on November 19, 20130 comments
Steve Ballmer granted a series of interviews to The Wall Street Journal that resulted in an article over the weekend on how he decided to retire.
Ballmer's story, corroborated for the WSJ's Monica Langley by Microsoft board member John Thompson, is that he came to a realization on a London street in May that Microsoft might undergo its necessary transformations without him and all the old-guard Microsoft baggage he carries.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on November 18, 20130 comments