Quest Software, which delved into the managed service provider market a little over two years ago with the acquisition of PacketTrap Networks, is bolstering that MSP portfolio.
The Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based software company on Thursday announced it acquired BlueFolder Inc., which makes a professional services automation (PSA) system. Between the remote monitoring and management (RMM) functionality of PacketTrap MSP and the PSA capability of BlueFolder, Quest now owns an end-to-end MSP package, company officials say. Terms of the BlueFolder deal weren't disclosed.
In an interview from BlueFolder's offices in Colorado Springs on Thursday, Mike Byrne, director of the MSP Network Management Division at Quest, said the plan is for the integration between the products to be seamless. "It's going to be the tightest of all," Byrne said of the integration between PacketTrap MSP and BlueFolder, which will be renamed PacketTrap PSA.
"Having both tools in a single interface, the MSP technicians won't have to jump into the RMM and then the PSA. They can pick and choose what they want to see in the dashboard. From an end user point of view, it's also a seamless application, where they can get to dashboards or create a ticket instead of going to multiple portals," Byrne said.
Quest's first release of BlueFolder will come toward the end of the first quarter under the PacketTrap PSA brand. It's not clear yet how much integration Quest can build into the two halves of the PacketTrap family by that point.
"We're working on a few kinks. We're doing our best," said Matt Bolton, divisional vice president for product management in the Network Management Division at Quest Software.
No matter how tight the integration at the end of March, Quest Software will continue to work on integrating the products throughout the year, Bolton said.
In the meantime, Quest remains committed to ensuring that standalone versions of the PacketTrap products integrate tightly with other PSA solutions and other RMM solutions on the market.
"We have deep partnerships with those guys," Bolton said and added that future releases would further improve the support for other PSA and RMM solutions at the same time as deeper integrations are being built between the PacketTrap products.
Quest Software's deepening commitment to the MSP market occurs as the company is in the midst of unifying its partner program in an effort to increase channel sales.
Posted by Scott Bekker on February 16, 20120 comments
Put the terms Microsoft, Amazon and cloud computing together, and the word "deathmatch" comes to mind.
After all, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is in direct competition with the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform. The approaches and capabilities are different, but the intent of the two companies to provide computing infrastructure in the cloud is similar.
Which is why I did a double take when I got an invitation today from the Microsoft Partner Network for the Feb. 28 webinar, "Getting Started with Microsoft Windows on Amazon Web Services." I was a little nervous about allowing my e-mail client to download the content, but it came through OK, and the link went to a legitimate MPN events page.
The webinar is presented by AWS in partnership with Microsoft U.S. Partner Hosting & Cloud Services. It's intended for channel partners and promises to show MSPs, ISVs and VARs how to "take advantage of your existing Microsoft investments and skill set to run Windows Server applications such as Microsoft SharePoint Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, and SQL Server" on AWS without incurring additional Microsoft licensing costs.
As is so often the case with all things Microsoft, the hype of platform battles rarely stands up to the more nuanced reality that where there's money to be made in partnering, Microsoft is usually game, no matter how unlikely the bedfellow may be.
I suppose, it's not surprising, as Amazon has been offering Windows hosted servers on AWS for years, clearly with Microsoft's blessing. Both benefit from this latest iteration of coopetition as Microsoft makes sure its software is relevant on the leading cloud platform while Amazon is able to ensure it serves the pent-up demands of its existing and prospective enterprise customer base.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on February 15, 20120 comments
The Windows Phone 8, or "Apollo," release of Microsoft's smartphone OS will integrate the phone with the core Windows 8 OS and restore enterprise-focused features to Microsoft's mobility platform, according to details obtained by an online news site.
A Microsoft spokesperson declined comment on reporting Thursday by Pocketnow.com about details in an allegedly leaked video that Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president for Windows Phone Program Management, reportedly created for Microsoft's phone partners at Nokia. However, another prominent news outlet vouched for the report's authenticity and SuperSite for Windows' Paul Thurrott used the occasion of the leak to release similar information that he implied he had been sitting on from other sources.
Judging by the information in the Pocketnow.com report, Microsoft is making architectural changes with Windows Phone 8 to leverage the biggest potential market share advantage in its considerable arsenal.
Currently, Microsoft badly trails Apple and Google in smartphone market share, making its efforts to persuade app developers to dedicate their limited resources to the Windows Phone OS a tough sell.
Yet if Microsoft could make Windows Phone apps interoperable with Windows 8 tablet apps and Windows 8 PC apps, the addressable market for Windows-focused mobile apps could become large enough to make the opportunity irresistible for developers.
According to the reports, Microsoft plans to take the integration of the desktop/tablet and phone OS much deeper than just the "Metro"-style tile user interface, potentially allowing intensive cross-platform development.
The phone and regular OS will share several key components, with heavy overlap in the kernel, the networking stack, security and multimedia, Pocketnow.com reported Belfiore as saying in the video. The steps will allow developers to "reuse -- by far -- most of their code," Belfiore reportedly said.
The Belfiore video also revealed that Microsoft expected 100,000 apps to be in Microsoft's marketplace when Windows Phone 8 launches. Given a rumored release date of Q4, that seems reasonable given that the Windows Phone Marketplace recently passed 50,000 apps. Even a 100,000 app count would leave Microsoft well behind Apple's 500,000-plus apps and Google's 400,000-plus apps, but Belfiore apparently promised Windows Phone 8 will help address that gap. The inclusion of native code support in the new version should ease porting of iOS and Android apps, according to Pocketnow.com. Meanwhile, Microsoft is also vowing backward compatibility for Windows Phone 7 and 7.5 apps in Windows Phone 8.
When Microsoft threw out the Windows Mobile platform in favor of a clean break with Windows Phone 7, the company abandoned many of the enterprise-friendly features that had helped that earlier Microsoft smartphone OS to a respectable market share.
After establishing Windows Phone as a consumer-first interface consistent with consumerization of IT trends, Microsoft now appears ready to try to build those business-friendly features in once again on the back end. According to the reports, new enterprise-focused features will include native BitLocker encryption, Secure Boot capabilities, some sort of return to ActiveSync (whether next to or in place of Zune seems unclear), Exchange ActiveSync policies, System Center configuration settings and the ability for businesses to distribute internal business apps behind the firewall.
There's also a slew of end-user features on tap, including support for multi-core processors, four different screen resolution options, removable microSD card storage, NFC radios, tap-to-share capabilities, the ability to track data usage, revamped Skype and Xbox clients and automatic preference for Wi-Fi connections.
If all of the details leaked Thursday are correct, and Redmond can execute on the plans, Microsoft will be taking a long stride back toward the center of the IT world with the Windows Phone 8-Windows 8 combination.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on February 03, 20121 comments
Research In Motion today announced general availability of free cloud services for using and managing BlackBerry devices with the Microsoft Office 365 suite.
The struggling business smartphone manufacturer released a beta of the service in October and had promised to make it available in January.
Formally titled the BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365, the main feature of the service allows for wireless synchronization between a BlackBerry device and Microsoft Exchange.
Another key end user feature is self-service security access that allows employees to reset their passwords and remotely lock or wipe their devices in case of loss or theft.
Some other features of the service should present opportunities to channel companies. "Managed service providers, systems integrators, carriers, resellers and other partners can also use the cloud service to manage BlackBerry deployments on behalf of their customers," RIM said in a statement.
The main administrative features is a Web-based console for provisioning, managing and securing BlackBerry devices.
An element aimed at both end user and IT audiences is BlackBerry Balance, a technology RIM describes as presenting a unified view of work and personal content on a BlackBerry while keeping the content separate and secure.
A similar BlackBerry service for Office 365's precursor, the Business Productivity Online Suite, originally cost $10. But RIM made the service free for BPOS a year ago and committed to making an Office 365 version free, as well, when it shipped.
In an interview with RCP last month, Tom Rizzo called BlackBerry support one of the most common customer requests for Office 365.
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 30, 20120 comments
Canalys, the market research firm that counts tablet shipments alongside desktops and laptops when sizing the PC market, reported today that Apple became the leading PC vendor in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Using the figures Apple released with its quarterly earnings last week, Canalys noted that Apple shipped 15 million iPads and 5 million Macs, for 17 percent of the total 120 million total PCs that shipped in the quarter.
HP, Lenovo, Dell and Acer, in that order, round out the top five PC vendors worldwide, according to Canalys' count.
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 30, 20120 comments
It was a day of reckoning for Nokia Inc., which is arguably Microsoft's most important strategic partner. By the numbers, the Espoo, Finland-based mobile phone maker's Symbian business is collapsing faster than expected while the nascent Windows Phone business is starting to boom -- also faster than expected but not fast enough to offset the Symbian shortfall.
Nokia reported its quarterly and full-year earnings on Thursday. The quarterly results showed a 21 percent drop in net sales and a 73 percent decline in earnings per share.
Run by former senior Microsoft executive Stephen Elop, Nokia is trying to execute a delicate shift in gears. The company is trying to de-emphasize the once-dominant but now seriously outdated Symbian OS-based line of smartphones while spinning up a new line of products based on Windows Phone.
Part of the decline in sales and earnings for Q4 came because of the "faster decline of our Symbian volumes than we anticipated," Nokia noted in its earnings release, which read:
"Following the announcement of our strategic partnership with Microsoft in February 2011, our strategy included the expectation to sell approximately 150 million more Symbian devices in the years to come. However, changing market conditions are putting increased pressure on Symbian. ... We expect this trend to continue in 2012."
While the company will continue to support Symbian customers with software through 2016, the company took charges in Q4 2011 for excess component inventory and future purchase commitments related to the realization that Symbian is not going to approach that 150 million sales figure.
Yet Nokia's shares traded higher after the earnings release. Part of the Symbian decline had already been priced into the stock, when a Symbian supplier warned investors of lower sales earlier this week.
But a bigger part of the stock boost is being attributed to Nokia's confirmation Thursday that it has sold "well over" 1 million Lumias, the new devices built to run the Windows Phone OS. The Lumia 710 and the Lumia 800 were announced in October, and started shipping in international markets in November and December. T-Mobile began selling the Lumia 710 earlier this month in the United States. Meanwhile, the most buzz-worthy device in Nokia's lineup, the Lumia 900 for AT&T was a hit at the Consumer Electronics Show and is rumored to be going on sale in the United States in mid-March.
In a statement, Elop employed military imagery to describe for investors the company's plans for fighting its way back into the smartphone market. "In the war of ecosystems, clearly there are some strong contenders already on the field. And with Lumia, we have demonstrated that we belong on the field. Our specific intent has been to establish a beachhead in this war of ecosystems, and country by country that is what we are now accomplishing," Elop said. "From this beachhead of more than 1 million Lumia devices, you will see us push forward with the sales, marketing and successive product introductions necessary to be successful."
That ability to jump into the market and immediately sell 1 million smartphones makes clear why Microsoft has been willing to invest so much in the Nokia partnership. Nokia's earnings releases Thursday also revealed exactly how much Microsoft's rumored payments to the mobile device giant amounted to:
"Our broad strategic agreement with Microsoft includes platform support payments from Microsoft to us as well as software royalty payments from us to Microsoft. In the fourth quarter 2011, we received the first quarterly platform support payment of USD 250 million."
Put another way, Microsoft paid Nokia almost $250 for every phone that's shipped so far, although the economics of the deal are sure to get substantially better for Redmond as production and marketing ramps up -- and as Nokia starts paying more in software royalties back to Microsoft.
Nokia softened the harsh declines in revenues and earnings with news of a dividend for investors. At the same time, Elop encouraged investors to keep their focus on the long term, "With a strong balance sheet, our performance in mobile phones and the new excitement around Lumia, we are confident that we are on the right track to build long-term value."
All in all, the Nokia earnings are one of the first signs that Microsoft may really be able to get some traction with Windows Phone after more than a year of mostly spinning its wheels. That said, as Microsoft has struggled for traction, Apple keeps moving the bar higher; Apple executives announced earlier this week that Apple sold 37 million iPhones in the quarter.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 26, 20122 comments
Polycom, which has a strategic partnership with Microsoft around the Lync unified communication product, saw its Lync-related revenues increase by 135 percent in 2011 compared to the year before.
Company executives shared the figure this week while discussing quarterly and year-end earnings with financial analysts. Overall, Polycom reported fourth quarter revenues of $407 million, up 20 percent from the year-ago period, and net income of $50 million, up 52 percent. For the full year, revenues were $1.5 billion, with net income of $136 million.
While Polycom officials attributed growth to several key partnerships, including those with IBM, HP, Apple and Lenovo, CFO Mike Kourey called out Microsoft as "a real highlight."
According to a transcript by Seeking Alpha, President and CEO Andy Miller said, "The opportunity to leverage these key relationships is proving to be significant as evidenced, for instance, by our success and growth through innovation and go-to-market alignment with Microsoft Lync. In fact, in 2011 we grew the revenues generated through our partnership with Microsoft by approximately 135 percent over 2010 levels."
"We believe this is driven through our integration of Lync functionality with Polycom's RealPresence platform and Lync-integrated video systems and desktop devices, coupled with the fast adoption of Lync worldwide," Miller said.
He went on to say that Lync adoption is picking up, reinforcing recent statements by Microsoft executives about Lync momentum and about the partner opportunity with the product.
"I think the trajectory of Microsoft Lync has evolved now to a point where we're moving from the early adopters and the pilot stages to real deployments, and of size as well," Miller said.
For its part, Polycom seems to be looking to current Microsoft partners to join its channel program and help the company drive its Lync-based solutions further into the market.
In talking to the analysts about priorities for newly hired president of North America sales David Ruggiero, Miller specifically called out the channel. "[Ruggiero has] hired vice presidents for the northeast, south, central, and west regions. In addition, we are continuing our focus on our channel strategy and channel fulfillment with a new vice president of North America channels."
Miller was referring to Dan Sibille, whose appointment as vice president of North America Channels was announced on Nov. 14. Miller reports to Ruggiero and also aligns with Ron Myers, Polycom's senior vice president of Worldwide Channels. Polycom has about 7,000 partners worldwide.
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 25, 20120 comments
Looking to make a splash with a mobile app? Some customers are better than others.
A study released this week by IDC, based on a survey of 50,000 consumers in 25 countries, segmented app buyers into six groups. IDC's segments include Tech Evangelists, Impulse Buyers, Experimental Adopters, Pragmatic Purchasers, Green Buyers and Disengaged Functionalists.
Will this taxonomy have the lasting power of Geoffrey Moore's categories from the tech marketing classic Crossing the Chasm? Probably not, but unsurprisingly, IDC identifies Tech Evangelists, like Moore's Early Adopters, as the key demographic. (Still, I find myself intrigued by the Disengaged Functionalists.)
"Tech evangelists not only own the most devices and utilize the most advanced functions, features and apps, they are also the group that drives adoption of device ownership and usage by other market segments," said IDC analyst Michael DeHart in a statement describing the research. "In terms of formulating a strategy for the prioritization of app development and marketing, focusing on Tech Evangelists' download and usage of apps will deliver the largest ROI by far in terms of segment-based app development and marketing."
In other survey results, IDC reported that free apps make up 85 percent of total app downloads, and the most prolific app downloaders (both free and paid) by country are South Korea followed by Sweden and the United States.
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 24, 20120 comments
A few rare beams of light are shining into the always murky closet of Windows OEM pricing.
Per Redmond magazine columnist Mary Jo Foley's ZDNet blog, an executive with ZTE told TrustedReviews.com that the Chinese phone maker must pay Microsoft $23 to $31 per copy to license the Windows Phone OS.
The amount seems really high to me, although I admit I don't know much about the relationship between the list prices you see for phones and what the carriers actually end up paying the phone manufacturers per device. (Care to enlighten me on a background basis? E-mail [email protected] or leave a comment below.)
In another interesting development on the pricing front, a report by Taiwan-based DigiTimes cited unnamed notebook vendor sources as saying that Microsoft's and Intel's combined fear of damaging PC pricing appears to be forcing Windows 8 tablets based on Intel chips into the $600-to-$900 price range.
According to the report, the pricing decisions may drive them to choose ARM solutions rather than the Intel platform to keep their Windows 8 tablet prices competitive with the market's dominant device, the Apple iPad. The iPad 2 retails from $500 to $830, but may come in less expensive options by the time any Windows 8 tablets ship due to pricing pressure from the $200 Amazon Kindle Fire.
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 20, 20120 comments
It's natural to assume that the Metro UI popping up on nearly all of Microsoft's screens -- from Windows Phone to Windows 8 to Xbox -- is being pushed down to the product groups from on high. More ammunition for that point of view came from the Microsoft keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show this month, when CEO Steve Ballmer and others mentioned "Metro" 27 times (you can count them in the transcript).
Nonetheless, that impression would be wrong, according to Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of Windows Phone Management. In an interesting interview posted today on Fast Company's Co. Design site, Belfiore told writer Austin Carr:
"We're at a point in our history where the product groups, by and large, operate independently -- they make decisions that they think are best for their customers and users," Belfiore says. "It's not a case where there's a top-down mandate: everyone go do this. ... There are few cases where senior management says, 'Everyone is going to do this.' Those [instances] are the exceptions rather than the rule."
Carr compares the situation to Apple's with Steve Jobs as the design czar and argues that Microsoft needs someone dictating the UI.
I'm less convinced that Microsoft isn't exerting pressure on all product groups to go with Metro -- or I should say, that the company won't exert that pressure when it matters. The Windows Phone team had already decided to use the Zune-inspired interface, and Xbox was another early convert. Windows chief Steven Sinofsky apparently decided to take the Windows client to Metro because it makes sense in light of the all-consuming focus on the tablet market.
All the product groups may be finding Metro on their own right now -- each for their own reasons. They're converging on a Metro idea that Ballmer and other senior leaders appear to love.
My sense is that the issue of UI control will come up in a future release, when somebody decides Metro is no longer in a particular product group's interest. At that point, I'd be surprised if the company famous for exerting a Windows "strategy tax" on other product groups will be so laissez-faire about the UI.
What's your take? Leave a comment below or e-mail me at [email protected].
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 19, 20122 comments
Datto Inc., the Norwalk, Conn.-based provider of hardware-based backup, disaster recovery and business continuity solutions, on Wednesday announced another year of triple-digit growth in revenues.
In a statement, which did not disclose the actual revenue figures, Datto said it had 300 percent revenue growth in 2011. According to the company, it's the third straight year Datto has achieved that growth rate.
With a channel-only sales model, Datto attributed much of its 2011 growth to investments in the channel, which included:
- boosting the resale partner base by over 200 percent to total more than 2,500 VAR, MSP and ISV resellers,
- introducing the Datto Authorized Reseller Program, and
- integrating a new online support ticketing system in the Datto Partner Portal.
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 18, 20120 comments
The System Center 2012 family will put Microsoft partners in a "prime position" to meet the emerging demand for private cloud solutions, Microsoft's top partner executive said this week.
Microsoft on Tuesday put out release candidates for all eight products in the System Center 2012 family, as reported in great detail by my colleague Kurt Mackie.
Among the highlights are a new licensing model that delivers all the components as a suite, rather than as a pick-and-choose menu of management tools. A more significant element is the way Microsoft is evolving the System Center brand from its former identification as a systems management platform toward a new identity as a private cloud enabler.
"Now customers and partners can manage physical, virtual and cloud environments from one console. They'll have full control across all datacenter investments," said Jon Roskill, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group, in a blog entry timed to the release candidate news.
As the product suite changes direction, the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group has been reconfiguring Microsoft Partner Network competencies to support the coalescing definitions of virtualization and systems management. The Systems Management competency and the Virtualization competency will merge in May into a Management and Virtualization competency designed around private cloud solutions.
That change will happen just a month after the re-focused line of System Center products is unofficially expected to be generally available.
"You can sell and deploy System Center 2012 as a bridge between your customers' on-premise investments and cloud opportunities. And you have Microsoft's common Identity & Security and Virtualization fabric," Roskill said. "Partners like you are in a prime position to help customers evaluate options and make smart decisions."
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 18, 20120 comments