Bill Gates often cites luck as a critical factor in his success with Microsoft.
Best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell famously developed the theme in Outliers, in which he argued that Gates and a few other tech titans were born in the right circumstances at the right time to strike it rich in the computer industry. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 31, 20111 comments
Microsoft pulled the switch today on a previously announced shuffle of competencies in the Microsoft Partner Network.
"Today, the [Unified Communications] competency has been officially retired and we officially launch the Messaging and Communications competencies," wrote Ian Hameroff, group product manager of Exchange Partner Marketing at Microsoft, in a blog post. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 31, 20110 comments
Here in the States it's Halloween, the day we all try to freak ourselves and each other out with scary costumes and scary movies. In the spirit of the holiday, I'll offer up my seven worst nightmares for Microsoft partners.
What would be the worst-case scenarios for solution providers who have made big bets on Microsoft technologies? More
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 31, 20110 comments
Every now and again Microsoft pulls product plans, R&D Division projects and a little creativity together to come up with a video showing what technology could allow in the near future.
A few years ago, a Microsoft video popped up at trade shows and on YouTube showing ubiquitous surface computing on walls, floors and windows, accompanied by credit card-sized handheld devices.
More
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 27, 20111 comments
Microsoft cited Office 365 as a bright spot in the otherwise lackluster quarterly earnings announced last week. For full coverage, see Kurt Mackie's story, "Bing Drags Down Microsoft's Q1 Earnings."
"The early success of Office 365 has surpassed our expectations. Businesses around the world, and of all sizes, are making the commitment to Microsoft's cloud services," CFO Peter Klein said during the earnings call. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 27, 20112 comments
Details are emerging in a published report on how exactly Microsoft is entering the mix for a potential Yahoo Inc. acquisition.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Microsoft is working with Silver Lake Partners and one of Silver Lake's investors, the Canada Pension Plan (CPP). Silver Lake and the CPP were co-investors in Skype, which Microsoft acquired earlier this year for $8.5 billion. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 20, 20111 comments
It shouldn't surprise anyone that Stuxnet's authors -- be they in the U.S., Israeli or other intelligence establishments -- are still toiling away to find virtual ways to do real-world damage.
What we do have now is tangible evidence that attackers are using the complex code of Stuxnet as a foundation for other attacks. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 19, 20111 comments
Most of the focus surrounding Apple's earnings yesterday is on the dip in iPhone sales and Cupertino's whiff on financial analysts' expectations. It's got to be bracing to Tim Cook that his first two major public events as CEO -- the iPhone 4S launch and the quarterly earnings -- have come across as disappointments. At this point, though, it seems like a hiccup rather than a trend.
In any case, sales of the iPad, and company officials' comments about iPad in the earnings call, continue to validate the market for tablets as business -- not just personal -- devices. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 19, 20110 comments
It looks like Microsoft will have a tablet ally in Dell.
Speaking in a press and analyst Q&A at Dell World 2011 this week in Texas, CEO Michael Dell reportedly said, "We are very aligned with Microsoft around Windows 8. You'll hear more about Windows 8 from us and see a wide range of products released" (emphasis mine). More
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 16, 20111 comments
A recurring theme here at Redmond Channel Partner is to highlight some of the best benefits of the Microsoft Partner Network. We've done that since we started in 2005 and update that info all the time. (See here for a story about where Microsoft caches Internal Use Rights for partners and here for one about how various benefits map to the cost of joining the MPN.)
Which is why we perked up and took notice when Jon Roskill, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group, posted a blog about which of the benefits he thinks bring the best value to partners. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 13, 20110 comments
Has Windows Phone hit the bottom of the trough? Figures released this week by market watchers at comScore could be a good sign for the Microsoft smartphone platform.
Windows Phone faced a challenge familiar to anyone who takes a moderately successful product and sends it back to the whiteboard for a do-over. I'm sure many a PowerPoint presentation projected on many a Microsoft corporate meeting room wall showed optimistic forecasts of Windows Phone being additive to Windows Mobile market share, with overall Microsoft share marching up and to the right in a confident and orderly fashion on the charts. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 10, 20113 comments
It is hard to separate the incredible burst of creativity of Steve Jobs' last few years from the illnesses that consumed him before our eyes.
The iPod arrived a few years before the 2004 diagnosis of a rare form of pancreatic cancer and certainly followed a long career of innovation. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 07, 20113 comments