Doug is out today, so covering for him is Jeff Schwartz, editor at large for Redmond magazine and executive editor at RCP magazine:
Microsoft was among those that said it will participate in the Enterprise Cloud Buyers' Council (ECBC), a consortium of software, hardware and telecom providers gunning to forge interoperability, security and common service levels among cloud providers. The consortium was brought together by the TM Forum, a telecom industry association.
In addition to Microsoft, initial backers of the ECBC include IBM, CA, HP, Cisco and EMC, as well as telecom providers AT&T, BT, Telecom Italia and Nokia Siemens Networks. Noticeably absent were Amazon and Google.
The TM Forum maintains it will succeed for one key reason: It's relying on enterprise customers, who have raised key concerns about cloud services, to bring providers to the table.
The ECBC has six major enterprise customers on board from industries such as pharmaceuticals, retail and banking, and has also been conducting ongoing discussions with a number of key influencers, according to Keith Willetts, the TM Forum's chairman and CEO. Only two of those enterprise customers have revealed their membership: Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Deutsche Bank.
"We've historically brought together buyers and sellers to really get the buyer requirements of the supplier side lined up," Willetts tells me. "We've been doing that for quite some time for the communications industry."
But IT and telecom consultant Tom Nolle of CIMI Corp. tells me he's skeptical that the TM Forum will be able to move fast enough. Nolle withdrew his involvement in the TM Forum, saying it moved too slowly in providing standards among telecom carriers.
"I know how these things work and the problem is the buyers are helplessly trapped in a bureaucratic process, and the thing that worries me the most about their enterprise initiatives is that the enterprises have a shorter capital cycle than the providers," Nolle says.
I'm scheduled to talk with Microsoft about its involvement in the TM Forum next week. If you have any questions for them, drop me a line at [email protected].
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 12/11/2009 at 1:17 PM0 comments
Doug is out today, so covering for him is Jeff Schwartz, editor at large for Redmond magazine and executive editor at RCP magazine:
The controversial health care bill seems to be progressing its way through the Senate, and while anything can still happen, it's looking like something might reach President Obama's desk after all.
So when I saw Microsoft's announcement yesterday that the company is acquiring Sentillion Inc., it served as yet another reminder of Redmond's effort's to capitalize on the need to provide technology that will provide better care and lower costs.
Microsoft this year placed a key stake in this area with the release of its Amalga Unified Intelligence System (UIS), a platform that ties together clinical, administrative and financial data from different systems. It's intended to make information available by practitioners, technicians, nurses and administrative workers. Among the 115 hospitals using it, according to Microsoft, are John Hopkins, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Novant Health and Seattle's Hospital.
What Sentillion brings to the table is single sign-on (SSO) software and technology, deployed in more than 1,000 hospitals, that provides provisioning, context management and strong authentication designed for clinical systems.
Redmond's interest in Sentillion doesn't surprise. Microsoft signed a deal to license its technology back in June. It would seem only natural that Microsoft would want to make sure Amalga has strong security and access management technology.
But could it be that Microsoft's interest in Sentillion transcends trying to bolster Amalga -- or, for that matter, its other health care offerings, including HealthVault? Or, looking even broader, could it be that Sentillion could bolster Microsoft's overall federated identity management (FIM) technology, called Windows Identity Foundation and now in test mode?
I wasn't the only one apparently thinking this. "While the emphasis on the acquisition is health care-focused, I'm sure that Microsoft will want to roll some or all of the Sentillion technology into their FIM/identity management product line eventually," wrote Jackson Shaw, senior director of product management at Quest Software, in a blog posting.
But on further reflection, Shaw later opined that while it might make sense to integrate Sentillion's technology into Microsoft's FIM stack, it raises a number of questions, perhaps most notably:
If Sentillion will be exclusively run by the Health Solutions Group, this could lead to a split identity management strategy at Microsoft and that would not be good. Imagine having to speak to the FIM sales guys about FIM and the health care sales guys about Sentillion/ESSO.
He also points out that Sentillion's technology is focused in user provisioning:
Can Microsoft afford two user provisioning solutions? Even if one is for health care only? Will FIM replace ProVision? Will Microsoft keep any of Sentillion's IDM [identity management] stack at all other than the health care-specific "context switching" stuff?
Finally, Shaw raises another interesting question:
Why did Microsoft acquire Sentillion versus leveraging FIM? I can guess at a whole bunch of reasons why this didn't happen: Time to market of a FIM-based solution for the health care people; FIM being a more general-purpose solution versus Sentillion's health care focus; or the health care people simply focusing on their market and Sentillion being a market leader was the obvious play.
This led Shaw to conclude that maybe this wasn't an identity management acquisition, but one intended to bolster Microsoft's play in health care.
Will the Sentillion technology ultimately show up in Microsoft's FIM stack down the road? What's your take? Drop me a line at [email protected].
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 12/11/2009 at 1:17 PM0 comments
Microsoft is on a search roll. Bing is getting good reviews from Redmond Report readers, was recently upgraded with mapping and other features, and now the deal in which Yahoo will use Bing search is finally final.
While Yahoo and Microsoft finally agree, however, it will be a year until the deal passes regulatory approval.
This is instant market share for Bing, but in a way it's unearned share, bought and paid for rather than gained through superior performance. It also reduces competition in the search market. And ultimately, this could benefit Google more than Bing as Yahoo users may Google rather than Bing. We'll find out in the coming months.
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/09/2009 at 1:17 PM2 comments
Reports have been circulating that Microsoft would pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to make content exclusive to Bing, keeping it off Google. The deal would satisfy two needs: Microsoft wants traffic and Murdoch is sick of Google stealing -- I mean aggregating -- his hard-earned content.
On the other hand, paying to build search market share isn't the best approach. Let the technology speak for itself, I say. Microsoft apparently agrees, and isn't currently pursuing such a deal, it now says.
That leaves the issue of aggregation very much on the table. The Internet is still the Wild West. I understand rogue sites grabbing content that isn't theirs, but Google is a huge public company, and its aggregation is killing the content that feeds it: When there are no journalists, what will become of Google? You tell me at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/09/2009 at 1:17 PM1 comments
Tomorrow, Microsoft will crack open a six-pack of patches. While not as tasty as a nice Hefeweizen, these patches at least won't leave you with a hacker-induced hangover. Half the patches are critical, while the other three are merely "important."
The most important is a roll-up of fixes for Internet Explorer 6 and 7. Those that can't move to IE 8 due to custom apps or other compatibility issues are well-advised to download and install this puppy.
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/07/2009 at 1:17 PM2 comments
Readers share their thoughts on Los Angeles' decision to adopt Google's e-mail service, and what it means for cloud computing:
Los Angeles is run by a bunch of morons. I used to work for a firm that did IT support for the city back in the late '90s, and they had the most moronic in-house IT people. Most of the divisions ran on computers so old, opening them up for service was pretty scary, as disturbing the dust inside would many times lead to failure. Instead of replacing old equipment, they would budget only for repairs, which cost two or three times more than new equipment.
As for Google Apps, it does not even come near the robustness of Microsoft Exchange coupled with Office. They have e-mail outages for a couple of hours every few months, which my organization would never tolerate. They have no respect for privacy, as shown in the service agreement, and technical support is pretty much non existent. L.A. is a city in a budgetary crisis and is looking to cut their IT budget. For a small company or startup without an IT budget, it may make sense to use Google Apps, but for an organization like the city of L.A., I think it could be disastrous.
-Asif
Major companies like Coke and Home Depot have chosen Microsoft for the cloud. They actually make money, whereas L.A. does nothing productive but waste taxpayer money. Not sure I'd call it a win for Google.
-Anonymous
Yep, this is a major win for Google. How do you translate "use e-mail to target ads" when the people you're targeting are the government? If I said, "Monitor confidential e-mail communications of the government to influence the awarding of contracts," would that sound as benign? Hmmm.
-Dan
I think that any organization that outsources their important (and in some cases confidential) e-mail to a third-party instead of controlling it within the security of their own firewall is asking for trouble. I predict that major security breaches of information will befall Los Angeles, and they will be a poster child for why you DON'T want your sensitive information in the cloud.
-Anonymous
The move to cloud-based computing environments is unstoppable. Microsoft knows this. Google knows this. Amazon knows this. IBM and HP know this. Salesforce knows this. Novell knows this. The Great Recession is accelerating the move to cloud computing; organizations are not going to be able to afford the capital investment or obtain credit to keep running premises-based computing work loads. The IT landscape is going to radically change over the next 10 years. Resistance is futile. Your IT services will be assimilated into the cloud.
-Anonymous
Confidential business data is what you use to keep your company competitive. Why would you trust the cloud for this? I have yet to see it proven that the cloud-based messaging water is safe, nor do I think it is an inevitable move. As it appears that it was a two-way fight between Google and MS, it follows for me that the wrong solution was chosen or the wrong question was asked.
-John
The real issue is useability. Exchange (and Office) is a full-featured client application. It gets pounded for being bloatware but if it misses a feature it'll get slammed for being incomplete. Google Apps is the other extreme: feature-lite. The Web is a kludgy environment for sophisticated programs despite the promise of RIA technology. Google Apps are feature-poor and will have a second-rate (or third-rate) interface until RIA gets beyond crummy JavaScript hacks like Ajax or CSS magic. Silverlight/Flash may lead to apps down the road which obsolete client software like Office but I wouldn't migrate to it today.
-Craig
I think your angle is incorrect on this. My understanding is that both Google and Microsoft were proposing cloud solutions in L.A. If that's true, then whichever way L.A. had gone, it would have been a cloud-based solution.
The key question is whether the Google solution that L.A. chose is going to give the city what it needs. If it does THAT, then Google's cloud-based solution will be validated.
-Dave
Count Kevin as among those who think Office 2010 is an improvement over its predecessor:
I recently upgraded my father's laptop to Windows 7 and decided to put Office 2010 on it instead of 2007. I really like the changes from 2007 to make the File and other (what they call "back office" functions) more congruent with the ribbon interface.
It was certainly a lot easier to give my dad a tutorial on using 2010 versus what I felt the experience would have been with 2007. Like Windows 7 with Vista, I believe Office 2010 is what 2007 should have been. So far, the experience is very pleasant...much like Windows 7.
-Kevin
And on reader gives kudos to Doug's son, Dave, for his feature article on Bing:
Congratulations on a well-researched and written article. Very readable and informative. I hope your dad's watching out for the competition.
-Anonymous
Tell us what you think! Leave a comment below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/07/2009 at 4:59 PM0 comments
Intel last week showed off a 48-core processor. That's the good news. Unfortunately, the chip giant has no plans to ship this puppy; it's for research only.
I'm excited about this breakthrough, but also a bit frustrated. With today's software, most of our extra cores remain idle because the programs are largely sequential -- not parallel. Microsoft, Intel and many others are now pushing parallel development. That means future software may take advantage of this enormous processing. For now, it's only specialized programs -- such as engineering, animation, rendering, video and design -- that are truly multicore-aware. Oh, and high-end gaming software!
Intel is arguing that this processor represents a cloud in a box. Forty-eight cores can support a serious app load, but imagine it being devoted to a single user!
Here's my question: We already have multicore processors. Add superfast graphical processing units and you can build a true desktop supercomputer for chump change. Are you in possession of such a beast? What could a supercomputer on every desk accomplish? Fire up whatever cores you got and educate me on harnessing high-horsepower hardware at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/07/2009 at 1:17 PM8 comments
By now you've heard that Los Angeles is going with Google's cloud e-mail solution rather than Exchange. Deals like these are game changers. If implemented successfully, L.A.'s e-mail plan is a lesson to IT: The cloud messaging water is safe.
What I'd like to see is some real analysis of costs, manageability, usability, and data security and availability. This is the kind of insight you need to truly evaluate a cloud approach.
Where do you stand? Which apps are ready for the cloud, and which need way more proof? Messages welcome from across the ether at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/04/2009 at 1:17 PM10 comments
Redmond Report readers are an awesome bunch. When I need help with a technical problem, answers fly my way. And if I'm writing a major story, your thoughts drive the entire process.
So here's a personal thanks to the many who wrote about your Bing experiences. My son David actually wrote the story and quotes about a dozen readers. It came out great, in my opinion. So I'd like you to take a look at the story, which was a close partnership between Dave and you, the Redmond Report reader.
As an added benefit, Dave also interviewed Stefan Weitz, Bing director, who explained the philosophy behind Bing.
How did Dave do on the article? What subject should Redmond mag tackle next? Ideas welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/04/2009 at 1:17 PM0 comments
Yesterday, Doug mentioned that Microsoft seems to be shedding its Evil Empire reptuation. Readers share their thoughts on Redmond's image makeover:
You asked if Microsoft's negative perception was ever valid in the first place. The answer is no. If the public only knew the truth about how far Microsoft has gone to assist us...
-Anonymous
I still consider Microsoft the "Evil Empire." Would be nice if they tightened up the code and reduced the memory hog it is. Windows 7 might be better, but Vista really sucks.
-Bill
I work for a very large company and I agree that Microsoft has changed. I hope Microsoft's customer focus continues and grows.
-Anonymous
Yes, I agree that Microsoft today is more of a partner than just a monolithic company.
-Craig
Whether or not Microsoft deserves its reputation (whatever it is), one reader has just one question for the company:
When will Microsoft ever sell an operating system with the ability to make restorable backups of the OS itself, including all its service packs and updates?
In other words, why, when the electromechanical hard drive tanks, do we have to find and reload the OS and each of its service packs?
-Anonymous
Here are more of your impressions -- good, bad and mixed -- of Office 2010:
As an IT pro, I am OK with the Office 2010 changes for the most part. If you are using Office 2007, 2010 will not catch you off guard. But if you're moving from 2003 (like most users), Outlook will drive you CRAZY. I like the idea that it compacts and fetches other related e-mails, but for the average user...watch out! I see an IT headache.
Maybe we need a Microsoft Bob for Office 2010. Or at least that annoying little dog.
-Dennis
MS has removed a very handy feature from Office 2010: the Document Image Writer. I searched Google to see if it was simply hidden like Quick Launch is from Windows 7. No luck. MS has the habit of removing excellent features from its newer versions.
-Dave
I've had a challenge or two using Office 2010, but mostly love it.
-Trevor
I have been using Office 2010 since it was available from the Microsoft Connect program. Mostly I am using Word with applications performing heavy automation tasks, Excel and Outlook. So far, I have been very pleased with what I routinely use. I particularly like the new printer support screens with the common printer controls exposed and built-in document previews.
Whether it is faster or not, it's too early to tell. Beta versions (I am now on Beta 2) tend to be loaded up with stuff to support the development/support as well as non optimized code.
-Al
I had to uninstall Office 2010 for two reasons. The first is a major priority: the inability to synch BlackBerry with Outlook. The second is just irritating: There's an Outlook bug that constantly asked permission to delete the trash every time I closed Outlook in spite of settings to the contrary. This bug has been known for a long time and yet it remains in the latest builds.
-Mark
Office 2010 is the only Office product I'm running on my system. I've experienced no problems yet, although the new Outlook ribbon bar is requiring a little time to learn. But just like the other ribbons, it won't take long. So far, it's working great!
-Jim
And finally, many readers yesterday cited Anrdoid as their mobile OS of choice, but one reader just doesn't see the appeal:
I've used WinMo 6 for a year-and-a-half, and I am hoping to move to 6.5 soon. Fortunately, most of my favorite apps were available in Windows versions -- which is NOT the case for Android. Also, the Android's inability to synch seamlessly with my Exchange Server makes moving to that platform impossible. Finally, have you actually looked at the Motorola Droid? It isn't exactly an attractive device.
On the other hand, being a serious Redmond fan, going iPhone was the last thing I planned to do -- until I saw my boss' iPhone. If iPhone comes to Verizon, I'm there.
-Shirley
Tell us what you think! Leave a comment below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/04/2009 at 1:17 PM0 comments
The recession, along with the mixed bag that is Vista, didn't exactly inspire PC sales. But Microsoft expects all that to change with Windows 7, as IT may finally get to indulge in the sometimes long-put-off PC refreshes.
Fortunately, you don't always need a new machine for Windows 7. Many older systems that run XP can do just as well with 7. New machines, though, are often the best and cleanest way to upgrade. And with prices as low as they are, new machines don't have to be a deal-breaker.
The PC refresh comments came from Microsoft's Neil Holloway, who was grilled by analysts in London recently. Holloway was less bullish on servers; because so many of you consolidate servers through virtualization, demand for hardware is down some 20 percent. That's good news for IT, bad news for IBM, HP and Dell!
Is a new machine the best upgrade and are PCs as affordable as I suggest? Are you buying fewer servers because of consolidation? Fire up the PC of your choice and send answers to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/03/2009 at 1:17 PM4 comments
As Microsoft picked off companies like Novell, WordPerfect and Netscape in the '80s and '90s, its public image suffered. Redmond was the evil empire, reducing consumer choice by putting key vendors out of business.
Interestingly, this was all on Bill Gates' watch. As tough a competitor as Steve Ballmer is, he has treated the competition quite differently, and as a result, Microsoft has lost much of its negative connotation. Add to Ballmer's efforts the fact that Google dominates search and many Web services the way Redmond manhandles operating systems, and Microsoft's image is lightened even further. Today, many find Microsoft a terrific and trusted partner.
I'm finding that myself, at this very moment. Earlier this year, the Redmond Media Group inked a deal with Microsoft to take over MSDN Magazine and TechNet Magazine. We've been working with Microsoft for most of this year, and it's going great.
Here's another example. Last year, we started Virtualization Review magazine and soon got to know the major virt players. I now hear over and over that Microsoft is a better partner for third parties than VMware. VMware should correct this tout de suite if it wants to maintain its healthy growth.
What do you think? Has Microsoft changed? Was the negative perception valid in the first place? Send your thoughts to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/03/2009 at 1:17 PM2 comments