Just weeks after VMware
unceremoniously
ditched
founder and CEO Diane Greene, you'd think the company would report
poor financial results. But no; actually, the company
reported
great financial results. At least in my opinion.
Second quarter revenues of almost half-a-billion dollars were up 54 percent
compared to the same quarter last year. Profits are shining, as well -- up $14
million to $61 million in quarterly profits. And it's expecting to grow almost
50 percent this year compared to '07.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 07/23/20080 comments
Some folks are real dopes -- and there's no better way to discover that than
on the Internet. We have thugs posing with guns on MySpace, predators leaving
electronic trails of perversion, and now a
brand-new
idiot: Joshua Lipton
.
This 20-year-old moron was caught drunk driving (it's easy to get caught when
you crash and nearly kill someone). Then, two weeks later, someone posted Facebook
pictures of Lipton posing with a bunch of beer cans and wearing a striped prison
shirt. That's not going to look too good at trial.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 07/23/20080 comments
In the weeks since he took over VMware, new CEO Paul Maritz has been pretty
darn quiet. My guess is he was huddling with EMC honchos figuring out what to
say. Well, they still haven't announced how independent VMware may or may not
be from EMC, and they still haven't announced a grand, new strategy, either.
Maritz did make some rather bold pronouncements in this week's earnings call.
First, he announced that ESXi, the embedded hypervisor, will
be free. With bundling deals with all the major server makers, this makes
ESXi almost part of the operating system.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 07/23/20080 comments
So is Google becoming
Microsoft's
evil twin
? Here's what a few readers thought:
You're dead-on with your assessment of Google. I've had the same concerns
myself for some time now.
-Paul
I have to echo your thoughts. I had rather positive feelings about Google
until I was invited to an interview at their shiny new datacenter in Central
Oregon last year. After a VERY bizarre interview -- unlike anything I had
ever experienced in 20 years in IT -- I did some more checking and had to
reach the same conclusion. I don't know for sure if Google is evil, but it
is certainly doing a lot to make me think so!
One example: The name of the fake company that it hides behind that houses
their datacenter (the sign outside) is "ValDeMoort Industries."
Now, I have to ask, who would name their datacenter after the ULTIMATE EVIL
character in Harry Potter? It was dumb, but maybe not. Maybe it is really
a message?
Honestly, I think Google just suffers from being an extremely immature
company run by extremely immature billionaires. Microsoft has had the advantage
of 30 years of experience, BG hired some of the top business managers in the
world right out of the gate, and he "grew into" his success.
-Jim
Nope, I totally agree with you. While I'm a MS partner and respect MS,
I don't always agree with them either -- but at least you can talk to someone.
Google bought Postini recently. If Postini weren't such a great product,
we would have dumped it 100 percent becuase of the crap we have been going
through. And this is an understatement.
-Don
Yes, I think Google has too much and it needs to be cut back. No one should
get any slice of Yahoo; it should stand on its own two feet. Ditto with MS
on the same subject, so yeah -- they are becoming the evil twins.
And do you think that MS buying Yahoo's search business will help MS?
I don't think it will help at all. MS will screw it up and it will burn. The
problem that I see is that what will Yahoo then get for income to do other
things such as its one-of-a-kind chat system which feature-for feature kills
anyone else? I would invest in Yahoo, but only if King Carl steps down and
leaves.
-Bruce
I guess I would rather opt for free services from a vendor that provides
open source options for those not willing to fork out money for an expensive
OS that is unreliable, less secure and a huge resource hog. I can't wait for
the Google phone.
-Nathan
I live in a Microsoft/Dynamics world all day long and I'm happy with that
world -- it keeps that regular paycheck coming. But I don't want to see a
monopolists dictating to that world, Microsoft, Google or anyone else.
-Ron
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Posted by Doug Barney on 07/23/20080 comments
Critics love to slap Microsoft around for its security problems. And by admitting
its faults each and every Patch Tuesday, Redmond gives these nitpickers plenty
of ammo. The open source world tends to keep its flaws more on the down-low
-- not exactly hidden, but not exactly disclosed with fanfare, either.
That's why it may be a surprise to some that open source apps have more holes
than a pair of hippy jeans, and are far
less secure than commercial apps.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 07/23/20080 comments
Research in Motion just
plugged
a hole in its BlackBerry
that could allow hackers to use PDFs to break into
BlackBerry servers. The company suggests that customers patch by moving to BlackBerry
Enterprise Server version 4.1, service pack 6 for Exchange.
I have a BlackBerry and love the e-mail. I hate, though, the way it deals with
attachments -- or doesn't deal with attachments. Talk about a kludge. No wonder
so many are switching to the iPhone.
Posted by Doug Barney on 07/22/20080 comments
Rumors have been circulating that Steve Jobs was ill when he showed up to the
latest iPhone debut looking thin and gaunt. Apple reps claimed that Jobs was
getting over the flu, but rumors persisted, especially since Jobs was diagnosed
with cancer of the pancreas several years ago.
Wall
Street flipped out over the rumors that Jobs is seriously ill after the
company refused to talk about his health on a recent earnings call. Investors
promptly started dumping the high-flying stock.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 07/22/20080 comments
Doug
asked
readers
recently what they would do if they ran VMware and needed to take
on Hyper-V's pricing (read: free). Here are some of your suggestions:
What would I do if I was VMware? PANIC.
-Anonymous
Well, I would ultimately slash the price of the ESX products, give away
the Workstation and servers for free (but have fees for support), add more
hardware vendor support or alliance, and publish more books or best practice
guide documents.
-Cornelio
Here is a plan for VMware: Provide a hypervisor and a VM maker for home
users. Servers are where the money's at, but if you want users to keep your
name, you have to provide the same wares at home. Well, maybe not the same,
but something that will transfer readily between work and home.
What I envision is a VM platform that would allow a home user to run
one or more OSes independent of the hardware. When it's time to upgrade your
hardware to a better system, you just package up your system as-is, copy it
somewhere (online storage, DVD, whatever), get your new machine and drop it
down. How many people are forced to move to Vista (for example) because they
got a new laptop? If it were a VMware microkernel, they could just mount their
old OS on a new system -- no fuss, no settings to reset, no new or significant
nuances to learn. No doubt people would pay a PC premium for this ease of
use, and it would knock down Microsoft significantly as it cannot force a
vendor to upgrade to its new OS package since any VMware-ready machine would
be OS-independent.
-Tom
A price increase might work for Smirnoff vodka, but it won't work for
software. It's the death knell for VMware. Just ask your corporate managers
who will force you to go with the lower-cost alternative -- especially from
a name-brand vendor like Microsoft.
-Mike
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Posted by Doug Barney on 07/22/20080 comments
I didn't see this coming. Yahoo has actually
given
in to corporate raider Carl Icahn
, and is allowing him and two others of
his choosing to join the Yahoo board. Icahn now controls three out of the 11
seats.
As owner of 5 percent of Yahoo shares, it makes sense to have Icahn on the
board. Then again, he's actively trying to dismantle the company. If I were
the Yahoo chairman, I'd treat Icahn like a Mexican jalapeno and steer clear!
Posted by Doug Barney on 07/22/20080 comments
Some developers interested in trying out the beta of Live Mesh are a bit disappointed.
No, not in the software -- in their ability to get it. It seems there's a
waiting
list
to get the test software.
I've read up on Live Mesh and still don't completely get it. Here's what I
think I know: Live Mesh isn't a product, but a set of tools that let developers
build applications. These applications are designed not just to share data across
the Internet, but keep it synchronized, as well. This is a very Lotus Notes-ian
concept, which used replication to sync end user machines with databases stored
on servers.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 07/21/20080 comments
I've pointed out many times -- some may say too many times -- that Google has
too much power. It knows too much about us (and this is only getting worse),
has too much control over Web advertising (which it somehow achieves without
creating any of its own content) and now it wants to completely corner the market
on Web ads with a
proposed
deal with Yahoo
.
I felt a bit like a voice in the wilderness. Now Bill Snyder of InfoWorld
(where I worked back when it still had a magazine) has joined me in the boondocks
with a column asking whether we want a monopoly on the Web, and warning that
"Google
is becoming Microsoft's evil twin."
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Posted by Doug Barney on 07/21/20080 comments
As Chico Escuela might say, software has been berry, berry good to Microsoft.
And despite the over-hyped Google threat, Microsoft keeps printing money faster
than the U.S. mint (though slower than a Chinese bank these days).
Case in point: the most recent fiscal year wherein Redmond brought
in over $60 billion (and by Redmond, I mean the company, not the magazine,
unfortunately).
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Posted by Doug Barney on 07/21/20080 comments