Could this be the first sign -- or one of the first signs -- of a possible
recession hitting the channel? The financial news from Avnet
is
not good.
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/17/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments
There's hype, and then there's movement. All of the articles -- some of them
here -- about SaaS being the next big thing, about how partners should prepare
for it, about whether Microsoft is ready for it...that's all, or at least mostly,
hype.
Ingram Micro's announcement this week that it will expand
its portfolio of hosted Microsoft applications and offer partners the opportunity
to resell private-label hosted applications...is movement.
It's movement toward something, anyway -- toward an easier path to offering
SaaS for lots of partners in different categories and of different sizes. Oh,
sure, we know. There are a lot of hosting providers out there, and they have
great opportunities for partners to resell hosted applications to customers.
We're not discounting them at all, and we'll keep telling you about them, too.
We're only saying that Ingram -- a distributor pretty much everybody in the
channel knows well -- kicking its offerings up to SharePoint, Exchange and (eventually)
Dynamics CRM Online represents a notable step in the progression of SaaS for
the "average" partner and customer. Ingram has breadth and reach that
a lot of other hosting providers don't necessarily have, and it has the kind
of name recognition that might make even the most SaaS-averse partner look at
setting up an operation for hosted apps.
What's nice about Ingram's program -- and, again, the distributor is hardly
alone here -- is that partners can brand their own hosted offerings even though
Ingram (along with its own partners) is handling things on the back end. That
means that partners can become "trusted advisers" to customers --
something everybody wants to be -- without having to compromise their own branding
or name recognition.
OK, so maybe calling Ingram's announcement a "seismic" shift is a
little much, but that's the name of the company's hosting platform, so we're
just playing off of it. Still, this week's news is a sign that SaaS isn't just
for those on the cutting-edge anymore, and, really, it hasn't been for a while.
It's mainstream and accessible...and, we're guessing, in demand.
What's your strategy for offering hosted applications? Drop a line to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/17/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Want to know more about it? Of course you do...but you'll just have to
click
the link. (Hey, we have to pay the bills around here, too.)
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/17/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments
A 20-year veteran of the company is the
new
head guy for channel operations.
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/17/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments
It's made by a company in India; it'll run (ahem) XP, and it'll
cost
about $425. What's not to like, actually?
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/16/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Another Windows executive and Vista co-conspirator has "
retired,"
meaning another shakeup of executives is in order in Redmond.
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/16/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments
"Who is gonna make it?
We'll find out
In the long run"
-- "The Long Run" by The Eagles, from 1979
(And, yes, you'll be humming that song all day now. You're welcome.)
Let's go ahead and call it a movement, or at least a cause. What started as
an online
petition demanding that Microsoft offer XP indefinitely and not scrap it
with OEMs for Vista in June has become something greater, something that has
leaked out of the trade press and nerd circles and into
the real world.
It's not just about an online petition -- a concept we've always found a bit
silly, but that's an aside -- anymore. It's about users talking to Microsoft
and Microsoft looking away and whistling as if nobody's saying anything at all.
And it's about Redmond hitting a wall with how much it can push people around
with forced upgrades. (Speaking of XP, by the way, Service Pack 3 is apparently
finally on
the way.)
Most partners don't seem too concerned about the fate of Vista itself -- at
least not yet, anyway. There's not all that much money to be made in OS sales
or even hardware refreshes these days; most of the dough is in consulting and
services. VARs, consultants and integrators can build on pretty much any Microsoft
platform and might even prefer working with XP as an OS.
There are greater issues in play for Microsoft, though. We at RCPU have long
maintained that Vista would eventually become most people's default operating
system, that we'd come in time to embrace it the way we now seem to love XP.
But, with Microsoft already dropping hints about Windows 7 arriving as
early as 2009, we're not quite so sure anymore.
Beyond that, and much more importantly, the software world is changing. Let's
not pretend that Windows is about to lose massive market share to Apple or Linux;
that's not going to happen, especially on the enterprise side, where companies
have a lot of money sunk into Redmond's wares. But other operating systems --
especially some Linux flavors -- are much more serious competitors for Microsoft
than they were even five years ago. And on the consumer side, the Mac is rebounding
quite nicely, thank you very much. Then there's the wild card, Google, which
might just make the OS obsolete someday with its SaaS offerings...although that
day still seems very, very far away.
The issue here for Microsoft isn't short-term Vista sales (which, Redmond keeps
telling us, are great -- we'll see how long that lasts); it's long-term customer
and partner relationships. It's not just the signers of the online petition
who are shouting at Microsoft not to scrap XP, it's also enterprises, who have
mostly avoided Vista like a vegan avoiding filet mignon: without a second thought
and, in a few cases, with more than a little disgust.
Microsoft has to listen to its customers and partners in a way it hasn't for
a long time, if ever before. It can't offer XP indefinitely; that would throw
a wrench into Redmond's whole revenue model. But it could extend XP's life until
Vista becomes a little more manageable (with drivers, incumbent corporate applications
and the like) or a little more popular, whichever comes first.
It could even, if Windows 7 is really on schedule for 2010-ish, just bite the
bullet and keep XP alive until users are ready to move to what hopefully will
be a lighter, more user-friendly, more driver-ready OS. In other words, skip
Vista altogether and just make Windows 7 the next forced (but hopefully voluntary)
upgrade. That plan, of course, assumes that Microsoft has learned from its Vista
mistakes.
Then again, Microsoft will probably do pretty much what it has done so far:
almost nothing. Well, nothing much different from its usual course of action,
anyway. The company's making buckets of money, more than ever before, and most
users will probably begrudgingly switch to Vista once they have to, anyway.
Forced upgrades can be nice little revenue boosts for partners and Microsoft
both.
But what consequences will the same, old strong-arm strategy have for Microsoft
(and, in turn, its channel) in a software world that really is changing? Even
if the short- and mid-term are both pretty secure for Windows, what about the
long-term? It seems short-sighted, and, in the long run, dangerous for Microsoft
to pretend that everything's fine with Vista and that everybody loves it, which
is mostly what the company seems to be doing. An acknowledgement that Vista
missed the mark for many users would be a start -- after all, we don't think
it's so much the popularity of XP but rather the problems with Vista that are
keeping the new OS down -- but some extension of XP's life to placate those
who really don't want Vista would be even better.
Eventually, companies and consumers are going to start seriously looking at
other operating systems again. It's a trickle now, but it could someday be a
flood. And, eventually, folks are going to have to ask themselves whether Microsoft
(and its partners, by extension) have earned their trust and faith over the
years or whether they're confident in and maybe even excited about going with
an alternative. Microsoft had better think long and hard right now about what
it wants the answer to be.
What's your take on Microsoft potentially extending XP's life? Would you like
to see it? Do you ever get frustrated with the way Microsoft treats its customers?
Let it all out at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/16/2008 at 1:21 PM5 comments
Oh, dear. Rumor -- and, remember, pretty much all of this stuff is rumor --
has it that Yahoo is
looking
to AOL (ugh) to save it from Microsoft...while Redmond might be looking
to News Corp. (double ugh) to help woo (or just gobble up) Yahoo.
What a mess. And what a pairing that would be -- Microsoft and News Corp. (Rupert
Murdoch's company, famous in the U.S. for Fox News). Man, that little couple
coming together to put down "Internet pioneer" Yahoo would probably
be enough to make some Silicon Valley bloggers' heads explode.
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/15/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Did someone say Web 2.0? Did someone say Software as a Service? Did someone
say cloud computing, or utter some other already hackneyed buzzword?
Oh, yes, someone did say all those things this week with the celebrity marriage
of Salesforce.com and Google, two of the industry's Webby young superstars.
The two SaaS evangelists finally exchanged vows of sorts this week, announcing
an agreement through which Salesforce.com will sell Google Apps with the
Salesforce.com-hosted CRM (customer relationship management -- but you knew
that) offering.
My, aren't
the synergies flowing now! Salesforce.com is a legitimate SaaS success story
and huge player in CRM, and Google is...well, Google. Surely, this must spell
doom for Microsoft and its own hosted-slash-on-site hybrid CRM product, Dynamics
CRM Online (formerly
Dynamics CRM Live), at least in the SMB space. Right? And it might even make
a huge dent in Microsoft Office, too, if Google Apps is readily available as
a replacement inside another popular service. Right?
Well, not everybody is so sure, and we're in the skeptics' camp, too. Why?
First off, we're in agreement -- as we so often are -- with RCP magazine
columnist
Josh Greenbaum, who sums
up our feelings rather well. Says Josh in one of his blogs:
"It's hard to imagine that adding a tab inside Salesforce.com for
Google Apps is going to do that much to add value to either partner, and making
Salesforce.com available as an online service with the Google Apps family
would add some hype-factor to Salesforce's marketing, but I'm having trouble
looking at the nascent Google Apps user base as a channel for Salesforce.com."
Josh and RCPU aren't the only skeptics out there, either. Others have noted
that, among other concerns, Google Apps still isn't
"all that" functionality-wise -- at least not enough to supplant
Microsoft Office, as bloated as Office might be.
Besides, as we've said many times before, companies already have huge investments
in Microsoft technology, and their customers and partners do, too. We're not
saying that Salesforce.com and Google won't have a happy honeymoon; their pairing
will probably meet with some success (and we'll be interested to see whether
it leads to Google buying its CRM partner at some point).
But it won't be anything close to a knockout blow to Dynamics CRM Online, which,
if anything, will probably steal market share from Salesforce.com now that Microsoft
finally has an SMB-targeted, hosted CRM offering. And as for Office, well, it's
just embedded in our work culture now, and some semi-nifty apps from Google
worked into a CRM service isn't going to change that all that much.
The Google-Salesforce.com marriage is SaaS-y; it makes for good Internet fodder.
It's all Web 2.0 and cloud computing and anti-Microsoft -- enough to send the
blogosphere into rapturous jubilation. But in the real world of the enterprise,
it's much closer to being just another hook-up than it is to being the wedding
of the century.
What's your take on the impact that an expanded Google-Salesforce.com partnership
will have? Sound off at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/15/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Windows is dying because of virtualization (and because it's so darn fat)!
Only
virtualization
can save Windows! Or so say the know-it-alls at Gartner, anyway.
Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense to us, either. We're scratching our heads
here, and so
is Doug Barney, editor in chief of RCP's sister publication, Redmond
magazine.
So, Windows is bloated (fair enough), which means that virtualization will
eventually lead to its demise (hmm), but the only way to save Windows is to
thin it out with virtualization technology. There's some sort of infinite loop
here, and we want out of it.
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/15/2008 at 1:21 PM4 comments