Editor's Note: Convergence Coverage this Week

Check back for updates on everything that's going on in the Microsoft Dynamics universe, along with snarky rants about the vapid atmosphere of central Florida (although we won't likely complain about the weather). It'll be a fun time for all!

Posted by Lee Pender on 03/11/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments

Tuesday Brings Critical Office Patches

Posted by Lee Pender on 03/11/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments

Tech Data Raking in the Bucks

Posted by Lee Pender on 03/06/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments

IT Leaders Not Totally Bummed About Economy

Posted by Lee Pender on 03/06/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments

Microsoft to Vendors: Let's Interoperate

Now, on the one hand, that's not all good news for Microsoft and its channel. After all, the "better together" pitch that Microsoft has used for years is a little bit weaker than it used to be. Prior to Microsoft's new era of semi-openness, a decent pitch when selling one thing from Microsoft was that a customer might as well buy everything else from Microsoft, too, because nothing works with a Microsoft product quite as well another Microsoft product.

That was true, in part, because Microsoft sometimes (often?) made it difficult and expensive -- which it had every right to do, RCPU says, although European courts disagree -- for vendors to let their products work with Microsoft's wares. In fact, the better together pitch is still valid, but Microsoft is in the process of changing its meaning. Redmond isn't, and doesn't want to be, quite as proprietary as it used to be. "Better together" could now mean, at least to some extent, working "better together" with other vendors.

And so, today, as part of its new message of openness, Microsoft unveiled the Document Interoperability Initiative, a global effort aimed at bringing vendors together to "promote interoperability between document format implementations," quoth the press release, or, basically, to test how different document formats work with each other on different platforms and try to develop templates that will allow different formats to work -- that's right -- better together.

Microsoft calls the DII (our abbreviation, not Redmond's) the first effort of its kind in the world -- and it will be global, with interoperability testing and discussions starting in the U.S. and then moving to Asia (South Korea, specifically) and Europe, Tom Robertson, Microsoft's general manager of interoperability and standards, told RCPU at a little press get-together in Cambridge, Mass. this morning.

"Our customers are telling us that some of them would like these templates because they could be useful in certain contexts," Robertson said. "We think vendors ought to come together to develop those. We want to be catalysts for bringing people together."

And some vendors have answered the call. Novell, notably but not surprisingly, was in attendance at today's event, as were a few smaller names -- specifically, Mark Logic (which sounds like some sort of nerd superhero), Quickoffice, DataViz and Nuance Communications. So what about, say, Adobe, Microsoft's rival and the originator of the PDF?

"We work with Adobe in a lot of different ways," Robertson said. "My sense is Adobe would find this to be attractive. I don't want to speak on their behalf as to when they would participate."

So, there's work to be done yet...and, frankly, we wouldn't blame some of Redmond's rivals for having a bit of trepidation about working with the software giant. After all, Microsoft does have a reputation -- well-earned, really -- for being a bit shifty in its dealings with other vendors. But this initiative, and most of Microsoft's new openness mantra, seems genuinely to be about opening Microsoft to the rest of the industry -- at least more so than in the past.

Well, it's about a couple of other things, too, of course, such as complying with EU competition regulations and court rulings. Robertson admits as much, saying that the European Court of First Instance's ruling, which upheld Eurofines against Microsoft last year, was a catalyst for Redmond's new Interoperability Principles (a proper noun, apparently, as Microsoft capitalized the phrase in its press materials).

"These principles absolutely are a step on our part to apply the concepts in the Court of First Instance decision across all of our high-volume products, but we have an eye on what the marketplace needs and what our customers have been asking us to do," Robertson said.

Beyond that, there's Microsoft's ongoing fight to get Office Open XML, the document format it created, adopted as a standard by the International Standards Organization. Incidentally, Open XML is already a standard, having been accepted as such in, of all places, Europe, by the ECMA International standards body. That means that ECMA actually "owns" the format now and that future evolution of it is in ECMA's hands, not in Microsoft's. If the ISO accepts Open XML, it'll own the format.

Robertson said that's important because customers and partners want to work with standardized formats rather than proprietary ones. (We would add here that Microsoft would surely like to score some openness reputation points with open source software actually making a move in some areas of the enterprise. Being proprietary apparently isn't as cool as it used to be. Score one for the Commu...uh, we mean "open source community" there.)

Of course, a standard document format -- the Open Document Format, or ODF -- already exists. We wonder how or why more than one standard should exist -- it hardly seems like a standard when that's the case -- although there are multiple standards in many different areas of the technology industry.

Robertson says that it's all about choice. Different user case scenarios require different formats, and users should be able to choose which "standard" (as in, not proprietary) format they want to use and help evolve. That makes sense, of course, and we're sure that it factors into Redmond's thinking.

But we also have to wonder whether Microsoft has the ulterior motive of wanting to compete with open source on what's more or less open source's turf, the international standards bodies. Getting Open XML accepted as a standard and then gradually letting it -- through the ISO -- squeeze the life out of ODF...What better way to hit open source right where it would hurt the most? Microsoft, more open than open source and deemed credible by an independent organization. Give that some thought. But don't hold your breath for it to happen; the whole ISO thing has been nasty and could get nastier.

Still, if the net result of the EU bulldogging the Open XML battle is Microsoft being a little easier to work with, fine. "You're going to see new entrants to the market that are optimized for interoperability with these high-volume Microsoft products the same way Microsoft products are," Robertson said today. "Long-term...You're just going to see a healthier IT industry."

Maybe so. Right now, for whatever reason, it seems as though we're seeing a more open Microsoft.

What's your take on Microsoft's new openness? Do you care about standard document formats? Why? Drop a line to [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on 03/06/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments

Ingram Micro Rolls Out Virtualization Services

Posted by Lee Pender on 03/06/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments

Dell Launches Rugged Laptop

Posted by Lee Pender on 03/05/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments

More on Microsoft and SaaS

It's just another day and another SaaS-related announcement for Microsoft (remember this one from earlier this week), which has rapidly gone from lost on SaaS to gung-ho on the hosted model -- although we'd still like to see Redmond clean up the mess that is "Live" branding. With Microsoft now challenging Google's supposed domination of all things Web, observers are starting to wonder whether Redmond can really keep up with its Silicon Valley rival. One even posits that Microsoft is chasing online dollars (in vain) out of jealousy toward Google.

We all know how wealthy and powerful Google has become in a short amount of time and, here at RCPU, we're pretty sure that Microsoft might as well give up the fight in consumer search and maybe even in online advertising, one of Steve Ballmer's pet categories. But we're skeptical of the warnings of impending doom for Microsoft coming from the anti-Redmond crowd.

Instead of asking how Microsoft can "catch" Google in categories such as hosted applications, we wonder why Microsoft wouldn't be able to build a business in those areas. There's plenty there for the taking -- hosted applications, enterprise search, unified communications and other collaborative categories -- and it's not as though Google has booted Microsoft out of the enterprise. Sure, Google Apps looks pretty cool, but Microsoft Office -- the old-school desktop version -- is still top of the heap when it comes to productivity apps. And while nobody "Live Searches" anything (we all "Google," of course), not many people go rushing to Google's word processor or spreadsheet before opening Word or Excel, either. Will that change? Maybe, but if it does, it'll take a while. And Microsoft isn't standing still.

We've been critical here in the past of Microsoft's SaaS strategy, but it finally seems to be coming together. Is Redmond behind Google in terms of online technology? Maybe, probably -- but Google is still way behind in market share in categories such as productivity apps. (Besides, when hasn't Microsoft been behind at least one big rival in terms of innovation?) Yes, the Yahoo overture reeks a bit of desperation, but at least it's a sign that Microsoft won't be content to be just a Windows and Office company in the enterprise evermore.

Google isn't going away. It's a powerful force in the industry, and it's only going to get bigger and stronger. That's a good thing, as competition tends to make everybody's slice of the pie larger. (Perhaps a lot of pundits just aren't used to Microsoft not dominating everything, and they confuse genuine competition with impending doom for Redmond.) But Microsoft isn't ready to give up on enterprise Web services, either. Is Redmond overreaching with its myriad of investments and initiatives? Probably, but that's been a problem there for a while now. What we like to see, though, is Microsoft (and its partners) fighting for the enterprise and deciding that the company can compete there not only with packaged software but also with online services.

Mark Twain might have had a line about Microsoft's impending doom...something about reports of it being greatly exaggerated.

What's your take on Microsoft's SaaS strategy? How powerful is Google in the enterprise right now? Let me know at [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on 03/05/2008 at 1:21 PM1 comments

IBM Goes Microsoft-Free in Eastern Europe

Posted by Lee Pender on 03/05/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments

IE 8 To Default to Standards

Posted by Lee Pender on 03/05/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments

Exchange, SharePoint Get SaaS-y for SMBs

Microsoft this week unveiled Microsoft Online Services for companies of all sizes. Previously, and somewhat incongruously, MOS (our name, not an official Redmond tag) had been available only to companies with 5,000 employees or more. Now, it's out there for the audience that seems most likely to crave it, SMBs.

MOS consists mostly of hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint servers along with some other features, such as Web conferencing, thrown in. It's an obvious parry to Google's thrust of Google Apps, the online suite of applications the search giant announced last year. But while Google is taking the odd approach of trying to build support for apps among grassroots users and bypassing stodgy IT types, Microsoft seems much more likely to leverage its massive partner network to sell MOS to business decision makers.

And we're guessing that there will be some interest. Love it or, uh, dislike it, people who purchase technology for businesses know Microsoft in a way that they don't (yet) know Google. They know SharePoint and certainly Exchange, and there will, no doubt, be a certain (possibly large) number of decision makers who had been waiting all along for Microsoft to provide them with a SaaS offering before they bought into the concept.

Then again, Microsoft's SaaS track record, at least on the consumer side, hasn't been entirely clean. Recent Hotmail and MSN Messenger (oh, we know, they're all called Windows Live something now) outages might lead to a little hesitation among those looking at Microsoft as a SaaS provider -- as opposed to, say, Google, which has more of a Web-first pedigree and maybe a little better track record with consumer services.

However, for the most part, what we're seeing is a Microsoft that finally seems committed to serving as landlord (along with its hosting partners) as well as builder in its massive software housing edition. What remains to be seen is whether companies buy into -- or maybe rent into -- Microsoft's new offerings.

How do you plan to profit from Microsoft's new SaaS gambit? Or will you have to struggle to adjust your business model to it? Sound off at [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on 03/04/2008 at 1:21 PM1 comments

Open Mailbag Leads to Redmond Blushes

Posted by Lee Pender on 03/04/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments