Mac
Pro and Xserve are big horses for enterprise-type stuff. They also have
new Intel chips inside. See, Mac people, we do know that you're out there.
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/09/2008 at 1:21 PM1 comments
Norway has always been a country of searchers:
Edvard
Munch searching in his expressionist art for some outlet for his anxiety,
energy companies searching for oil in Norway's fossil-rich waters,
Henrik
Ibsen searching for hidden truth in the rigid morals of Victorian society...
Oh, you thought this newsletter was all football references and pop-culture
quotes, didn't you? Well, think again -- we have patches on the sleeves of our
tweed jackets today. And note that somehow a site dedicated to the art of Munch
has a link labeled "Fun Stuff." Yes, Munch is always a lot of...fun.
You have to love the Internet.
Anyway, just as Norwegians have always searched for...something, Microsoft
is making a pilgrimage to Oslo in search of...well, search. Redmond is planning
to splash out $1.2
billion on Fast Search & Transfer, a provider of enterprise search based
in the capital of Norway.
Long a laggard behind Google and Yahoo in consumer search, Microsoft actually
has a shot at making an impact among enterprise info seekers. After all, most
companies already have a huge investment in Microsoft infrastructure, anyway,
so why not offer a (hopefully) pre-integrated Microsoft enterprise-search tool
to set on top of the whole thing? It makes sense, at least on the surface --
and Redmond is hoping that Fast will provide a more robust platform for developers
creating enterprise-search functionality.
Normally, $1.2 billion would be an eyebrow-raising sum, but with Microsoft
having raked in about $50 billion in its last fiscal year alone, it's not much
more than lunch money for Redmond. And given that enterprise search seems a
more open, accessible market than its consumer cousin at the moment, it might
just be money well-spent in search (see, everything ties back to the beginning)
of market share.
Do you have any experience with Microsoft enterprise search tools? What's your
take on the market? Shoot me your views at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/09/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments
The first Patch Tuesday of the year is
looking
like a cake walk. By the way, when's the last time somebody actually organized
a cake walk?
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/08/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments
If you caught the results of
RCP the magazine's
reader
survey in our December issue, then you know that one of the few things partners
don't like about working with Microsoft is Redmond's rarely simple, sometimes
arcane licensing policies. In our survey, more than 60 percent of you said that
Microsoft's licensing procedures make its products difficult to sell.
Given that the respondents to our survey make at least part -- and, in most
cases, probably a large part -- of their living selling Microsoft's wares, licensing
issues and the hassles associated with them are a big deal. Well, late last
week, Microsoft eased partners' pain a little bit with some loosening of its
licensing procedures.
Of primary interest to partners will be Microsoft's Open Value Subscription
Program, through which partners will be able to offer customers subscriptions
-- which will function
almost like a lease -- for Microsoft applications. (We're projecting to
the future here because OVSP will be available in March.)
A company interested in Microsoft's stuff will be able to pay for it -- through
a partner, naturally -- on an annual-subscription basis rather than having to
fork over the money for it all at once and up front. At the end of the year,
the company will have the option of canceling the subscription, renewing it
or just buying the licenses outright.
The OVSP won't really ease the headaches caused by Microsoft's complex licensing
policies, but it will give partners a less-expensive and perhaps more manageable
option to offer to those customers that are reticent about paying the -- let's
face it -- high price to invest in Microsoft applications. It won't necessarily
make the purchase of Microsoft products cheaper, either, but it will make it
more flexible -- and flexibility is almost always a good thing for both partners
and customers.
Of secondary interest, we're guessing, to partners is the loosening
of licensing restrictions on Windows Web Server 2008 (which, we must confess,
some
"other" channel publication first reported on last week). Redmond
is making Web
Server 2008 -- a Windows Server 2008 SKU...what, you haven't heard of it?
-- easier to license in order to make it more competitive with open-source competition.
Whatever Microsoft can do to make licensing easier and more flexible seems
to RCPU like good idea, so we're chalking this up as good news to start 2008.
Now, if Microsoft can just get its server bonanza launched without any (more)
delays...
How interested will your clients be in a subscription model from Microsoft?
How interested are you? Let me know at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/08/2008 at 1:21 PM1 comments
Funny
tribute
videos aside, Bill Gates, who's finally pretty much done as Microsoft's
chairman,
didn't
really have a whole lot to say at this week's big, headline-grabbing trade
show, CES. Of course, Gates'
somewhat
mundane speech gave rise to a whole new round of criticism of Microsoft
for not innovating...which leads us to wonder, to what extent has Microsoft
ever innovated?
Microsoft has always been about sales, marketing and, uh, "dealing with"
its competition. It has rarely been on the cutting edge of much of anything
-- nor has it needed to be. And Redmond's not hurting financially now. So Gates
didn't set the world on fire in one of his big farewell appearances. So what?
He can still play big-money whip-out with just about anybody on the planet,
and, fortunately for much of the world, he's doing a lot of good with his money.
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/08/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Some enterprising reporter pored over a bunch of numbers over the holidays
and figured that Microsoft must be making a killing on its Novell SuSE Linux
deal. In the spirit of the Internet, your somewhat less enterprising newsletter
writer (hey, there's been lots of football on TV these last couple of weeks)
is
linking
to the story. Enjoy.
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/03/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Welcome back! And welcome to 2008 -- an Olympic year, an election year (in
the U.S., anyway), a year when there'll be a European Championship soccer tournament
and a year in which you'll see a few new wrinkles in what we hope is your favorite
e-mail newsletter, or at least your favorite newsletter written by a Texan working
in an office on Route 9 in Framingham, Mass. (We're guessing that we've got
that last category nailed.)
Yes, we're making some changes to RCPU. Oh, it's not going to be that big a
deal. In fact, we think that you'll like the new, more focused, (somewhat) less
random RCPU for 2008 (and, we hope, beyond). First off, we're going to run the
newsletter three times per week rather than four most weeks this year in hopes
of at least postponing your editor's inevitable development of carpal tunnel
syndrome.
Beyond that, we're going to reorganize things just a bit. You'll still get
the opening RCPU rant du jour at the top of the newsletter that you've come
to know and tolerate, but, after that, we'll be sorting news and commentary
into categories, a different one for each day of the week the newsletter runs.
(Collect them all! It'll make a fun game!)
The opening item of the newsletter will, as promised, continue to be a comment
on whatever big thing happens to be happening right then. We'll start breaking
stuff down after that. On Tuesdays, we'll come in with general tech industry
news -- stuff like financial results, vendor executive moves, analyst blather,
nasty little wars of words between industry players and the like. On Wednesdays,
we'll deliver product news, which seems pretty self-explanatory. And on Thursdays,
we'll hit you with channel news -- all partner stuff, all the time.
So, you say, whither Reader Feedback Friday? Alas, like the year 2007 just
passed, it is but a pleasant memory now. But we'll still be running tons of
reader e-mails (probably on Thursdays, mostly, but you'll have to keep reading
to find out), so please keep sending them to [email protected].
All of this will start next week. Until then, enjoy your leftover New Year's
champagne (and the last few college football bowl games), and get that tree
out of the living room before you burn the house down.
-- Lee
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/03/2008 at 1:21 PM0 comments
We hate predictions here at RCPU. Most of the ones we read tend to sound kind of pompous and obvious -- pundits love to predict that the earth will continue to rotate on its axis and then cover themselves in glory when, hey!, they turn out to be right. Either that, or analysts and other pundits go off and make a bunch of predictions in December that nobody remembers (nor checks for accuracy) a year later.
Still, it's the week after Christmas, and we're just not sure what else to do. So, to go along with the 2007 reviews (last chance for Vista bashing!) and the 2008 crystal balls, we offer our simple, humble, completely obvious and probably useless predictions for 2008:
Enterprises will get serious about adopting Vista. This is the only bit of punditry we'll delve into that has even a hint of risk of inaccuracy, but all signs point to Vista actually gaining a foothold in the enterprise in 2008. Look for more in the January issue of RCP (what a tease!), but heed our words and those of the analysts when we say that Service Pack 1, corporate hardware refreshes and the looming end-of-life for XP will finally drive widespread adoption of Microsoft's downtrodden operating system. We're not saying that Vista will overtake XP in 2008, just that it won't be shut out of the enterprise the way it was in 2007.
The wild card here? A massive recession that halts IT spending in its tracks.
Pundits will continue to predict the demise of Microsoft. Well, it happens every year, doesn't it? Steve Ballmer wasn't going to make it through 2006 at CEO. The departure of Bill Gates was going to leave Microsoft without a strategic vision. Competition from Google and open source was going to sink Redmond. Well, guess what? Although it does face more challenges than perhaps every before, Microsoft is still the monster of the software industry, which leads us to our next prediction....
Microsoft (and its partners!) will continue to rake in the cash. Remember, there are only three things in life that are inevitable: death, taxes and Microsoft making massive, jaw-dropping amounts of money. Microsoft's last fiscal quarter was a blockbuster (the best in almost a decade, essentially), and we're guessing -- sorry, predicting -- that the fire hose of cash pointed at Redmond will continue to spray money. So, don't listen to the haters -- Microsoft will still be our staggeringly wealthy software overlord in 2008. Just embrace it.
Oh, and we're pretty confident that the earth will continue to rotate on its axis, too. But, you know, we don't like to make predictions.
Have a prediction for 2008? Send it to [email protected]. Oh, and happy New Year!
Posted by Lee Pender on 12/27/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Tired of having systems provided by other vendors (hmmm, short list there) hacked, the U.S. Army is
looking to integrate more Macs into its infrastructure.
Posted by Lee Pender on 12/27/2007 at 1:21 PM1 comments
According to a new book (and to Google, so take that for what it's worth), there's a
not-so-small security problem with Adobe's Flash software. By the way, we love the use of the word "vulns" as an abbreviation for vulnerabilities.
Posted by Lee Pender on 12/26/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
For some reason, there's a fair amount of buzz today about a
Pew
Research Center study that revealed that Americans like to look themselves
and others up online. Why that's a surprise to anybody, we don't know...but
there you go.
Posted by Lee Pender on 12/21/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments