Visa and Weyerhaeuser are
sick
and tired of these pesky states that want the government to keep monitoring
Microsoft for antitrust violations.
Everybody now, in your best English accent from Pink Floyd's "The Wall":
"We don't need your supervision...We don't need government control...No
extension of the antitrust deal...Hey, government, leave Microsoft alone!"
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/29/2007 at 1:21 PM4 comments
All the leaves really are brown, and the sky...well, it was blue today in Greater
Boston, but not as blue as it's about to be in California for either Microsoft
or Google. The Golden State, always on the cutting edge (seriously), is moving
its e-mail, messaging and -- when, exactly, did this become a verb, or even
a gerund? -- "calendaring" to a hosted model. And it looks as though
either
Microsoft or Google is going to get the bid.
Quoth the InformationWeek article: "It's a choice that could impact
a quarter of a million state workers and create a multimillion dollar revenue
windfall for one of two major technology vendors."
Sure, but it's a lot bigger than that. Thus far, Google has owned Microsoft
in search, but Microsoft has owned just about everything else. This represents
one of the first really big, head-to-head contests between the two rivals for
a major hosting client. It's the grizzled veteran versus the up-and-coming star.
It's Brett Favre vs. Tony Romo on Thursday Night Football. It's a battle not
just for dollars and desktops (albeit with nothing installed on them) but also
for momentum.
Whichever vendor wins California will have a bell-cow Software-as-a-Service
account to trot out to other prospective clients, as well as a head-to-head
victory over its chief rival. For Microsoft partners, a win for Redmond could
be a huge boon and serve as a calling card for pitching hosted applications
to clients -- but only if partners have developed a SaaS strategy themselves.
Maybe that's the real lesson here -- SaaS isn't coming; it's here. Now. If
you haven't figured out how you're going to address it, you'd better calendar
yourself some meetings and come up with something. California isn't just dreamin'
about SaaS (on such a winter's day) -- it's doing it. You should be, too.
Who do you think will win the battle of California, and why? What are you expecting
from your SaaS business in 2008? Let me know at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/29/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Lawyers for a couple of people suing Microsoft over its use of the couplet
"Vista capable" on PCs say that
even
folks in Redmond had no idea what the phrase meant.
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/29/2007 at 1:21 PM1 comments
The owner of z4 Technologies (what, you haven't heard of it?) will soon be
a
wealthier
man.
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/28/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Apparently, XP with beta Service Pack 3
trumps
Vista, even with the new operating system's first service pack in place.
Please, don't even pretend to be surprised by this (not that you were pretending).
Actually, it sort of makes sense -- XP is a much more mature platform, and it's
already on SP3. Vista will come along...in time. We hope.
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/28/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Just like a petulant 10-year-old trying to talk his way out of trouble, Microsoft
has
really
learned its lesson this time! No more problems with WGA! No more nasty outages!
And this time, we mean it.
The funny thing, of course, is that WGA just
might be working.
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/28/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Robert Lendvai was as confused as anybody when he read RCPU's declaration that
IBM's planned buyout of Cognos meant the
end
of business intelligence as we know it. The chief marketing office of Blink
Logic, an Ottawa-based BI firm, even had a bit of a career crisis: "I wondered
whether maybe I should resign," Lendvai said.
Hey, folks, he's just kidding. Lendvai's not going anywhere, and neither is
his company. Blink Logic, an independent vendor whose leaders cut their teeth
at Cognos, actually has a pretty cool idea: BI for BI. Cognos, Business Objects
(recently acquired by SAP), SAS and the gang came up with BI so that executives
could more easily drill into and use SQL data that previously only IT types
knew how to find. It was a great idea, and it sold -- a burst of innovation
at the early part of this decade met genuine customer need and voilà!
BI was big business.
Unfortunately, it was also...well, just big. And expensive. The applications
that were supposed to (and did) ease a painful process actually became bloated
and pretty difficult to use. They also ended up costing a lot of money, and
they weren't easy to implement, either. "There's a good reason why two-thirds
of the licenses of most BI platforms are sitting on the shelf," said Bill
Stewart, a member of Blink Logic's product marketing team who bravely fought
through a vicious cold to speak with RCPU.
In steps Blink Logic. It's a pure, Web-based, Software-as-a-Service play with
nothing to install at the client site. It sits on top of a variety of platforms
and provides a simple, front-end view of structured data (stuff residing in
databases) as well as unstructured data (stuff roaming around in e-mails and
the like). It can serve as a point of entry to BI for smaller companies or as
a way for firms already invested in bigger BI systems to get more out of their
implementations. It can sit on top of a Microsoft BI platform or work with Cognos
applications.
What Blink Logic really does is deliver through a browser-based interface what
BI was supposed to provide in the first place: a clear, manageable view of critical
data. At some point, the bigger BI vendors largely lost their focus on simplicity
of interface and user experience. Blink Logic intends to bring it back.
There are collaboration tools, user-customizable views and all sorts of other
neat things in Blink Logic's offering -- and it's cheaper and easier to manage
than a lot of heavier, software-intensive alternatives. That's one of the reasons
why Fieldpoint Service Applications, a Gold Certified Partner also based in
Ontario, sells Blink Logic to its clients, who mostly play in the technology
services industry.
"BI has always been a cost-prohibitive thing for any of us who sell in
the small-to-medium space," said Fieldpoint President Richard Smart (who
goes by Rich -- meaning his name is Rich Smart, two adjectives most people would
love to have associated with them). "If you want to partner with Cognos
or the other big players, you've got to staff up for that. It becomes a whole
part of your business. The fact that we've got a low-cost entry point for our
customers is absolutely key."
Now, with the great BI consolidation of 2007, Blink Logic finds itself running
into new competition: Oracle, SAP, IBM and, of course, Microsoft. But Lendvai
doesn't look at those big vendors as competitors, only as data sources.
"We've never seen ourselves as competing directly with the BI platform
vendors," he said. "We're not going to build OLAP servers. These
guys are just a group of data sources for our product. As we grow the business,
it could be any data source. We will sit on top of their stacks."
Blink Logic has put out the call to Microsoft partners -- it wants to work
with them on development for the Microsoft BI and SharePoint services markets.
And the upstart vendor sees in the consolidation around it nothing but opportunity.
"You cut the big trees down, that clears room for vigorous growth to come
back in," Stewart said. "Those platforms are going to be tied up in
how do they fit into the bigger story of their acquirer, but the rest of the
industry is not going to be marking time while they make their minds up. It
opens up a lot of opportunity."
So, it appears, Lendvai will keep his job after all.
Have a BI story of your own to tell? Tell it here: [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/28/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
The word "vulnerability" in reference to a software security issue
always makes us giggle a little -- it sounds more like somebody's endless craving
for sweets, or something someone would say on the first date after a particularly
nasty end to a prior relationship. "I'm just feeling very vulnerable --
kind of like Windows when a hacker
takes
control of a workstation through QuickTime."
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/27/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Two notes before we start: First, your editor is on deadline for a magazine
story, so today's RCPU will be shorter (and possibly even sweeter) than usual.
Second, we promised you last week that we'd hear this week from a small business-intelligence
vendor trying to survive in the shark tank of BI acquisitions by larger companies.
We will bring you that vendor's story -- but not this week after all, as today's
newsletter will be the last one until after Thanksgiving.
Oh, and Happy Thanks...giving...from R...C...P...U (and Les
Nessman)!
It's fall in New England -- autumn, if you want to get poetic about it -- and
a late run of warm weather into October has stretched leaf-peeping (seriously,
people call it that) season well into November. Even today -- the week of Thanksgiving
here in the U.S., fairly late for this sort of thing -- there are trees festooned
with blazing yellow and fiery orange leaves. Soon, they'll darken, tumble and
cover the ground, and the trees will be bare stick figures until spring comes
again.
We see this same cycle of life (and death) with the endless Microsoft-is-going-to-buy-Yahoo
rumor. Last we remember, it came up back in the late spring, budding again from
a winter of slumber. Now, in the fall, it has burst into spectacular color,
thanks to a blog
post from former Wall Street type Henry Blodget.
Magnificent! Just look how bright it is! Of course, as many other commentators
have already noted (here's
one), the rumor is likely to be bunk again -- meaning it'll soon meet the same
fate as a leaf that turns brown and tumbles to the ground. So, admire it while
you can. We could be in for a long winter ahead.
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/20/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Seriously. No kidding. One discounted model for at least one day, anyway,
on
Amazon.com, but still.
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/20/2007 at 1:21 PM1 comments
Really,
it's
brief. Somewhat interesting, but brief. We're not kidding.
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/20/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments