Partners! In case you missed one of about a billion Microsoft e-mails you must
get every month, here's a tip for you: You can now participate in an
evaluation
of the latest release candidate of Windows Server 2008. Our first comment
in the evaluation? "Change the name back to Longhorn."
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/01/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Well, here we go again. Apple is out with a new version of OS X,
this
one called Leopard, and
everybody
(and we do mean
everybody)
is telling us how much better Leopard is than Vista. Everybody who's not complaining
about Leopard's
supposedly
questionable security, that is.
And so, we at RCPU give the usual response: Yeah, so? The Mac OS has long been
superior to Windows, and although we haven't seen Leopard yet, we're sure that,
security hassles aside (as if those don't exist in Vista), the new Mac OS probably
blows Microsoft's latest effort out of the desktop water. It's important to
note here that we actually like Apple stuff at RCPU. We're far from being Microsoft
zealots -- remember, we don't work for Redmond.
Your editor owned an iMac for years before leaving it behind in Europe and
would definitely consider buying another one at some point. And, of course,
we've been on board with the iPod for years, like the rest of the world (except
for one of the producers of this newsletter, who confessed to us earlier this
year that he has a Zune -- he will, of course, remain anonymous).
But every time Apple trots out a new version of the Mac OS, we hear the same
old lines about how much better it is than whatever Microsoft is offering (fair
enough, but that's like saying that Seattle is rainy) and how this is going
to be the release that finally provides a market-share breakthrough for Apple.
Whatever. Yes, the Mac OS is gaining in market share -- as we noted earlier
this week, it's encroaching on double digits -- and there's well-documented
discontent with Vista both among consumers and in the enterprise.
And still, Windows dominates, and it will continue to dominate. Apple gave
up on the enterprise a long time ago, so there's obviously no threat to Microsoft
there. But even on the consumer side, people just seem to stick with Microsoft.
There are probably a lot of reasons why -- familiarity, previous investment
in software, price -- but that's the way it is. (Hey, it's not as if Apple's
hurting, anyway. That whole iPod thing made some money after all. Steve Jobs
won't need another bailout from Redmond any time soon.)
So, we add to the list
we started after Microsoft's most recent (and staggeringly successful, even
by Redmond's standards) earnings report. Maybe you remember (and here, we quote
ourselves):
"Vista stinks? Microsoft makes more money. Google's on the rise?
Microsoft makes more money. SaaS is gaining a foothold? Microsoft makes more
money. Linux is getting established in the enterprise? Microsoft makes more
money. The EU wants to appropriate the campus in Redmond and turn it into
some sort of hippie compound for rogue socialist economists? Microsoft...you
get the idea."
So, this week: Apple comes out with another vastly superior operating system?
Yep, you guessed it -- Microsoft makes more money.
Have you used Leopard? What do you think of it? Tell me at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/01/2007 at 1:21 PM7 comments
It's all butter cookies and, uh, Danish, we suppose (if Danish -- as in the
sweet, sweet pastry -- is actually Danish, unlike french fries, which aren't
French) this week at Euro Convergence in Copenhagen. (OK, so the only other
thing we can think of when we hear "Copenhagen" is chewing tobacco,
which just sounds so much less appealing than cookies and pastry -- or even
fries. But go with whatever you like. Just use the spittoon, please.) And just
as we've had from Microsoft at prior Convergence get-togethers, we've got messaging
about the four disparate Dynamics suites cozying up to each other in some way.
Since Microsoft kind of sort of officially dropped the notion that it would
eventually meld all four enterprise resource planning suites into
one mega-suite, we've had fits and starts of messaging about NAV, GP, SL
and AX and how
they're going to relate to each other. A common interface among the suites
seems in place, and this week Redmond took the unification message further by
saying that it's developing
a single code base for the for software siblings.
So...we've got, or will have, four suites (plus customer relationship management,
no small piece of the puzzle) that look the same and run on the same code base
-- which makes total sense, of course, because everything Dynamics is Microsoft
now, and Microsoft's value proposition has long centered around integration
and ease of customization and use. A single code base will let partners more
easily develop from one application to another and integrate ERP and CRM into
the rest of the Microsoft platform. It should also help considerably with intra-company
data and process sharing.
All of this must surely mean that the old mega-suite idea -- once known as
"Project Green" -- is back on, right? Same interface, same code base;
easy integration with all things Microsoft, including potential money pots like
unified communications -- we're nearing the end of Dynamics alphabet soup...aren't
we?
Nope. Check the PC World story linked above. It (indirectly) quotes
Kirill Tatarinov, vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions, thusly:
"Users won't ever see a single Microsoft ERP product for all markets,
since Microsoft realizes that business have different needs, [Tatarinov] said."
Won't...ever? Really? Somehow, we doubt that. Check out the entirely reasonable
response to Tatarinov from an average user quoted in the same story:
"'I don't understand why they have so many different products,'"
said Lars Jalve, financial manager for Transas Ltd., a company that makes
navigation equipment for ships and managing harbors."
Well, Lars (and we do hope that you're enjoying the butter cookies), originally
it was because Microsoft didn't want to cannibalize its ambitious ERP effort
and wreck its Dynamics channel by announcing that there would someday be a mega-suite
but making partners and customers wait years for it, thereby delaying or possibly
just killing potential investment in it. (Actually, Microsoft did pretty much
just that a couple of years ago at Convergence in talking about Project Green
and then had to back off big time and change its message.) After all, why would
a company buy SL today if Dynamics Ultimate (or whatever) would be ready in
a few years? This isn't the operating system market; there are plenty of fully
baked alternatives to Dynamics out there. Microsoft is, after all, the newbie
here.
But now that Dynamics has, or will have, a common code base, a common interface
and deep integration with everything else Microsoft, why not start talking up
the mega-suite notion again? It's long been the elephant in the room at Convergence,
anyway. Maybe introduce some sort of upgrade or migration path, or reward customers
of current suites with an easier and/or cheaper route to Big Dynamics when it's
ready? Start now, build for tomorrow -- that sort of thing. Because we at RCPU
do think it'll be ready eventually, no matter how much Microsoft tries to say
otherwise. And as long as Dynamics is still more flexible, less expensive and
easier to integrate than its competition's products, there will be nothing wrong
-- and a lot of things right -- with simplifying both the marketing and the
message of Dynamics.
Oh, and while we're going on about Dynamics, here's
a somewhat dry but entirely useful look at Dynamics Entrepreneur, a small-business
product that, thus far, only our friends in the Netherlands (big shout-out to
our boys in Rotterdam here) have been able to buy and sell.
Which would you prefer, the Dynamics status quo or a single suite? What's your
strategy for selling Dynamics now? Let me know at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 10/25/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Redmond magazine contributing editor Mary Jo Foley has a report on what
Microsoft is doing to get consumers to
buy
Vista for the holidays. So far, the answer is...not much of substance, actually.
But we are kind of looking forward to Steve Ballmer's appearance in
Vogue.
Posted by Lee Pender on 10/25/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Mr. Ellison usually gets what Mr. Ellison wants (right, Siebel and PeopleSoft?),
but the Napoleon of the software industry
hasn't
managed to pillage BEA yet. He's still on the warpath, though, and it wouldn't
surprise us to see BEA fall into Oracle's hands before this little drama is
finished.
Posted by Lee Pender on 10/24/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Microsoft
introduced
Mobile Server this week, hoping to pick BlackBerry's position in the "smartphone"
market. And, by the way, we'd like to thank Research In Motion for naming its
product BlackBerry and giving us all these great fruit references to use in
RCPU. Now let's see whether Mobile Server turns out to be a lemon. (See? It
just never stops.)
Posted by Lee Pender on 10/24/2007 at 1:21 PM1 comments
Maybe you missed Microsoft's introduction of a
Web
site for medical records, which the company announced last week. If you
did, that's OK -- it wasn't in the newsletter, so it won't be on the test.
Health care, though, is a great big ol' booming business, chock with profits
for partners who know how to take the temperature of the market and prescribe
some implementations for customers. (Health care metaphors never fail!) Rich
Freeman has a diagnosis
of the health care vertical market (oh, really, stop it) in October's RCP
that's well worth a read.
Posted by Lee Pender on 10/12/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Your editor will be out next week on vacation, eschewing cell phone, computer,
online news aggregators and quite possibly even television. Filling in will
be
RCP Editor in Chief Scott Bekker who, like David Letterman on the
old "Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson, always does such a wonderful
and entertaining job of spelling the regular host. Fortunately, unlike the great
Johnny Carson, your editor is not currently dead and will return with a new
edition on Oct. 23. In the meantime, please welcome Scott into your inboxes.
Posted by Lee Pender on 10/12/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Let's rip right into reader e-mails in this Friday edition. The big news this
week was SAP's planned buyout of Business Objects (say it as a subject and verb,
and suddenly it's a pretty funny name), which had us
pondering
whether Microsoft might make a big business intelligence purchase of its
own.
Peter, who would certainly have Gold E-Mailer status by now if we had such
a thing, says that BO makes a lot of sense for SAP...but that Microsoft has
bigger things to worry about:
"We are in the Microsoft BI space and have some idea of the competition.
BO as a front-end to SAP is a great idea. The SAP BI is complete, rigid rubbish.
We always regarded BO, as the name suggests, as a fairly mediocre product.
They got to sell so much because of their very aggressive sales folk who misled
the customers. Similarly, Cognos is full of bugs and not a particularly good
product either. Microsoft already has better products than both BO and Cognos.
"Microsoft, unfortunately, will shoot themselves in the foot with
their very heavy BI offering, PerformancePoint Server. Don't forget, Microsoft
is an SAP customer and already has all kinds of BI interfaces to SAP. The
far more serious competitor for Microsoft is Oracle. They acquired brilliant
BI when they bought Siebel. That is now called Oracle BI Enterprise and much
better than BO or Cognos."
Jeff's also talking about Oracle...and he's got a very expensive proposition
for Microsoft.
"I think SAP's acquisition now gives INFOR and Oracle's strategy
credibility. What I mean is in today's ERP marketplace, it's cheaper and much
less time-consuming to BUY customers than go out and get them the hard way.
"SAP has been acquiring companies for quite some time; however, it
has been doing so under the radar. Guess there was no point in trying to hide
this acquisition.
"Microsoft should put an end to all this misery and just acquire
SAP like previously planned. I think the combined value of Microsoft + SAP
is more than separate."
The combined value of Microsoft and SAP would be massive, even staggering --
as would the resulting problems with integration and cultural fit. Plus, we're
not sure that federal regulators would let that acquisition pass. Microsoft
and SAP as one company...we're going to have to lie down for a while. Just the
thought is exhausting and more than a little scary.
Thanks to Peter and Jeff for their thoughts. Even though I'll be away next
week, keep your comments coming to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 10/12/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Keith Ward brings you
Part
2 of his already popular list of the most overlooked features of Windows
Server 2008.
Posted by Lee Pender on 10/11/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments