Oh, we try hard, so hard, not to pile on with this Vista stuff. It's just that
every time we think it's getting old to talk about what a, uh, "mitigated
success" (yes, we're being kind) Vista has been, something else comes out
that demonstrates that this operating system is about as popular as
New
Coke was once upon a time. (By the way, thank you, Internet and Wikipedia,
for providing us with more information than we ever thought existed on New Coke.
What was life like before the Internet? We don't remember...and we don't care.)
Anyway, it wasn't enough, apparently, for Dell
to start selling PCs with XP (rather than Vista) pre-loaded. Now Dell, HP
and Lenovo are all offering
downgrades to XP for customers who buy machines with Vista pre-installed.
The linked article says that most of the downgrades are primarily for business
customers rather than the retail set; the anecdotal evidence we've heard suggests
that neither category of customer is happy with Vista, but the critical point
here seems to be that Vista has drawn reactions not so much of apathy but almost
of disgust and contempt. It's one thing for businesses to ignore a major Windows
upgrade; it's another for them to actively dislike it.
Of course, we still maintain that we'll all be running Vista eventually, but
with Office
under attack from multiple sources, open source getting lots of press and
the European Union putting
the hammer down on the company, it sure would be nice for Microsoft if it
could point to Vista as a bright spot in its current cloudy skies. Alas, that's
not really possible.
Any leftover thoughts on Vista? It always seems to be a popular topic. Send
your musings my way at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 09/25/2007 at 1:21 PM4 comments
Steve Ballmer
pulled
in about $1.3 million in fiscal 2007,
a
pittance according to Microsoft.
And, really, it doesn't seem like that much money for a guy who heads a company
that made more than $50 billion in the same fiscal year. Our favorite part of
this story, though, comes from the second linked article (the one from Australian
IT):
"Unlike some companies that spend millions on executive perks, Microsoft
gave Ballmer a modest $US6750 to his retirement plan and about $US3000 worth
of life insurance and athletic club memberships."
Athletic club memberships. Yeah. We're just going to let that one sit out there.
Posted by Lee Pender on 09/25/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
We just love using "ink" as a verb.
Ingram
will boldly go wherever the Geek Squad can't get the job done.
Posted by Lee Pender on 09/25/2007 at 1:21 PM1 comments
Does
this
seem like a fair trade for Yao Ming? Probably not, if you're a Microsoft executive.
Posted by Lee Pender on 09/21/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
In case you missed it, here's what Symantec CEO John Thompson
had
to say about Microsoft Forefront in the
September
issue of
RCP:
"When the hype settles down, people have to settle into the pragmatic
reality, which is that [Microsoft's] product sucks."
Well, then! If you'd like to read the rest of what Thompson had to say, check
out Redmond magazine's Q&A
with him.
As for security, reader Kevin writes to say that he's all for Microsoft taking
care of its own software:
"I have always thought that the security of Windows should squarely
sit on Microsoft's shoulders. All the third-party vendors providing 'security'
for Windows by selling software and updates to install on the host machine
are more like piranhas than heroes. Here is my thought process on this:
"One, Microsoft owns the design of the operating system. For good or
bad, they OWN it. Two, third-party 'security' vendors do not go after the
perpetrators directly and they offer no monies in earnest to apprehend them,
but instead just sell software to thwart an 'attack.' Three, stupid users
being lulled into thinking it is safe to download and run any software found
on the Internet.
"For point 1, Microsoft should be held financially accountable for providing
the fertile ground for such attacks to the operating system. They should be
held accountable for each attack as should the hardware vendors. Yes, I am
including the hardware vendors since there is no native protection from buffer
overflows that the general population has available to them. If the hardware
were to separate the buffer space from the executable space, it would go a
long way to keeping such attacks from happening.
"OK, point 2 is totally self-serving on the 'security' vendors' part;
if they actually cared about their customers and were successful in shutting
down the criminals, their whole reason for being is wiped out. So, they talk
up the issues and provide a fence but no strike force to stop it from happening
in the first place.
"Point 3, yes, there are a lot of stupid users and mostly in the consumer
space. The always-on, bare Internet connections are the most vulnerable to
attack. Too many times, I have seen a machine happily infecting others even
when the 'security' software was installed. Again, Microsoft has cultivated
a population that knows nothing about a computer and what it can do but seems
to be able to 'use' it. It would be like telling a teenager a story of how
to drive and then giving them a key to an automatic car. Now, if the car were
manual transmission, they would more likely know more about how to drive it
than an automatic. That same teenager would then go out in the wild and more
than likely cause accidents. Basically, the computer is too easy to use for
the available built-in controls and security measures. So, users go out and
purchase the security software and think they are safe. They never even bother
to learn what the security software does or what to do when it detects something.
"Well, I could go on and on but you get the point."
We do, Kevin...and it's an interesting perspective, one that makes us think
but that we also can't say we've heard that many times. Thanks for sharing it.
Posted by Lee Pender on 09/21/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Oof. It's never easy staying on top -- not even for Microsoft, which has dominated
the software industry for so long that it's hard to remember when IBM was the
"evil empire" of technology.
It was bad enough that last week, Google
and Capgemeni got together to try to rope and tie Microsoft's cash cow,
Office. Now, though, Google appears to be going
after Outlook, too, and it's not the only competitor trying to carve out
a bigger
slice of the e-mail pie. Nor is Google the only Microsoft rival to take
a fresh run at Office, now that IBM
has a free suite of its own.
But, hey, that's competition, and if it leads to innovation (and, in turn,
increased investment in new and improved technologies), it'll be a good thing
in the long run for partners, users and the industry as a whole. Google's Capgemini
link seems to be by far the biggest threat to Office in particular and to Microsoft
in general, but the main theme here is that Microsoft is going to need to adapt
in order to keep Office dominant -- come up with a true SaaS version of the
suite or at least a lighter, (much) cheaper alternative to the current monster.
The proverbial ball is in Redmond's posh, well-manicured court. We await Steve
Ballmer's -- or perhaps Ray Ozzie's -- forehand.
Then there was the real blow of the week, Microsoft's
loss in its appeal of ridiculous antitrust fines imposed by the European
Union. It wasn't exactly unexpected, and it's not as though Microsoft can't
afford to pay for what the EU and a European court determined to be its anti-competitive
sins.
But it does complicate matters for Microsoft, its partners and even its users,
given that Microsoft's effort to sell multiple versions of Windows with various
products (such as Windows Media Player) cut out of certain versions wasn't enough
to placate the EU hunger for eating
successful American companies alive. What now? Well, perhaps another appeal
from Redmond -- or perhaps a big check sent from Seattle to Brussels and another
15 versions of Windows launched in the EU. We'll see.
All of this bad news, of course, has the press (generally an anti-Microsoft
lot, honestly, which doesn't do much for impressions of objectivity) absolutely
drooling and gleefully throwing together "this
is the death of Microsoft" articles. Of course, Microsoft lives, and
it's got more money than ever before. And it won't go away, just as IBM didn't
go away after falling off its industry perch in the 1980s. But the question
now is whether Microsoft can continue to be the software industry heavyweight
or whether it'll slip into being just another big player. Everybody's asking
that question, so we know that we're stating the obvious here. But still, it's
a question worth asking.
We're not going to make any predictions on that front, except to say that standing
pat (which Microsoft doesn't appear to be doing) is the worst thing Redmond
can do. What we wonder is whether Microsoft is going in the right directions:
With huge investments in search, advertising, video game consoles, portable
music players and other non-core efforts, will Redmond be able to circle back
around and defend its home turf of Office (still the company's big revenue generator)
and Windows and keep the revenues pouring into its channel? Stay tuned.
Have any thoughts on anything that happened this week? Or last? Or might happen
next week? Send them to me at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 09/21/2007 at 1:21 PM1 comments
We were all prepared with a joke along the lines of, "And in other news,
the earth continues to rotate on its axis..." but there's no use piling
on.
Here's
the study.
Posted by Lee Pender on 09/20/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
In old-school video games -- and, we gather, in most new ones -- there are
levels of play. You get past one, and your reward is a whole 'nother one, as
we'd say back in Texas, that's even more difficult to conquer. There's not much
time for celebration moving up the ladder of success. Well, that's what business
is like these days for Salesforce.com, in case you were wondering just where
this was going. (We're not gamers here at RCPU, but your editor did spend a
few months working for a company that makes video games.)
Salesforce.com, of course, has been highly successful and a darling
of the trade press. As a vendor of hosted customer relationship management
applications, Salesforce.com has conquered the first few levels of the software
(or "no software," in Salesforce.com's case) industry. Great. Now,
things get harder.
They get harder because, as we've known for a while, the big players in the
software industry -- namely Microsoft -- are waking up to software as a service
and prepping hosted offerings that will compete
with Salesforce.com's impressive CRM wares. And we all know what usually
happens in this case. The innovator, or the metaphorical rabbit in the market
race, either gets consumed (bought) or chewed up and spit out (kicked to the
curb, Netscape-style) by bigger competitors.
Salesforce.com's CEO Marc Benioff knows all this and, at this point at least,
he doesn't seem to be aiming for the Holy Grail of acquisition and the good
life as a wealthy pseudo-exec. No, admirably, he seems to want more -- to keep
conquering the levels of the game until Salesforce.com becomes more than just
a hit upstart.
At his company's show this week, Benioff positioned Salesforce.com not just
as a niche hosted-CRM competitor but as a company offering a whole
development platform -- boldly named Force.com -- for hosted applications.
As far as we (or anybody else) can tell, nobody has tried the development-platform-for-hosted-apps
approach before. And consider Benioff's quote in the BusinessWeek
article linked here:
"We're a platform company, not just an applications company. We have a
vision for the future of an industry."
Those don't sound like the words of a guy who's ready to sell out or quit on
his vision. That's good -- because too many innovators now want nothing but
the big payout that acquisition by a mega-company brings. And while we have
nothing at all against the normal course of industry consolidation, we do understand
that acquisition can (although it doesn't always) stunt or even snuff out innovation
within companies doing some really interesting stuff. Just look what Salesforce.com's
success has brought forth -- a hosted CRM application from Microsoft that, if
they know how to handle it, could be a boon for partners. It often takes a mouse
to make the elephant jump, and the quickened pace of innovation that results
is good for partners, users and the industry as a whole.
Now, whether Benioff and his charges can conquer the next level of the game
-- the one in which Microsoft and SAP enter the picture (the "Bosses"
of the level, perhaps) -- is another issue altogether. But we're glad to see
that he's still playing, and we'll be looking over his shoulder as Salesforce.com
takes on all comers.
What's your take on the impact of SaaS? Are your clients showing interest in
hosted applications? Let me know at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 09/19/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Cuddly, cuddly! What a week for former Microsoft rivals to nuzzle up to Redmond.
Still-new friend Novell is teaming with Microsoft to
open
an interoperability lab in Cambridge, Mass. (perhaps America's smartest
city), and there are
new
customers for the infamous Microsoft-Novell Linux deal, too.
Posted by Lee Pender on 09/13/2007 at 1:21 PM0 comments