After Microsoft announced that R2 of the forthcoming Windows Server 2008 (nee
Longhorn) will only come in a beefy (get it?) 64-bit version, rumors spread
that Microsoft might not release another 32-bit operating system after Vista.
That might or might not be the case, though -- because
Redmond
hasn't decided yet.
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/22/2007 at 1:20 PM0 comments
Last week, in a
rather
innocuous RCPU entry, we linked to a study put out by the school of business
at the University of Michigan that suggests that Microsoft's rating for customer
satisfaction is getting worse. We wanted to get your take on that and how it
affects partners.
Let's just say that we touched a nerve. RCPU's inbox quickly filled with e-mails
about dissatisfaction with Microsoft -- although not all of them were as angry
as you might think. Here's the best of what we received, edited in some cases
a bit for length. (And, lest you think we've lost our grammar skills, yes, the
headline of this entry is an allusion to the classic Rolling Stones song. We
hope you knew that already, though.)
Ken, whose thoughts fall more on the angry side, writes from Australia to say
that if folks are dissatisfied with Microsoft, it might just be because Redmond
has lost its focus on the "little guy" in terms of both partners and
customers.
"I am a small business IT consultant in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
For 30 years now I have sold and serviced computers to the SOHO marketplace
and have worked as a contractor for large businesses, as well. In that time,
I have been happy and grateful to sell and service Microsoft products, but
in recent years people like me have become less and less relevant to Microsoft
and we are feeling the pinch.
"Clearly I cannot compete with IBM or the multinational IT big boys,
and I am not even going to try. But Microsoft seems nowadays to ONLY care
about them, and that ticks me off a lot -- as, although I am not a big player,
I have been a regular unpaid representative of Microsoft/Intel products for
30-plus years and cannot even get the common courtesy of a return phone call
or even e-mail replies nowadays. I provide feedback to Microsoft on beta products
but my views as an end user and reseller are ALWAYS met with silence, giving
me the perception I do not matter at all.
"Vista is a classic case in point -- it provides everything Microsoft
wants but not much of what clients want. The PC has become more like a mainframe
computer with all the inherent inflexibilities and associated costs; [Vista]
suffers grossly from appallingly slow speed, software and driver incompatibilities
and code bloat, and, in my opinion, it is a step backward from XP SP2.
"Office has features many of us will never use -- or ever understand
why they are there to be used -- so it's a waste. Unfortunately, corporate
greed means we may never get an operating system that is really tight, super-fast
and reliable, as that might kill off the cash cow that is Microsoft.
"[We] little guys are now saying, tough luck, Microsoft. You won't support
us; we are no longer supporting you. We are sticking with XP, refusing to
sell or recommend Vista and no longer offering our time and interest for free.
I think Microsoft underestimates and undervalues the impact we have on a lot
of people, but eventually they will find out they are going to have to rethink
the attitude and do a lot more to help us help them again."
Netfali chimes in, too, saying that Microsoft has become more about hype and
product bloat than about quality:
"Rather than relying on the quality of their products and services
to back up their sales, they have to create this excitement, which is by now
starting to backfire. It is backfiring because customers are tired of it.
It brings nothing but confusion and more spending because they know that by
the turn of the corner there is a new product to replace what came out yesterday
or to add to it. Rather than developing an overall strategy and spending enough
time to develop a sound product, they act like high school kids with the eagerness
to just be first and beat the competition. This, I think, adds to the perceived
disconnection in their products. Not only does the customer have to buy item
No. 1, but now they have to buy item 2 and 3 and, tomorrow, item No. 4, a
new product altogether. [Microsoft] need[s] someone from a sound company to
come in and teach them business basics."
Ian, employing something of a sarcastic (and entertaining) tone, noted that
Redmond's technological goofs don't help, either:
"On a recent SBS 2003 R2 implementation (where I was upgrading from
a mixture of legacy servers), WSUS caused the previously infrequently patched
but running A-OK workstations to run like snails and be unusable for 20 minutes
each morning.
"What a great idea -- an automatic security protection system that
manifests itself in the worst denial of service the customer ever experienced!
(After spending a great deal of time convincing them of the benefits, I must
have forgotten to tell them about the added benefit of 100 percent CPU usage.)
"Great customer feel-good factor for a 20K upgrade. I am still struggling
with a few workstations. Nice."
Not so nice, Ian. But Bob, on the somewhat softer, less angry side of things,
says that the problem isn't so much with products as it is with activation,
registration and a bunch of other stuff (although we sense that there are some
problems with the products, as well):
"I believe Microsoft software is better than it has ever been. It
is priced pretty decently and is a fair value for the money. Microsoft is
less buggy than most business-class software. What the customers hate are
all the processes that go with registration, activation, reactivation, multiple
choices for the same product, reactivation, checking for authenticity over
and over, failed reactivation, 30-minute waits on the phone to reactivate...you
get the idea. The dissatisfaction isn't with the product; it's with everything
that rides along with it. I understand Microsoft's need to protect its intellectual
property, but it is costing multiple millions, if not billions, of dollars
in lost productivity to businesses.
"Then there was Vista, the fastest-selling OS of all time [or
so
Redmond says --L.P.]. I don't know one person who likes it.
The aggravation mentioned above is far worse; peripherals became obsolete,
vendor drivers are buggy or nonexistent, the product is confusing and unfamiliar
and the security is far too intrusive (see the associated Apple commercial).
But, oh, how we love Office 2007. That's sweet! Everyone knows that someday
they will find their way around the ribbon and be far more productive than
ever before. No, I don't believe for one minute that the dissatisfaction with
Microsoft is from the software. People think they are dissatisfied with the
product when the product really isn't their issue."
For her part, Mary wants to help Redmond out of its customer-satisfaction jam
by offering Microsoft a little gift:
"A book I brought back in 1998 called Great Customer Service
was dusted off and put into position. I'm thinking my gift list is going to
be long this year."
Apparently Redmond can use all the help it can get right now.
Many thanks to everybody who responded, and don't forget that you can continue
this conversation here
or by dropping me a line at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/22/2007 at 1:20 PM0 comments
If you're old enough, or just enough of a fan of TV trivia, you might remember
the tastefully named Lee Majors starring in "
The
Six Million Dollar Man." The actor played a test pilot who was horribly
injured in a plane crash and subsequently rebuilt by the U.S. government with
all sorts of high-performance bionic parts in his body -- hence the reason his
reconstruction cost $6 million, a hefty price tag back in the mid-'70s. (That
kind of money might get you a decent middle reliever today, but we digress.)
Anyway, Majors' Col. Steve Austin character, who made that name famous long
before it belonged to a certain "Stone
Cold" wrestler, could do all sorts of amazing things with his tricked-out
robobody. He paid the government back for the favor of rebuilding him by doing
intelligence work and combating all sorts of terrifying threats to national
security -- including, in one episode, Bigfoot. (This, of course, was before
the phrase "the terrorists" meant anything -- but we digress again.)
It turns out that this "Six Million" metaphor has come back around
again, and this time it's about an online advertising firm called aQuantive.
Presumably aQuantive hasn't suffered a horrible accident and doesn't need to
be rebuilt with bionic parts. But it has a few things in common with Lee Majors
as Col. Steve Austin, starting with its price tag. Microsoft announced this
week that it's buying
aQuantive for an eerily similar sum, updated for inflation in 2007 -- $6
billion.
And just as the government made a major investment in Steve Austin's body,
Microsoft is paying
a huge premium to buy aQuantive. This deal, in fact, dwarfs the $3.1 billion
buyout of DoubleClick by Google that upset
Microsoft so much about a month ago.
We've been wondering here at RCPU just how serious Microsoft was about the
online ad game -- and we had to ask some questions again earlier this week when
24/7 Real Media, another firm Microsoft had been rumored to be eyeing, went
to another bidder. However, $6 billion big ones should answer anybody's questions
about Redmond's commitment to catching up with Google. The question now is whether
it's too little (or maybe too much), too late. After all, Google has a huge
lead in search and online advertising over Microsoft, and unlike Redmond's highly
diversified corporate profile, Internet stuff is what Google does -- and does
very well.
For most partners, it's hard to see a direct entry into the online ad game,
but anybody whose business relies on the corporate giant in Redmond should pay
close attention to how and where Microsoft spends its money, especially a chunk
of money this large. If Microsoft gets bogged down in an online ad game it can't
win with an expensive acquisition it can't swallow, the fallout could affect
the company's stock price and executive leadership -- and maybe even trickle
down throughout its operations.
Then again, if the aQuantive acquisition works, it could be a cornerstone of
a Microsoft Internet strategy that still
seems a bit shaky for now and really needs to come together. Plus, Microsoft
has a pretty darn good track record with acquisitions it's made in the past.
Still, this is a watershed moment for Microsoft. The commitment is there; the
money is there -- now it's time for Redmond to produce results.
Of course, to continue the metaphor, we shouldn't forget how Lee Majors fits
into all this. Just as the government needed Col. Steve Austin to perform superhuman
feats, Microsoft needs aQuantive to help it pull off a near-miracle and catch
Google in the online ad game. Let's remember, though, what Lee Majors did after
"The Six Million Dollar Man" ended its run -- he became "The
Fall Guy."
Taking a fall and failing to catch rival Google isn't what Redmond plans with
aQuantive, of course. No doubt, Redmond is hoping for something more like the
"Promised Land"
where Lee Majors spent an episode (OK, we're stretching here, but just go with
it).
What's your take on Microsoft's big acquisition? How do you see it affecting
you as a partner? Can you get the theme song from "The Fall Guy" out
of your head? I can't. Enlighten me at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/18/2007 at 1:20 PM0 comments
Unlike some other commentators, we're not big fans here at RCPU of referring
to Microsoft as "evil" or "the devil," so let's put the
headline of this entry into context. SAP -- the big, German, still mostly dominant
enterprise resource planning vendor -- has been
snuggling
up to Microsoft lately, promising better integration between its ERP applications
and Redmond's SQL Server 2005 database.
SAP's motivation for doing this appears to be to keep database giant Oracle
and its line of enterprise apps, which compete with those of SAP, at bay. SAP
also has a nice product with Microsoft called Duet that ties the familiar Office
front-end to SAP's considerable back-end. So, by being buddy-buddy with Microsoft,
SAP covers two of its main weaknesses -- database integration and front-end
accessibility. All of that sounds pragmatic enough, right?
Well, here's where the context part comes into play. Anybody who has been paying
even the faintest attention to the ERP market knows that Microsoft
has major ambitions in it along with a complicated -- and increasingly
competitive and contentious -- relationship with SAP. All of this, then,
leaves us wondering whether SAP has made a deal with its own personal little
devil in Redmond (as opposed to a more universal devil, which we don't consider
Microsoft to be) in the name of driving a stake into Oracle's heart.
After all, Microsoft plans to attack the ERP market the way it has attacked
many of the other markets it now owns -- by preaching native integration of
its own applications. Just to spell things out, that means that Microsoft is
ready to send its partners to customers with the message that Dynamics, its
ERP offering, is simpler (in a good way), cheaper and better (and certainly
better integrated) top to bottom than what SAP or Oracle can offer.
And what better way for Microsoft to boost the two quantities it lacks in ERP
-- credibility and experience -- than by working closely with the longtime market
leader? The pitch almost sells itself: "If you like SAP's enterprise wares
with our database and front-end, just imagine how much you'll like cheaper,
simpler, easier-to-maintain and more tightly integrated Dynamics playing nicely
with your all-Microsoft implementation. Let's get you started switching over
now..."
Now, your editor has had considerable experience writing about SAP over the
last 10 years or so. We're quite sure that the folks in Walldorf (Germany, where
SAP's headquarters are located) know that they're playing with fire. So how
do the folks at SAP propose to not get burned?
And here are some other things to ponder. Does Walldorf see any threat to their
gigantic market share from Microsoft on the horizon? Do they not believe that
Redmond can execute on its ambitious, but still largely nascent, ERP strategy?
Does Oracle -- a bigger threat to SAP right now than Microsoft -- just look
like the most important dragon to slay?
We suspect that, in part, the answer to those last three questions is "Yes."
However, if that's the case, SAP had better know what it's doing. Dynamics is
no Windows Live Search or Zune. It's a serious set of business applications
from a company that has a hefty presence of its own in the enterprise. The folks
in Walldorf have a pretty impressive ERP empire going, but the road is littered
with such deals. It's why, we suspect, "the devil" term is used in
the first place.
What do you think of SAP's cooperation with Microsoft? How soon do you see
Dynamics seriously competing with SAP and Oracle? Let me know at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/17/2007 at 1:20 PM0 comments
Before we get to Ballmer's mafia handle, let's look at a few reader e-mails
on other topics.
Colin quite rightly called your editor out for having been too lazy to look
up the old magazine cover with Apple's logo and the word "Pray" on
it that we
referenced last week. Turns out it was Wired, not Upside,
that ran the cover -- and it turns out that the cover's quite famous, as you'll
see from Colin's note:
"I have to say, you were almost asking for this...I put 'apple pray'
(without the quotation marks) into Google, and return No. 5 was: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2006/03/70538.
"Which led me to http://www.magazine.org/Editorial/Top_40_Covers/
[#33] and http://www.magazine.org/Editorial/40-40-covers/33b.jpg."
Well done, Colin, and thanks.
On Vista activation, suddenly an important
topic in Redmond, apparently, Mark says that he's had just about enough
-- and he thinks that others might have, too:
"Having been a mostly loyal Windows shop since Windows 3.11, before
that DOS going back to version 3.2, I am happy that each version of Windows
subsequently released gets better and more stable (with the exception of Millennium
Edition; that was a complete disaster!).
"Starting with Windows XP the activation issues have been forcing
me to look into the viability of Linux as opposed to Windows. The latest changes
in Vista, both OS features/enhancements and increased WGA requirements are
actively accelerating my movement away from Microsoft and to the alternatives,
which are becoming more viable with each passing day.
"I believe that as soon as Linux can be installed and used as 'easily'
as Windows, that will mark the first serious landmark in the downfall of MS
Windows. Techies deal with 'stuff' every day; for us, install problems are
not insurmountable. Windows has fewer and fewer install issues as time progresses,
but Linux is catching up. That day is coming, and I believe sooner rather
than later. Driver issues, lack of compatibility with existing software, annoying
pop-ups asking to confirm everything one does -- these are all factors that
will quietly cause the trickle of defectors to become a roaring tsunami."
We wonder, Mark, whether Redmond hears the waves starting to pound on the shore.
OK, enough of the serious stuff. We told you this week that Microsoft's Wiseguys
are about to face a RICO
charge (well, lawsuit) and wondered what you thought Steve Ballmer's mafia
name might be -- if the mafia actually existed the way it does in "The
Sopranos."
We got some great suggestions, the first from Tom: "La Cosa Visto,
and his name is 'Balls.' Or shall we just call him 'Big Cahones'?"
Jon, who's in serious danger of becoming a serial e-mailer, chimed in with:
"How about 'The emBallmer'?"
Pretty good, both of them. William went with something that makes Ballmer sound
a bit more like a '50s rock star than a mafioso, but it certainly fits: "How
about 'Screamin' Stevie Ballmer,' for his onstage antics?"
And Chris went with a more violent theme: "Steve 'The Crusher' Ballmer
or Steve 'IronFist' or 'The Fist' Ballmer."
Good entries all. But our winner this week comes from Joel, who plays Ballmer's
job title off nicely with a Bobby
Knight-esque rampage for which the Microsoft chief has become dubiously
famous: "Doesn't it have to be 'The Chair-Man'?"
You know, Joel, it really does.
Thanks to everybody for your e-mails on all sorts of topics. Keep them coming
to [email protected],
and don't forget to get in arguments and call each other names (hey, I know
how this Internet stuff works) in the comments section of each
entry on the blog site at RCPmag.com. I
might even join in from time to time.
Spring is here...have a great weekend!
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/11/2007 at 1:20 PM0 comments
Whether or not the latest (and oddly persistent) flare-up of the
Microsoft-to-buy-Yahoo
rumor turns out to be true -- and we're not betting that it will -- Steve
Ballmer does seem to have a hankering for a bit of shopping. Ballmer said this
week that he wouldn't rule out dropping a bundle of Microsoft's
dwindling
pile of cash on acquisitions to beef up the company's still-cloudy Software
Plus Services (not to be confused -- or
maybe
to be confused -- with software-as-a-service) strategy.
Big spending all in one place would buck the trend that Microsoft has set of
late -- buying
up smaller players and glomming their applications into the Microsoft stack.
(Of course, it's not as though Microsoft hasn't tried to dump lots of money
into one acquisition lately -- remember
DoubleClick?) Furthermore, Ballmer's talk of pumping up S+S with a major
buyout has the overtones of an executive who is maybe just a bit desperate to
piece together a strategy in an area in which Microsoft is not at the forefront.
Of course, any company with tens of billions of dollars in the bank and a chokehold
on the markets for operating systems and productivity suites can't be all that
desperate. Still, Ballmer's dropping hints -- will dollars follow?
If they do, they'll be dedicated to S+S, or at least not spent on enterprise
applications such as business intelligence. Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft's
business division, said this week that Redmond plans to build,
not buy, business applications. That, of course, is a bit of an odd statement,
given that Microsoft announced a BI-related
acquisition (albeit a small one) just this week. It's even more odd considering
that Microsoft Dynamics,
the company's enterprise resource planning offering, is really just a package
consisting of four different suites that Microsoft purchased over the last few
years by buying other vendors' solutions.
We'll take Raikes' comments to mean that Microsoft won't be spending any more
money on business apps than it already has. Clearly Redmond seems more confident
in its business offerings than in its S+S wares -- and probably for good reason.
In any case, Ballmer seems ready to open the vault and perhaps redirect the
course of the whole industry the way Microsoft has done in the past.
If you were Steve Ballmer, how would you spend Microsoft's money? Let me know
at [email protected].
And speaking of S+S, SaaS and lots of other unusual acronyms, Mike weighed
in this week in Microsoft's Web-apps strategy. We edited this one a tad for
length, but we liked it a lot:
"The good news for Microsoft is that the world is in a migration.
Most of us use Windows and Office and are not leaving the womb (or tomb) any
time soon. As new software, with new delivery models, is introduced, we consider
it, and if it makes sense, incorporate it into our daily routine. I don't
think individuals are any different than large corporations.
"I have made investments in real dollars to buy Microsoft software
(and lots of other companies' software, too) and invested significant time
in learning Microsoft products over the last 17 years. I'm not going to throw
that away overnight. Just because Google has a Web-based spreadsheet, that
doesn't compel me to switch to it when the one I'm using is working just fine.
Like they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
"Ten years from now, Microsoft will be around; it'll be an $80 billion
company, and will have figured out how to monetize the Web and include partners
in the process. But the model won't look the same as it does today. The revenue
is likely to be recurring, maybe based on usage, and we will pay more for
the same functionality than we do today. That's happened with television (cable),
communications (cell phones) and that's the way it will be with software.
"Microsoft and Ray Ozzie have time and they know it. Their problem
is that the sizzle is gone -- Google, Salesforce.com and others have taken
away the franchise that they owned for almost 15 years. That hurts the stock
price, makes recruiting talent more difficult and it makes playing the game
a lot more difficult. In other industries, investors are ecstatic to own a
company that has 25 percent net margins, is throwing off cash faster than
they can invest it and growing predictably. Microsoft's problem is that that
is not what it, or the market, is used to. Google will run into the same problem
in five to 10 years, maybe sooner. Then the next big thing will get all of
the attention.
"I think Microsoft and Ray are right on track. Keep the faith, experiment,
react when necessary and everything will be just fine."
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/11/2007 at 1:20 PM0 comments
As we do sometimes here at RCPU, we're going to throw a topic completely open
to you, the faithful reader. In other words, we'll give you a bit of news and
just let you run with it in e-mail form or as commentary on the blog. (Yes,
this means that we're going to mainly keep our mouths shut on this issue --
for now.)
We did this last summer with Windows
Genuine Advantage and got tremendous
feedback. So here we go again. This week, it's time to Get
Smart, as the topic is business intelligence (clever, huh?).
Here are your bits of news: Microsoft and SAP both made small BI acquisitions
this week, with Redmond buying
a Java reporting tool called OfficeWriter and SAP snapping
up OutlookSoft, which makes applications for budgeting and financial forecasts.
Incidentally, we're pleased to see that both giants bought companies that use
SmashedTogether words with a capital letter in the middle as their names. We
ReallyLike CompanyNames like that. WellDone, Microsoft and SAP.
And lest we forget, last month, BI player Business Objects (two separate words)
announced that it would buy OutlookSoft competitor Cartesis (and its somewhat
disappointing one-word name).
These smaller acquisitions come in the wake of a really big one, Oracle's
multibillion buyout of Hyperion. Obviously the big guys in BI -- Cognos
also comes to mind in that category along with the aforementioned players --
are snapping up smaller vendors in a pretty textbook case of market consolidation.
And, obviously, somebody thinks that there's money and opportunity in bringing
corporate information to the desktops of nontechnical people, especially executives,
in a clean and simple way -- which is what BI is supposed to do.
Microsoft is, not surprisingly, becoming a very
serious BI player, although reviews of Redmond's effort in the area are
a bit mixed thus far. Check out RCP magazine columnist Joshua
Greenbaum's comprehensive take here.
What I want to know, though, is what BI is doing for you. If you're selling
it (especially from Microsoft), how's it going? How's demand? Do customers understand
the benefits of BI, and are you profiting from selling and deploying it? If
you're using it (as we have a lot of nonpartner IT folks who read the newsletter),
is it delivering everything you expected? Do you consider it a critical part
of your enterprise technology strategy?
Send me your thoughts at [email protected].
We'll take the best of your e-mails this week and the next and run them a week
from Friday (on May 18). And thanks in advance for your thoughts.
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/10/2007 at 1:20 PM1 comments
Here come those third parties Microsoft has been waiting for on Vista. Virtualization
kingpin
VMware
has released Workstation 6, the first of its virtualization products to
support Vista.
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/10/2007 at 1:20 PM0 comments