Some analysts are predicting that this week's earnings report
won't be a positive one for Microsoft. We'll have more about Microsoft's earnings on RCPmag.com after Thursday's announcement and (probably) even more in next week's RCPU.
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/21/2009 at 1:22 PM0 comments
Live Mesh is going to, uh,
mesh with Live Services.
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/21/2009 at 1:22 PM2 comments
We'd like to thank Citrix and Intel for revealing this week that they've been working on what they're calling a "bare metal" hypervisor that'll be optimized for Intel technology.
Oh, we're sure it'll be a fine product, but the tag "bare metal," aside from sounding like name of a nudist hard rock band, gave us a great excuse to troll YouTube for old heavy metal videos and call it work. So, before we go on, let's set some background music.
Anyway, Citrix and Intel are working on a hypervisor -- part of what they call "Project Independence" -- that'll be available in the second half of 2009. In a chat with RCPU last week, Calvin Hsu, director of product marketing for the desktop delivery group at Citrix, explained why the "bare metal" hypervisor will rock harder than the other hypervisors out there:
"What's commonly available today is a type 2 hypervisor, or hosted virtualization. Boot up machine, and it brings up base OS, then you load virtualization on top of that. Then inside that container, you bring up another OS. The virtualized operating system is a few layers away from the hardware. It does raise some concerns because you have this exposure to the underlying operating system.
"This [new] hypervisor is the first thing that loads -- it sits directly on the hardware, and then above that, you have your operating systems. The hypervisor is talking directly to the hardware. The two desktop environments sit beside each other. They're not on top of each other."
Hsu and Citrix envision a day when companies will stop buying laptops for their employees. (No, seriously.) Workers will use their personal computers both at home and at work and switch back and forth between environments on one device. And they'll do it all with a single log-on for each user that'll provide access to everything that user needs.
"It's liberating for the users," Hsu said. "It's a way to enable this BYOC [bring your own computer] world. The CIO gets to get this amortization and all the other things that go along with that off their books."
Bring your own computer? It could happen, we suppose; your editor has written many an edition of RCPU on his personal laptop while working at home. In any case, we'll see whether the "bare metal" hypervisor turns out to be a rock star or a one-hit wonder.
What are you doing with desktop virtualization? And what heavy metal tune would you choose for the "bare metal" hypervisor? Let us know at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/21/2009 at 1:22 PM1 comments
No pink slips yet, but Microsoft
won't be expanding at the rate it had planned. Lousy economy...
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/21/2009 at 1:22 PM1 comments
We received an e-mail from Alejandro at Nortel last week:
"Nortel is not bankrupt, but we had to go through several internal sessions yesterday to understand Chapter 11. The goal is to protect you from creditors to restructure debt and the company structure.
"I understand your article. Most of the media captured bankruptcy. Only a few added bankruptcy 'protection' to the headline. We clarified this to several partners and customers and received their support to do business as usual."
Alejandro, that's a very good point. Nortel filed for Chapter 11, which means, as far as we can tell, that the company will likely continue to operate with some protection from creditors. "Bankrupt" is a very harsh word, and while it might technically kind of sort of describe a company that files for Chapter 11, it's really more appropriate for a firm that has suffered Chapter 7, Chapter 11's meaner cousin. Chapter 7 is liquidation bankruptcy, the Circuit City kind. And that's not where Nortel is, just to be clear. Nortel lives.
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/20/2009 at 1:22 PM2 comments
Microsoft owns the desktop (for now). Google owns the Web (also for now). But this Software-as-a-Service stuff is wide open, and a huge player kicked up its pace in the SaaS race this week.
IBM unveiled LotusLive this week in Orlando at -- where else? -- Lotusphere. LotusLive is a hosted collaboration suite that includes pretty much everything you would think it would include -- e-mail, file sharing and various online collaboration bits. It slots in competitively, more or less, with Windows Live and maybe a bit with Google Apps as well.
IBM isn't going it alone with LotusLive, either. Big Blue has integration partnerships with heavy-hitters Salesforce.com, LinkedIn and Skype in its portfolio. Of course, the Salesforce.com agreement isn't necessarily exclusive, as Salesforce.com also has a relationship with Google around Google Apps. But suffice it to say that IBM's messages with LotusLive are all about openness -- and, specifically, open standards -- and powerful partnerships.
So, what does all this mean for partners? Well, first, it means that partners that don't have a SaaS strategy of some sort had better get one -- because the big vendors all have them, and they're going after the market with gusto. Along those same lines, it might be time for partners to start figuring out how they can make money off of SaaS, which could necessitate a fairly significant shift in business model as well as a willingness to accept a monthly revenue stream rather than collect big licensing fees up front with every deal.
Aside from the monthly check -- which might very well come from a vendor in the form of a referral fee -- there should be plenty of opportunities to customize SaaS applications. In that sense, this SaaS business isn't all that much different from the regular ol' software business; it's all about customization and services and not so much about licensing (or renewal fees). The trick is that partners have to know how to work with SaaS applications, although it seems that the big vendors are doing their best to facilitate that.
Which mega-vendor, then, will win the SaaS race? We kind of suspect that all of them will. IBM's model looks more pure SaaS than Microsoft's, but Microsoft has a massive installed base and a lot of incumbent applications in the enterprise for integration purposes. And then there's Google, which is replicating Microsoft's model by going after customers through the channel, which seems to us like a wise strategy indeed.
In all likelihood, the race for SaaS superiority will be a marathon and not a sprint. And as long as partners can make a few bucks along the way, that'll be a good thing.
What's your take on the impact of SaaS? How do the vendors' plans look to you? Sound off at [email protected]. It has been a while since we've run reader feedback; we're going to try to do that later this week. Stay tuned.
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/20/2009 at 1:22 PM2 comments
Haven't we been through this before? Like, a long time ago? And didn't Microsoft lose...but not really lose? Well, that was all in the U.S., and the EU doesn't care about that. And now the EU competition folks, who have dogged Microsoft for years, are back on Redmond's case, claiming that Internet Explorer might just
infringe on antitrust laws.
It would seem to us that this argument had a lot more strength when Microsoft was busy dumping Netscape's lifeless body into Puget Sound almost a decade ago. But now? Well, all we're saying is that your editor is a user of both Firefox and XP, and Firefox seems to be nipping away at Microsoft's market share all the time. Does that mean that IE doesn't violate antitrust laws in Europe? Not necessarily. But the question we're asking is, who cares? And why this? Why now? Competitors -- Firefox, Chrome, Safari -- are eating away at IE's market share, anyway. This feels like some sort of EU witch hunt or vendetta or something...but surely our friends across the pond wouldn't take that attitude. Oh, surely not.
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/20/2009 at 1:22 PM2 comments
From the in-case-you-missed-it file, it's
MED-V! But not everybody's so impressed thus far.
Virtualization Review's Keith Ward
weighs in. (Chapeau to Doug Barney, who also
posted a link to Keith's comments in the Redmond Report Newsletter.)
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/20/2009 at 1:22 PM1 comments
Oh, it's on now. Sure, Microsoft and Google have been competing for a while, battling it out in search and, to a much lesser extent, in productivity suites (which means Microsoft Office and Google Apps, in case you were wondering).
But it's really on now because Google has decided to replicate arguably the smartest move Microsoft ever made: selling through the partner channel. That's right -- Google has a partner program, and it's looking for you.
Well, it might be looking for you, anyway. The program is primarily focused on Google Apps -- the search giant's low-cost answer to Microsoft Office -- right now. A Google spokesperson shed a little light via e-mail to RCPU on what the company is seeking from partners. It's nothing you wouldn't expect, but here are the guts of what he said:
"As our customer needs are diverse, we also expect the characteristics of our reseller community to be diverse. For some, this is an opportunity to add SaaS products to complement their existing on-premises portfolio. For others, it's an opportunity to go all the way into the cloud. We anticipate that those firms who have a strong orientation toward SaaS and cloud computing as a primary or a complementary business will be most successful. And we expect that a commitment to providing value-added wrap-around services and solutions is also essential. Successful partners will help customers to plan, migrate, integrate, customize, optimize, extend, and support their Google Apps solutions."
That's sensible enough. Google's looking for SaaS-oriented partners that want to provide add-ons to Apps or offer other services that add value to Google's goods. Of course, partners would be working with the Premier version of Apps, the one Google actually charges for, and would keep recurring revenue after buying Apps at a discount. Presumably, the real money would be -- as it almost always is -- in providing services and add-ons, and Google's prepared to help train partners to do that, too.
Everything considered, it sounds like a good effort for a first-time partner overture. And nobody can argue with Google's desire to copy the model that has made its chief competitor in this space so successful. What we wonder is what Microsoft thinks of all this. We haven't seen a response from Microsoft yet -- and, to be fair, we haven't asked for one yet, either. But we're guessing that Microsoft doesn't have much of substance to say about Google's move. Companies rarely do in these situations, and that's understandable. It's not Microsoft's announcement.
Besides, Office isn't exactly under threat for now. It's still the dominant productivity suite by miles, and Google Apps still can't compete with Office in terms of functionality. Beyond that, just about everybody's used to Office by now, and Office file formats are de facto standards. (In fact, the Office Open XML format actually is a standard now.)
Ask yourself this, though: If you're a Microsoft partner, how will Redmond look at you if you decide to dip your toe into Google's waters, or maybe, more appropriately, reach for Google's cloud? Sure, Microsoft partners link up with other companies -- with competitors -- all the time and Redmond doesn't look at it as the end of the world.
But this is a little different. This is Google, the new superpower, coming right at Microsoft, recruiting partners -- in all likelihood, Microsoft partners -- to try to take down Office, which is still a big cash cow grazing in the fertile fields of the Pacific Northwest. Google seems to be offering a pretty good deal for the right kind of partner, but if you're tight with Microsoft -- or, more appropriately, if you're worried about your relationship with Microsoft -- think about the consequences of linking up with Google before making a move. Because even though Google's a huge underdog in this space, we have a feeling that this fight could end up getting pretty nasty.
Will you look at Google's partner program for Google Apps? Why or why not? Let us know at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/15/2009 at 1:22 PM1 comments
There's a change in management at Yahoo -- will Carol Bartz's arrival
attract interest from Microsoft again? And don't you just love newsletter entries that are really just questions?
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/15/2009 at 1:22 PM0 comments