Salesforce.com and Google Expand Cloud Partnership

Posted by Lee Pender on 12/09/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments

Microsoft, Fashion House

Posted by Lee Pender on 12/09/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments

What You Want from Windows 7

Well, just in case it doesn't -- where's that "rolling eyes" emoticon when we need it? -- Windows 7 is well on its way. We asked you last week what you wanted from Windows 7, and some of you answered, in great detail, in the comments section of the RCPU blog online (and thank you for that). Some of you took the other route, though, and e-mailed your editor directly. We like both forms of feedback, so let's get to those e-mails:

Keith starts us off:

"The IT department here has been using Vista in case we decided to roll it out to the whole company, and I can definitely state that I have no intentions of doing so. I will use XP on my network as long as I possibly can. If Windows 7 is just a glorified version of Vista, then it may be time to migrate to Macs. It's obvious that Microsoft has lost its edge. But it remains to be seen if Apple, which has historically failed to capture the mainstream market, can use the Vista debacle to make strong gains on corporate America. I believe losing market share is the only way Microsoft will wake up and realize that Vista is a flop. It should have built Windows 7 on the XP core instead of the Vista core, in my opinion."

Keith, that whole message makes a lot of sense, especially the last bit. Why Microsoft insists that Vista's core is the way forward is as baffling to us as it is to you. (Then again, we here at RCPU don't build operating systems, so...) It certainly feels as though Redmond is trying to force the Vista-Windows 7 model down our throats, but we wonder how much leverage Microsoft still has to do that sort of thing these days. A lot, maybe, but it would be nice if Microsoft would listen to its customers and accept that Vista is largely a flop. Maybe Windows 7 will be much, much better than Vista -- but it'll have to be a massive improvement if Microsoft wants to win back the hearts and minds of a lot of users and partners.

Dave offers a similar perspective:

"IMO, Microsoft has three blind spots it will need to face before the rest of us will take a look at a new OS:

1. Legacy applications. Vista won't run them, and all security issues aside, there has to be a way. If I wanted to re-buy all my applications, I'd switch to Mac.
2. Testing. I purchased a brand-new HP with brand-new Vista Ultimate, and it's had unresolved problems since Day 1. I STILL have to reboot every day. I want an OS that is tested before I buy it.
3. Parity. My Vista computer refuses to install updates, even after a complete re-install of Vista. XP gives me no trouble, so why change? I want to go beyond parity.

"The bottom line is: What am I going through this kind of pain for? The Aero interface? If that's the big attraction, then who cares? Microsoft assumes we find value in Vista but fails to convince us that Vista has more to offer than XP when, in fact, we find Vista to offer us less. What do I want? In a word, MORE."

We hear you, Dave. We feel sure that Keith hears you as well. The question is whether Microsoft hears you. Stay tuned.

Thanks to Keith and Dave for their thoughts on Vista. We'll be running more reader feedback this week, so get your thoughts in on anything and everything to [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on 12/09/2008 at 1:22 PM4 comments

Microsoft, RSA in Security Pact

Posted by Lee Pender on 12/09/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments

Microsoft To Add Datacenters

Posted by Lee Pender on 12/04/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments

Vista SP2 Beta Available

Posted by Lee Pender on 12/04/2008 at 1:22 PM1 comments

Vista's Days Numbered as Windows 7 Beta Nears

Now, back to business. Not that Microsoft is trying to push Vista into the retirement home early or anything, but there could be a Windows 7 beta available as early as next month. In any case, folks who attend the upcoming MSDN Developer Conferences will get Windows 7 DVDs at some point, and that point might be as early as mid-January.

At least Redmond has stopped pretending that companies are going to suddenly wake up to the beauty of Vista and adopt it en masse. Microsoft hardly talks about Vista anymore -- the last hardcore marketing of it we heard came at the Worldwide Partner Conference in July, and all talk of Vista seemed to stop dead after that -- and Windows 7 has been the primary buzz generator in Redmond for a few months now.

We'd all be wise, though, not to view Windows 7 as some sort of operating-system messiah that's going to save us from Vista. It'll actually be a lot like Vista, as we all now know, and even Microsoft is starting the spin on differentiating Windows 7 from -- oh, dear -- a Vista service pack. If Redmond's already telling people that Windows 7 isn't just a glorified Vista service pack, well... We'll let you draw your own conclusions.

The real question will be whether people just didn't like Vista and therefore rejected it or whether they really, really like XP and don't want to move. If the former is true, Windows 7 will hopefully fix some of the issues that made Vista so annoying and get the Microsoft OS roadmap back on, um, track (there's a mixed metaphor in there somewhere -- sorry). However, if users stick with XP just because they like it and don't want to move away from it, Microsoft will face the much more daunting challenge of convincing customers that they really will need to upgrade to a new OS at some point -- or Redmond could just speed the end of XP support, we suppose, and force everybody's hand.

Either way, Windows 7 is as much of a watershed OS as a company with 90-plus percent market share can release. And it's already stealing the headlines from Vista -- which seems to be just what Microsoft wants.

What do you want from Windows 7? What will it take functionality-wise to pull you away from XP? Sound off at [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on 12/04/2008 at 1:22 PM2 comments

Ingram Offers Microsoft SPLA

Posted by Lee Pender on 12/04/2008 at 1:22 PM1 comments

Interactive Intelligence Plans To Make UC Work

We've mentioned here before that we just don't get UC, and we kind of doubt that anybody else really does, either -- including a lot of the marketers who work for UC vendors. But one vendor that's more or less in the UC space is finally making sense to us, primarily by attaching an actual practical application for UC.

We're written about Interactive Intelligence before, and we were pleased when a couple of folks from the company made the trip to Framingham to see RCPU a couple of weeks back. What they talked about was the first thing even remotely UC-related that has seemed to us capable of generating real value for customers.

Simply put, Interactive Intelligence wants to tie UC with business process automation. In fact, the company is pretty much getting into the BPA business with a little UC on the side. The basic idea is to use UC's find-me-anywhere functionality to automate processes. So, instead of just letting one worker know how to get hold of another worker at a given time, Interactive Intelligence's system would automatically route a process -- say, a claim at an insurance company -- to the right person at the right place...at the right time.

"In a manual process, there's a lot of human latency and inefficiency," Joseph A. Staples, Interactive Intelligence's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, told RCPU in our meeting. "The way the process gets automated is the system knows what happens in the next step."

Now, see, this makes sense to us -- and it seems like a practical application for UC. Instead of just telling Worker A that it's best to reach Worker B by instant messenger in a given moment, this system, which Interactive Intelligence will call Interaction Process Automation, will actually do some something practical by tying business processes to UC functionality. The company plans to have a product by the middle of 2009.

Maybe other vendors are doing this -- Staples allowed that his company will soon be competing, on some level, with like likes of Oracle via Siebel -- and, after all, BPA in and of itself is nothing new. So we'd love to hear from anybody and everybody who's doling something similar.

But the UC angle, if we've understood it correctly, sounds unique to us at this point. And it's the first time we've understood how a company could get any significant value out of a product in the UC space. It's the process automation that matters here -- not strictly the ability to find people when they're in their cars or working at home.

Oh, and by the way, partners, there will be plenty of opportunity for you to do significant customization work, and Interactive Intelligence does have a channel-sales strategy and a partner program.

There are some potential hang-ups. Staples sees his company's vision as being an alternative to enterprise resource planning, rather than complementary to it. And while we see where he's coming from, especially regarding Interactive Intelligence's SMB sweet spot, we're thinking that some ERP integration might not be the worst idea at some point.

Still, everything considered, this is the first UC solution we've seen that makes sense -- mainly because somebody finally realized that UC all by itself isn't really that useful after all.

What's your take on unified communications? Is your company doing anything useful with it? Do you have a product or story you'd like to pitch? We're all eyes at [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on 12/03/2008 at 1:22 PM2 comments

Microsoft Officials Dizzy from OneCare Spin

Posted by Lee Pender on 12/03/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments

The View and VMware

Posted by Lee Pender on 12/03/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments

Worm Winding Way into Un-Patched Windows

Posted by Lee Pender on 12/02/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments