That's right -- Microsoft has started a clothing line. No, really! And it's
called..."Softwear"! Just remember that the marketing guru who dreamed
this up probably makes well into six figures, if not more. Check out
this
story from
Macworld, but be ready for a snark attack in the comments
section.
Posted by Lee Pender on 12/09/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments
So, the beta version of Vista SP2 is
now
available, which is only important if you bothered with Vista or Vista SP1.
Already, the reviews for SP2 beta
lack
enthusiasm but, hey, it's only a beta version, right? And Vista's only two
years old -- it could still catch on. Right? Right?
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 is
integrating
RSA's Data Loss Prevention into the Windows infrastructure. RSA, of course,
is now part of EMC. So that's EMC's RSA's DLP being integrated into Windows.
Got that?
Posted by Lee Pender on 12/09/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments
We suppose you could call
these
the sky in cloud computing...or something like that.
Posted by Lee Pender on 12/04/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments
For those who have bothered to deploy Vista,
SP2
is already in beta. The Windows Server 2008 beta is available, too.
Posted by Lee Pender on 12/04/2008 at 1:22 PM1 comments
A quick note before we start: Your editor didn't realize until it was too late
that there would be no RCPUs the week of Thanksgiving, otherwise known as last
week. We had planned to run a barrage of reader feedback that week, but instead
we went dark. So, as the holidays near and news inevitably slows over the next
couple of weeks, expect some reader feedback from pretty deep in the archives
to appear in this space. Your weeks-old e-mail might show up here yet. Don't
give up hope!
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
Wondering how the channel is going to participate in this whole cloud computing
thing? Well, Ingram Micro is now offering Microsoft Service Provider License
Agreement to its partners. There's more detail in Ingram's entirely comprehensible
(and thank you for that, Ingram)
press
release.
Posted by Lee Pender on 12/04/2008 at 1:22 PM1 comments
Finally, something having to do with unified communications makes sense -- because
it really isn't focused on UC at all.
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
The soon-to-be-dead Windows Live OneCare wasn't a failure, Microsoft folks
are saying -- it just didn't succeed because people in developing countries
couldn't afford it. Uh, do what, now? Hey, we don't get it, either...but check
out the furious spinning for yourself
here.
Posted by Lee Pender on 12/03/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments
No, Barbara Walters isn't prominently involved...as far as we know. This View
is a
new VMware
product.
Posted by Lee Pender on 12/03/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments
Seriously, Microsoft's not kidding about this patch stuff. If you haven't been
on top of it, you'd better read
this.
Posted by Lee Pender on 12/02/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments