Just a quick note before we get started: We're giving you a break from reader
feedback this week, even though we've had some great stuff come through recently.
This week's
entry
on social networking has drawn some especially interesting feedback, so
we're actually going to blow that out a bit and come back to the subject in
future RCPUs. In the meantime, keep the good stuff coming to
[email protected].
We'll run your e-mails again soon, probably next week.
Anyway, for many people, the title of this entry comes as no surprise (heh
heh). But seriously, folks, the Vista debacle -- and that's really what it is
now -- is starting to bite Microsoft in the...well, in the stock price, among
other sensitive places.
Before we get to that, though, let's go ahead and get one thing out of the
way: We were wrong, apparently, about Vista. Many are the times we've said right
here in this newsletter that Vista would be the next XP eventually, that we'd
all use it and come to love it and miss it when it gracefully bowed off the
stage. We even said
something similar in the more formal confines of RCP the magazine.
And it appears that we -- along with a few analysts, although we should've known
better than to agree with them -- were wrong. Sorry about that.
The enterprise hates Vista, almost in the same way that people "hate"
a food they've never tried or a city they've never visited. That is to say that
most people we know who have Vista actually kind of like it -- maybe it's an
acquired taste -- but those who don't have it absolutely, completely, definitely
don't want it. And despite Microsoft's many claims of Vista success, the avoiders,
as far as we can tell, still greatly outnumber the accepters.
That's probably why we're hearing so much about Windows 7, the next version
of the operating system, which Microsoft seems to be rushing to market in an
effort to make up for Vista. We've already had limited
demos of the new OS, even as Microsoft is still ostensibly trying to move
us to Vista. Let's just say that the emergence of Windows 7 hype relatively
early (perhaps very early) in Vista's intended lifecycle isn't exactly a subtle
move on Redmond's part.
From a partner perspective, Vista's main cost has probably come in customer
confidence; after all, not many enterprise partners make serious money these
days by selling an OS. But they do sell Microsoft applications in an increasingly
competitive and dynamic (no pun intended) environment, and when Microsoft trots
out an Edsel like Vista as a long-planned, long-hyped major release, it doesn't
exactly inspire confidence that Microsoft's other big products -- such as this
year's batch of servers -- will be winners.
That might be (and probably is) unfair, as the new server team is mostly getting
rave reviews, and new-ish products such as SharePoint have taken off very well
indeed. Still, Vista's relative failure might make customers think twice about
trusting ol' MS, and that's not a good thing in today's competitive environment.
For Microsoft, though, the cost of Vista has been higher -- much higher. And
that's why we have an excuse to rag on it again today. BusinessWeek --
the best business magazine out there not named Redmond Channel Partner
-- documents this week the fairly
steep financial cost of Vista to Microsoft. The forlorn OS is taking a bite
out of Redmond's revenues and stock price, and big, big businesses (think GM)
are increasingly looking at passing it by altogether.
That's bad news for partners, too, as less money flowing into Fortress Microsoft
will mean less cash trickling down to partners. More than that, the pressure
is on Microsoft to execute now -- with Windows 7, with its critical SaaS efforts
and with generally adapting to a rapidly changing (more rapidly now, we'd say,
that in the last five years or so) software market.
Can Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, Kevin Turner -- and, critically, not Bill Gates
-- and their 80,000 or so colleagues pull it off? We'll see. Vista disaster
or otherwise, we still wouldn't bet against them.
How much has Vista cost you, if anything? Send your thoughts to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 06/12/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments
While it has absolutely nothing on
RCP the magazine's
annual
salary survey, we'll admit that Glassdoor, a new startup, sounds pretty
cool. It's all about tracking salaries and levels of employee satisfaction in
companies such as Google and Microsoft.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer blogger
John Cook has the lowdown
here.
Posted by Lee Pender on 06/12/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments
These days, Microsoft's Tech-Ed conference is an obnoxious two-week binge,
with one week devoted to developers and the second to IT folks. With a minimum
of product announcements on the slate, the more interesting (or at least somewhat
less nerdy) second week is all about agenda-setting for Redmond rather than
about product pumping. (And, no, RCPU is not there, in case you were wondering.)
So, what's on Microsoft's agenda? This week, anyway, it's our
old friend virtualization. Microsoft is touting
its architecture and applications as excellent candidates for the virtualized
environment, pushing the forthcoming Hyper-V and noting that the Forefront security
suite, if anybody wants it, will run in a virtualized environment.
The other big item on the agenda is SQL Server, a release candidate of which
is now
available. Short-timer Bill Gates pitched
SQL Server at the other Tech-Ed conference last week as being extremely
critical to the Microsoft data platform.
So, that's where we are right now on the Tech-Ed front. Really, it seems appropriate
that Microsoft it talking more about technology agendas than about pure product
releases (although the SQL news really falls into the latter category). After
all, the days of product-driven IT are ending, what with SaaS, virtualization
and other less physical (for lack of a better word) technologies piercing the
enterprise. Why it takes Microsoft two weeks to talk about this stuff is beyond
us, but at least it's recognition that we're not just living in an old-fashioned
software-and-servers world anymore.
What would you like to hear Microsoft say about virtualization? About other
new technologies? Sound off at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 06/11/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments
Mary Jo Foley suspects that Office 14 might just end up being called
Office
2009.
Posted by Lee Pender on 06/11/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments
Apparently too intimated to sit down and face the icy stare of RCPU, Bill Gates
and Steve Ballmer instead went running to the
Wall Street Journal (how
very old-media of them) to reminisce about old times and talk a bit about the
future. Actually,
this
is a really entertaining interview.
Posted by Lee Pender on 06/11/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments
Releasing an open source product
with
no source code? Tsk, tsk, Microsoft. The party does not tolerate that kind
of behavior, comrades.
Posted by Lee Pender on 06/11/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments
Here's something you should know upfront: Your editor is not on Facebook, or
MySpace, or any of the popular social networking sites of the day. A few message
boards? Sure. E-mail? A lot. The Internet in general? Pretty much all the time.
But not the social networking sites. Why? Well, it's hard to see what they
deliver on top of everything else, other than providing little ego.com spaces
for most of the people on them (and most of your editor's friends are on them,
in case you were wondering). This relative luddite still gets by on e-mail and
occasionally via telephone without much problem.
However, social networking is the phrase on everybody's lips -- and fingertips
-- and has been for a while. That's certainly the case this week, as Microsoft
and a slew of partners are releasing
"Web 2.0" (whatever that really means) social networking applications.
What we're wondering is exactly what people are doing with work-related social
networking stuff, if anything so far. A couple of quotes from the Computerworld
story linked above make us wonder. Some of the stuff, we get. Let's go directly
to the story here:
"For example...a salesperson could use iGoogle with a WorkLight gadget
to receive updates about products from multiple back-end systems, including
those that show sales and product demand in a particular region. Then the
user could directly order products from iGoogle and have them shipped to a
particular customer..."
OK, that makes sense. It's a supply chain application, basically. We get that,
although we're not totally sure that it has anything to do with social networking,
per se (and, to be fair, the article didn't really label it as such). But then
there's this, again taken directly from the story:
"TownSquare is an enterprise news feed that allows users to receive
news about managers, friends and colleagues in one place, Microsoft said.
Microsoft also plans to announce a new open-source project for the development
of podcasting applications in SharePoint Server."
News about managers? Do we want this? Am I going to get an e-mail that says
something along the lines of, "Scott Bekker just got a haircut and is fairly
pleased with it, although he wishes the guy had taken more off the top"?
Or, "It took Anne Stuart two hours to get home last night because of traffic
on the highway"?
Seriously, we're sure that there's some use for social networking stuff in
the office, but we're not totally sure what it is. We'd like to hear from you.
If you're doing something interesting with social networking (and goofing around
on Facebook at work doesn't count), tell us your story at [email protected].
As always, we'll run the best of what we get here in RCPU.
Posted by Lee Pender on 06/10/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments
Here's one for all you health care partners out there, in case you missed it.
Kaiser Permanente (as opposed to Kaiser Temporalis, we suppose) and Microsoft
have an initiative to
digitize
health records and safely store and transfer them online.
Safely? Well, that might be a bit of a sticking point, we suspect, with a lot
of patents and doctors. Still, there could be money to be made here for enterprising
health care channel players.
Posted by Lee Pender on 06/10/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments
Like RCPU, it sort of hits you with unrelenting regularity. This month,
seven
patches. Enjoy.
Posted by Lee Pender on 06/10/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments
Ever wonder who's really seeing those IMs that are always flying around your
office? Depending on which client you're using, they might be more public than
you think. Check out the comprehensive (we'll give CNET credit for this one)
review of IM security
here.
Posted by Lee Pender on 06/09/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments
Is somebody plotting something dastardly in the background while you're on
Skype with your best friend in Europe or maybe virtually attending your family
reunion?
Could
be, apparently.
Posted by Lee Pender on 06/09/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments
There's the forest, and then there are the trees. Sometimes it's hard to see
one for the other. That seems to be the case right now with unified communications (UC).
With what? That's the question a lot of small to midsize business (SMB) owners
are probably asking themselves if they're reading this. bMighty.com,
a Web site for SMBs, recently released results of a survey
that revealed that SMB owners and IT folks aren't nearly as excited about UC
as some of us in the trade press and the channel are.
In fact, folks with SMBs mostly don't even know what UC is or what is meant
to be part of it -- but, thinking about it, do you? It's still kind of a nebulous
concept in a lot of ways, isn't it? And every vendor has a different definition.
So maybe that shouldn't be a surprise.
What might be a surprise, though, is that the main reason that SMBs are shunning
UC -- whatever they think it is -- is because they find it too expensive. That
means that the vendor and partner messaging about cost savings with UC isn't
resonating. In fact, all SMB owners see with UC is cost ... the "savings"
bit hasn't followed for most of them.
Not only that, but out in the world outside the tech industry, folks are still
discovering some new-fangled thing called Skype. So, there's work to be
done here. On one hand, UC simply needs to mature as a technology -- which it
will, as vendors shake out and the market begins to better define itself and
what it offers.
On the other hand, however, partners apparently need to do a better job communicating
-- and maybe understanding themselves -- the cost-saving benefits of UC. Until
that message goes through, they might continue to get a busy signal from customers.
Perhaps we in the industry see so many UC trees that we forget that customers
still feel lost in a telephony-messaging forest. It's time for partners to guide
their way.
Posted by Lee Pender on 06/09/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments