Last April, the economy was crashing worse than a Lindsay Lohan SUV, and critics were predicting the fall of the Redmond empire. I wrote a long essay, "The Strength to Endure," arguing that Microsoft would be just fine.
Microsoft's latest earnings report backs my case, as rampant Windows 7 sales have Microsoft bean counters working overtime. Not only did Microsoft pull in nearly $19 billion (with an impressive net income of nearly $7 billion), but sales rose 60 percent compared to a year ago.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 02/01/20104 comments
Readers ponder the future of the Oracle-Sun deal, from where money will be invested to Oracle's approach to the cloud:
It's going to be interesting to see how all of this pans out. I wonder which products Oracle is going to maintain. I didn't get a chance to watch the press conference, but a buddy told me that they're going to increase R&D from $2 billion to $4 billion. That's never bad. We'll just have to wait and see where that money's funnelled.
Sun had been putting some serious coin into developing VirtualBox, trying to get it to a point that it will compete with tier 1 virtual hosts. Will Oracle allow funds to be directed there (to a losing battle, in my opinion)? This could be a good thing. I'm looking forward with cautious optimism.
-Cory
So Oracle wants a cloud version of OpenOffice. So Larry doesn't think the cloud is a joke anymore?
-Cameron
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Posted by Doug Barney on 02/01/20102 comments
Blogger Bob Evans recently took offense when Doug compared Larry Ellison's epic-length conference detailing the Sun deal to a "Hugo Chavez-style five-hour company and press event." But many of you, like Doug, think he doth protest too much:
When I read your piece that used the Hugo Chavez metaphor, it didn't even occur to me that you were trying to picture Larry Ellison as a tyrant. It was obviously a reference to long-windedness. It is amazing how aggressively people that are carrying a large chip around can find such odd things to become upset about.
-Anonymous
I never looked at it in that light, nor after reading about Evans' reaction does it readjust your position or mine.
-Rick
It never occurred to me to compare Larry to Hugo, but I immediately got the analogy for the long press event. Now that I think about it a little more, doesn't Larry own and fly a MiG? I hear Chavez is buying.
-John
I have been following you and Evans for about the same time (10 years, give or take a few months). I have noticed that while you have remained even-keeled and humorous, I have found Evans' stuff getting more and more hostile. I haven't read the article yet, but I will tonight. I am appalled at Evans. He sounds like a pompous ass.
Kudus to you for being the bigger person. I, however, will not be so diplomatic. He is definitely going to get an earful from me.
-Rich
I got the joke the first time (even though I admire Larry and despise Hugo). It seems Mr. Evans has given us reason to update the saying "Don't speak before you think" to "Don't blog before you think."
Of course, it just could be that, like so many commentators out there today, he hears what he wants to hear, sees what he wants to see, and HATES anyone who doesn't see or hear it his way!
-Ron
I may disagree with you at times, but I have never doubted your journalistic integrity. Continue to stay above the name-calling that the Internet seems to degenerate to.
-Ed
As a longtime reader and part-time journalist, you were correct in the facts and logic of your initial discourse. In addition, you have long used correct journalistic practices and your precise use of the English language could only have been misinterpreted by someone with an axe to grind. Congratulations on taking the high road!
-Glenn
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Posted by Doug Barney on 01/29/20100 comments
Sometimes, stories like the one I'm about to bring you turn out false. But I'll proceed in assuming it's true. Apparently, an ex-Microsoft worker inadvertently posted release dates for nearly all important products Redmond is working on.
Here's a rundown of the leaked dates: Windows 8 will be out July 2011, Office 2012 a year later, and SQL Server 2011 in -- you guessed it -- 2011!
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Posted by Doug Barney on 01/29/20102 comments
Oracle held a press conference longer than a Joe Biden diatribe this week to explain to the world just what it intends to do with Sun. I'm talking five solid hours of exec-speak.
Now, I'm usually not happy when a cool, independent company gets bought, but Oracle is probably the best buyer for Sun. Like Sun, Oracle is feisty and pushes more envelopes than my local post office.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 01/29/20101 comments
Doug asked readers recently to share their favorite late, great tech companies. Here are some more:
NeXT.
-Anonymous
Ricochet and Digital Equipment Corp. (the originator of 64-bit).
-Al
Mine is Wang Laboratories of Lowell, Mass. I was there in 1983 when Wang had 300 employees and Dr. Wang would go around and pay office visits to all the cubicles, asking how we liked our jobs. I was there when Wang had 35,000 employees around the world in an amazing period of growth. I was there when Dr. Wang was diagnosed with esophageal cancer (he was a chain smoker to the nth degree, with two ashtrays and a cigarette going in both). When he found out, he got rid of all the cigarette machines in the building and did not allow smoking anymore except for one designated room on each floor.
During that time, Chinese tradition forced Fred Wang, the eldest son, to take over the business. He did not want to. Fred wanted to teach business subjects at Harvard Business School. So what happened? Fred surrounded himself with atta-boy-Fred people who agreed with everything he said and, not knowing what he should do, he ran Wang into the ground, insisting on proprietary software (which, of course, did not work with other vendors' software running on all kinds of other vendors' hardware).
As a result, I was there when Wang went back down to 350 employees in 1994, and then I left for other opportunities. I helped many good friends carry their things to their cars as they were laid off. Because so many people were being laid off at once, security couldn't manage it, so people were taking furniture, computers, etc. But who cared? It was an incredible tragedy. And where is Fred now? Teaching business subjects at Harvard Business School. Wang is no more. Well, it sort of evolved into Getronics, but they're in survival mode, with about 350 employees.
-Anonymous
I really miss Hayes modems.
-Rich
I agree that the Amiga was way ahead of its time. I recall Amigas with the NewTek video toaster selling for thousands of dollars for many years because nothing else could touch it.
DEC is long gone, but VMS (now OpenVMS) is alive and well. It follows from Compaq and then to HP, migrating from VAX to Alpha and now to Intel Itanium. I can assure you that it is as powerful, secure and stable as ever. We use it here to run our factories.
-Dave
DEC was a great company. The equipment is rock-solid. In fact, we still have Alphas running VMS in production. I'll be glad when I don't have to deal with MYLEX controllers anymore. Back in the day, they were good, but compared to modern RAID controllers, are a bit short on features.
-Bruce
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Posted by Doug Barney on 01/27/20101 comments
Friends, your faithful scribe has been attacked, reviled, subjected to ridicule and hostility. Bob Evans, senior VP at TechWeb (which, incidentally, competes with nearly every property I run) came across my item about Oracle buying Sun.
In that item I said, "I admit it: I'm a huge fan of Sun Microsystems...But it soon may no longer be a company at all as the European Union this week approved Oracle's proposed $7.4 billion buyout. It's such a done deal that Larry Ellison is planning a Hugo Chavez-style five-hour company and press event next week on the matter."
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Posted by Doug Barney on 01/27/201021 comments
In 1999, while at Network World, Carolyn Marsan and I interviewed Vint Cerf about IPv6. Cerf was beseeching the entire industry to move as quickly a possible to IPv6 since IPv4 addresses were running out.
Thanks to a kludge or two, 11 years later there are still IPv4 addresses left -- but not many. Over 90 percent of all possible IPv4 addresses are in use. At this rate, all of them will be gone by 2013, says the Number Resource Organization.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 01/27/201012 comments
I used Notes in a past life and didn't much care for it, at least as far as pure e-mail goes. It was clunkier than my rusted-out '96 Ford Bronco (which is my daily driver). But many people love Notes, especially IBM, which is touting an upcoming version that's a bigger social butterfly than the late Truman Capote. (Remember when social butterflies actually had some brains?)
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Posted by Doug Barney on 01/25/20101 comments
Nearly three years in the making, SQL Server 2008 R2 is finally on its way. It's due to land in IT shops this May.
Something called R2 doesn't sound that exciting or all that new, but Microsoft often packs a lot of new stuff into these releases. Windows Server 2008 R2, for instance, could have just as easily been called SQL Server 2010.
SQL Server 2008 R2 has some new business intelligence features such as PowerPivot. PowerPivot (can we call it PP?) works with Excel and turns database data into online analytical processing (OLAP) data.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 01/25/20101 comments
Microsoft legal eagle Brad Smith is asking Washington to pass laws and revise existing ones to make sure our clouds are safe, secure and private.
There are a number of computer-related laws on the books, but all were written when the predominant style of computing involved hard drives and local processing.
Smith is looking for action in three areas. First, he wants cloud providers to be able to hunt down hackers, something I'm clearly in favor of. Next, he wants information to be as private as possible, in part by making cloud providers disclose privacy policies clearly. Finally, he wants our security acts to take clouds into full consideration.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 01/25/20101 comments
Doug's item last week about Oracle's impending buyout of IBM had readers reminiscing about their favorite "defunct" tech companies. Here are some of your thoughts:
Don't laugh -- my favorite defunct computer company is good, old Commodore. The Amiga was a masterpiece of its day, and had its engineering team had the same opportunities as, say, Apple to research, refine and innovate, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find the modern-day Amiga on a par with Cray while priced like a netbook.
Well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but you get my point...maybe?
-Tom
When Commodore Computers went out of business, it was a huge blow to innovation. The Amiga was way ahead of its time. My memories may parallel the stories about the big one that got away, but I believe the Amiga was doing tricks back in the '80s that the clones couldn't do until the next decade. Heck, the Commadore 64 was doing things with 64K of memory (thats kilo, as in thousand) that my Windows beast still chokes on with four gigs of memory.
-T.L.
My favorite defunct company is Javelin Software, which reinvented the spreadsheet as a personal OLAP cube 25 years ago. Their IPO was scheduled for a week after the mini stock crash in 1988 and that ended them. They were bought by IRI who let them stagnate, then IRI was bought by Oracle who killed off the Javelin line.
Shortly after that, Lotus released Improv which was a virtual clone of Javelin ported to the NeXT and later Windows.
-Mike
DEC and the the DEC VAX/VMS operating system wins my award for what is sorely missed these days. Intrusions? Not a chance. Downtime? Minimal to none. Time between outages was often measured in years for issues that were OS-related (most downtime was due to putting in a new version of something that was just developed).
DEC had industrial-strength computing at cheap prices long before Intel came around and mucked it up. The hardware had built into it from DAY ONE the ability to prevent memory access hacks. It is my understanding that unless you had physical access to the system, you couldn't even hack into it unless you guessed a weak password.
-Bruce
Loved my Prime super-minis. Used them for over 20 years and about nine years past the closing of the company. Much of the software developed on Primes during the '80s continues to run on our second round of IBM AIX equipment.
-Stephen
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Posted by Doug Barney on 01/25/20100 comments