There are, to be sure, at least a couple of good reasons why virtualization
pioneer VMware
lost
about a third of the value
of its stock price on Tuesday following its Monday
afternoon fourth quarter earnings report.
First of all, VMware's quarterly revenue number and its projections of revenue
growth for 2008 both missed analysts' estimates. And, even though everything
else for Q4 and 2007 actually looked
pretty good, those two numbers coming up short was enough to scare off investors.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 01/30/20080 comments
That's right -- a
mobile
thin client
.
Well, sort of mobile. It's not for the road warrior with millions of frequent
flyer miles, Tad Bodeman, director of blade PC and thin client solutions for
the HP Personal Systems Group, told RCPU. It's more for folks jumping from meeting
to meeting.
"Folks that are working in a wireless campus environment -- this is targeted
at them," Bodeman said. "They want to have a mobile device because
they want to work at their desks, go from conference room to conference room
for their meetings."
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Posted by Lee Pender on 01/30/20080 comments
RCPU's incontrovertible rule of the technology industry passed another test
last week. The rule, of course, is that no matter what happens -- with the economy,
with the industry or within the hallowed walls of Redmond itself -- Microsoft
makes
more money
.
And so it came to pass last week, as you probably know by now, that MSFT (cool
financial writers love to refer to companies by their ticker symbols) tore through
Wall Street expectations again and reported
another blockbuster quarter for the period ended Dec. 31, 2007. Plus, the
company said that fiscal 2008 will also beat the Street's expectations. Microsoft
makes more money. And, hey, for partners, that's a good thing.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 01/29/20080 comments
It's looking more like
late-2008
than mid-2008
for SQL Server 2008, which might have a branding crisis if
it actually manages to slip to 2009 (which, of course, we're not saying that
it will).
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/29/20080 comments
Sometimes, we like to make
these
arguments
ourselves...and sometimes we let the former chief economist for
the FCC make them for us. The crux of the argument: Evil Microsoft didn't turn
out to be that evil after all.
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/29/20080 comments
We wanted to know last week whether and
how
you were preparing
for an economic slowdown. Well, you are. Joseph, though,
hopes that his business has things pretty much under control:
"We are definitely preparing. Many of our customers appear at the
moment to be scaling back on new purchases; luckily we provide managed services
to many of our customers, which will allow us to maintain a steady revenue
flow, since it would be difficult for those customers to do without our support
services as we basically are their IT department. However, the scaling back
of the purchases of new machines and other equipment does also hurt our bottom
line."
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Posted by Lee Pender on 01/24/20081 comments
And it's a big hello from
RCP
Editor Scott Bekker, who checks in with
channel news:
Keeping track of the customer promotions and partner subsidies on the Microsoft
Incentives page used to be a full-time job for Microsoft partners. Maybe not
anymore. Next month, Microsoft is launching a single partner subsidy program
called the Big Easy Offer. Microsoft is putting $10 million behind the program,
which offers partner subsidies for customer purchases of nearly all of Microsoft's
main SMB-targeted products, with the exception of Windows Vista. Partners who
can upsell, cross-sell or sell more expensive licensing options see the subsidy
go up on a sliding scale.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 01/24/20080 comments
The
MozyEnterprise
backup application
, a prize bit of booty from the acquisition of Berkeley
Data Systems, will soon be available with the EMC Fortress data-storage platform.
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/23/20080 comments
So far this week, foreign stock markets have tanked, the U.S. markets have
continued to be skittish at best, the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates
in a Hail Mary-pass-like move to save the economy from recession (which we might
already be in) and President Bush has talked up an economic stimulus package
of tax rebates.
Times look tough, financially, and they might be getting tougher soon. So you
know what that means: As always, Microsoft makes more money. Redmond is due
to reveal its financial results on Thursday, and already the press and Wall
Street watchers are using phrases like "sharp
rise in profits."
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Posted by Lee Pender on 01/23/20080 comments