OK, we're calling BS on this one. (Can we say BS here? We'll find out…) Apparently Google is going to make it very difficult for its employees to get Windows on their machines from now on, a move that has led many press outlets to say that Google is dumping Microsoft.
Why, pray tell, would Google do something like this? Because it is developing its own operating system now and wants to, as the old saying goes, eat its own dog food? Maybe it's because Microsoft is a huge competitor to Google, and it's best not to pay a competitor to run everything on its software. Or maybe Google wants to embrace the open source community by moving to Linux. Maybe Google just wants to make Microsoft look bad -- old, tired and not ready for Web 2.0 or whatever the hipsters are calling it these days.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 06/02/20109 comments
We still think that they look ridiculous (and your editor still doesn't have one and isn't shopping), but people apparently love these iPad tablet thingies. Apple's currently selling them at a pace of about a million per month. That has left other computer makers racing to get tablets out the door -- Asustek and Micro-Star are talking about putting them out -- and Microsoft is wondering how on earth it's going to catch Apple in this market. Hey, Microsoft, how about Windows 7 tablets that work (almost) as well as iPads but are a lot cheaper and accessible for regular folks? Just a thought… And don't try to be cool this time. Just be functional. We don't need another Zune, thanks.
Posted by Lee Pender on 06/02/20107 comments
The headlines all said that HP was cutting 9,000 jobs, but did you read past the first paragraph of the story? Check this out from the story linked above:
"The Palo Alto, California-based company plans to replace about 6,000 of the eliminated positions with workers in different countries."
So…that's 3,000 jobs cut and 6,000 outsourced. Call it what it is, HP. Sure, we know that with your 300,000 employees we're talking about a tiny percent of your workforce here, but don't try to hide outsourcing as layoffs. That's just…weird, actually.
Posted by Lee Pender on 06/02/20105 comments
The brain-melting heat in Greater Boston this week got us to thinking about summer and that staple of the greatest of all seasons: The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.
This year, the WPC will take place in Washington, D.C., which will no doubt be boiling by the time July rolls around. (Here comes a dreadful segue…) But the action inside the conference center should be pretty hot, with Microsoft (hopefully) providing updates on everything from the progress of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to its further explanation of exactly what "all in the cloud" means.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 05/27/20100 comments
It's a tool for corporate finance-management reporting, and while it's just for the new version of GP at this point, it'll ultimately work with other products in Microsoft's barbershop quartet of ERP suites.
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/27/20100 comments
Most of us know that statistics are one of the famous three types of lies -- but they manage to be interesting, anyway. So we couldn't help but notice this week that Apple is close to becoming the world's most valuable technology company.
That spot, of course, has had Microsoft's name on it for years now. But while Redmond has floundered with its efforts to develop cool consumer technologies, Apple has re-made its name with its various and near-ubiquitous "I" devices. Suddenly Anthony Michael Hall's declaration as Bill Gates in the epic film Pirates of Silicon Valley is starting to seem dated. In case you had forgotten (and we really don't know how that's possible), the made-for-TV Gates bellows at Noah Wyle's Steve Jobs: “I got the loot, Steve!”
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Posted by Lee Pender on 05/26/20102 comments
Somebody had to shoulder the blame for the Zune. It turns out that Robbie Bach and J Allard will depart -- on good terms, Microsoft says -- after a couple of decades each in Redmond. They leave behind them a mixed record at best in developing consumer applications. The Xbox is cool but rarely, if ever, profitable. And the Zune…well, we don't even have any jokes left for that device here.
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/26/20100 comments
Many of us won't have to worry about this, but it's worth noting nonetheless. The problem here involves Windows 7 64-bit, Windows Server 2008 R2 for 64-bit systems and Windows Server 2008 R2 Itanium operating systems, as Jabulani Leffall ably explains for RCPmag.com.
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/20/20100 comments
Google is expanding its App Engine Web-apps platform to something called App Engine for Business. The most interesting part of this little piece of news is that Google has joined with VMware to create a platform in which developers can create applications in Java and then launch those apps on multiple cloud platforms -- not just on Google's cloud platform. Score one for multi-platform capability and a bit of openness here.
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/20/20100 comments
The saber isn't ratting anymore. It's out now, and it's pointed at one of Microsoft's biggest rivals in the cloud- and enterprise-computing markets.
Microsoft has long threatened rivals (think Linux) with patent lawsuits, but rarely has it actually made good on those threats. Only a handful of times has Microsoft sued anybody for patent infringement without Redmond being sued by the other company first. So, it seems likely that Microsoft is pretty confident in laying down the patent gauntlet in front of one of its mouthier rivals, Salesforce.com.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 05/20/20103 comments