Symantec's got a bit of that mix-and-match thing going in the cloud. The security giant has pure-play cloud storage offerings and has for a while, but now the company is giving customers the option of going full cloud, in-house "cloud" or both.
The longtime Microsoft partner and security market leader this week released FileStore, a platform that, very simply put, allows companies to build private, in-house storage clouds.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 10/06/20090 comments
It's getting better out there, right? Well, with financial markets seemingly recovering and, at the same time, the unemployment rate bumping up on 10 percent here in the U.S., the messages are mixed at best. And we've stopped listening to most of the experts who got so much wrong over the last 10 years or longer and helped get us here in the first place.
Except for these experts. IDC released a study this week saying that IT will create 5.8 million jobs (worldwide) by 2013. Microsoft sponsored the study, which identified IT as a major driver of a global economic recovery. (This, oddly enough, as Steve Ballmer -- and we think quite correctly -- is spreading the messages that IT budgets will be down for a while and that the economy has "reset" and won't return to the levels it reached before the crash of 2008.)
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Posted by Lee Pender on 10/06/20090 comments
Champagne all around for the Microsoft legal team. A federal judge this week overturned a great big, $388 million patent-infringement ruling against Microsoft. Apparently, Microsoft didn't infringe on Uniloc's patent, after all. Apparently, the original trial went on for six years before a jury slammed Microsoft with the punitive fine -- which a judge overturned on appeal in a matter of months. Weird how the system works sometimes, isn't it?
Posted by Lee Pender on 10/01/20090 comments
OK, so maybe we judged a book by its cover, or, more appropriately, by past works by the same author. Earlier this week, we ripped a bit on Microsoft Security Essentials, Redmond's new (and free) anti-virus effort, comparing it to sugary cereals that were always "part of this complete breakfast" in their old TV ads.
Evidently, though, early returns suggest that Security Essentials is actually pretty good and might have some impact on the anti-virus market after all. We note, of course, that these returns are very early, given that Microsoft just released the new product on Tuesday. But given that we expected a flood of articles this week about how woefully short the product falls in terms of providing protection, we're honestly a bit surprised...and humbled.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 10/01/20090 comments
Here we go again with this ridiculous tablet thing. Talk about a tempest in a teapot -- rumors and reports are swirling about a product that we predict nobody's going to want, anyway. But if you really want to know what's going on, there's some info here.
Oh, by the way, if we're wrong about our prediction and tablets take off like PCs in the '80s, we'll just do what the analysts do and hope that you forget that we ever said anything about tablets at all (which you probably will).
Posted by Lee Pender on 10/01/20091 comments
To those of you out there who have taken pay cuts recently (or been laid off by Microsoft), rest assured that the big wigs in Redmond are suffering right along with you. Steve Ballmer's salary cratered from $1.35 million to $1.28 million year-over-fiscal-year, and other Microsoft execs took pay cuts, as well. (Of course, compared to what the real losers on Wall Street have made over the years while helping wreck our economy, Ballmer's base compensation doesn't seem that outrageous.)
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Posted by Lee Pender on 10/01/20092 comments
There's no way we're not going to start this entry with Jack Webb, so cue the biting monotone of Sgt. Joe Friday and that iconic opening theme: "This is the city, Los Angeles, California. Every 60 seconds, a crime is committed in Los Angeles..."
And apparently, every couple of decades or so (we're not sure how often, actually), L.A. does an IT refresh. That time has come again. City Hall in the City of Angels is looking to boot an old e-mail system and upgrade to something more modern than what Joe Friday might have used very, very late in his career. (Or maybe not, given that Jack Webb left us in 1982. But we're trying to stick with the theme here.)
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Posted by Lee Pender on 09/30/20090 comments
Steve Ballmer -- or, quite possibly, somebody who writes e-mails for Steve Ballmer -- sent a message this week that went on a bit about the new economy and so forth and how Microsoft's products will fit into it. Then, at the end, Ballmer got to the interesting stuff: companies that have adopted Windows 7.
The names are not insignificant, with Ford and Continental Airlines among the charter customers. In fact, here is exactly what Ballmer said in his "executive e-mail" to subscribers (which we at RCPU received because we're plugged into the scene in Redmond, of course):
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Posted by Lee Pender on 09/30/20090 comments
For some reason, despite the fact that soccer teams around the world have been putting ads on their shirts for years, we here in the U.S. freak out when sports teams start talking about renting out space on their jerseys.
So it made news this week when Microsoft and the (thus far woeful) Seattle Seahawks agreed to slap a Bing ad on the Seahawks' practice jerseys (yes, the practice shirts, not whatever this was supposed to be), and then trotted out a bunch of hilarious "synergy" quotes about the deal.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 09/30/20090 comments
Duty calls this week from the mother ship (Redmond magazine), so we're going to have to keep RCPU short and, hopefully, fairly sweet.
Anyway, after the fairly unmitigated disaster that was Windows Live OneCare, Microsoft is apparently back in the anti-virus game this week -- today, even, with the release of Security Essentials. We loved this quote from this Stuff.co.nz story:
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Posted by Lee Pender on 09/29/20094 comments
Few people can make news by stating the obvious, but Steve Ballmer is one of those people who can. Ballmer apparently said at a press-less Venture Capital Summit that Microsoft "screwed up" with Windows Mobile. Oh, really? Thanks for letting us know, Steve.
Ballmer has said a bunch of other stuff, as well, in recent interviews. One of the more extensive ones is here.
Posted by Lee Pender on 09/29/20090 comments
The firm once known as "the document company," with a brand as strong in the copier game as that of Kleenex or Google is in tissues or Web search, is trying to branch out of paper and into managing datacenters. Xerox this week bought Affiliated Computer Services for the not-small price tag of more than $6 billion. Will datacenters someday be known as Xerox centers? Stay tuned.
Posted by Lee Pender on 09/29/20090 comments