It's the old switcheroo, I tell ya! Folks in Redmond must sound like 1920s gangsters (or maybe 1850s gold prospectors?) when they discuss, no doubt in heated tones, Google's big cloud win with the General Services Administration.
Apparently (and this is a complicated story), the GSA, a U.S. government agency, stipulated that, among many other requirements, its cloud data must rest in data centers in the U.S. Microsoft responded thusly with a plan. Then Google, via Unisys, came in with a slightly different proposal that didn't include domestic-only data storage.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 12/06/20100 comments
SAP is a company so important and presumably so difficult to manage that it actually has two CEOs. In any case, one of them this week delivered the good news that IT spending is coming around, particularly in the software market. No word yet on what the other CEO thinks.
Posted on 12/02/20100 comments
As December rolls in, so the tide of news slowly begins to roll out. We've only got a couple more weeks of RCPU left for the whole year, as incredible as that might seem. Your editor is studying his calendar carefully to make sure it's actually December. Where did 2010 go?
That paragraph sounds like a setup for some sort of year-in-review post, but it's not. We're just sort of rambling here, to be honest, and we're not sure how to make a clean segue to the topic of this entry. So, let's just go without one.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 12/02/20100 comments
The would-be do-gooders in the European Union who have given Microsoft such fits over the years are getting serious about going after another American target: Google.
And what incriminating stuff does the EU have on Google? Well...none, actually, but the European governing body is pretty darn sure that Google has been evil somehow. Check out these allegations leveled against the company, taken from the article quoted above:
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Posted by Lee Pender on 12/01/20104 comments
Really, now, why? Why are these tablet things so popular? What's really weird here is that a bunch of investment bankers are going to be carrying around products with the super-cool Apple logo on them. What will that do to Apple's street cred with the bookish hipster coffee-house set?
Posted by Lee Pender on 12/01/20101 comments
You probably won't be able to use it yet, but the missing link between Google Docs and Microsoft Office (from the Google side, anyway) is in beta.
Posted by Lee Pender on 12/01/20100 comments
The Supreme Court is going to hear Microsoft's appeal in the patent case that led to an injunction on sales of Microsoft Word. We kind of like Microsoft's chances here given the pro-business nature of this court. Don't hold your breath for news on this, though -- the Supremes, with or without Diana Ross, hope to reach a decision by the end of June.
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/29/20100 comments
We read (and write) it all the time: Microsoft is behind the curve in developing for new technology formats. Redmond's smartphone operating system is an also-ran. Microsoft has no tablet strategy. Google, Apple and RIM are just killing the old dinosaur in those areas.
But so what? Microsoft is still raking in money, and there's still a Windows laptop on almost every...well, lap, we suppose, or desk. The company's server products are going like gangbusters, and even Dynamics is settling into a niche. No big deal, right? Tablets, trick-pony phones and all those toys can take a back seat to real technology.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 11/29/20106 comments