Tag Archive for Microsoft

| May 17, 2013
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Is Windows an Olds?

Is Windows an Olds?Do you remember Oldsmobile? The BusinessInsider documented what I have sensed for a while. Windows is playing less of a role at Microsoft (MSFT). When was the last time something came out of the Windows camp that fired us up? BI notes that for a long time, Microsoft was a company whose success or failure was built around Windows. While Windows is still the heart and soul of Microsoft, it’s becoming a smaller part of its earnings.

Microsoft WindowsThis chart from BI shows Windows operating income as percentage of its overall operating income versus its overall operating income. The total operating income is slowing growing, while Windows percentage of the total is slowly decreasing.

Windows declining role at Microsoft

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I have covered the angst over MSFT’s profitability for a while here and here. There are those that think Redmond is a long-term play as a leader in the cloud market, I don’t see it. Calling MSFT a good play in the cloud is  like asking General Motors to make money on building roads and not cars. MSFT’s latest products (Vista, Win8) as memorable as the Olds Calias or the Achieva.

Category: PC | Tags: , , ,
| May 9, 2013
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Tech Disrupters

Tech DisruptersThe BusinesInsider notes that analysts at investment bank Citi (C) have issued a new research report, that takes a look at 10 disrupting technologies, According to the BusinessInsider these technologies will change the way we do business. The  firm which took $300 billion dollar taxpayer-funded bail-out looked into practically every sector you can think of: energy, entertainment, IT, manufacturing, and transportation among them.

SDN is too cheap to resist.One of the information technologies that Citi called a disrupter is Software Defined Networks (SDN). SDN’s simplify IT networks by separating the Control Plane (the intelligence) from the Data Plane (the packet forwarding engine). “Instead of having intelligence distributed across the network in separate boxes, SDN centralizes the Control plane in an overriding software layer which disseminates instructions to each router or switch.”

Citi claims that SDN is too cheap to resist. They cite data from IDC that says Software Defined Networking is expected to grow from just under $360 million in 2013 to $3.7 billion in 2016. Revenues are likely to be split between startups, traditional network vendors like Cisco (CSCO), and big IT vendors like IBM (IBM), HP (HPQ), and Dell.

SaaSThe progonistators at Citi also identified SaaS another disruptive opportunity. The article explains that Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is Internet-based software delivery. Basically customers can use software that they’d otherwise have to buy via downloads or at a store. Examples include Google (GOOG) Apps, Microsoft (MSFT) 365 and Amazon (AMZN) web services.

In 2012, the SaaS market grew 26% to become an $18 billion market according to market research firm IDC.  According to Citi’s survey, SaaS has already captured 8% of their software wallets so far and firms expect to increase spending to 70% of their budget over time — a 9-fold increase.

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The Citi progonistators are so smart, they are at least a year behind the Bach Seat. I have covered cloud since 2011. I think we all know that cloud computing and software defined networking are information technology disrupters. Thanks guys.

 

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Category: Security | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
| May 7, 2013
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Which SkyDrive is Right For You?

Which SkyDrive is Right For You?Jonathan Hassell who runs 82 Ventures, a consulting firm based out of Charlotte, NC tries to clear up confusion about exactly what SkyDrive Pro and SkyDrive really are for CIO.com. He explains that the Microsoft (MSFT) branding machine confuses perfectly good and functional software with names that are impossible to parse. So tries to define exactly what each service is and what their limitations are.

Microsoft logo SkyDrive Pro – is a business storage space for individual users. The author says SkyDrive Pro is a feature and capability that comes from a SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise license—a license that you can buy either to run on servers in your own data center premises or access through a subscription to Office 365 on a monthly or annual basis.

SkyDrive Pro is available in the data center or the cloud and functions the same either you run it. The article stresses the key part to remember is that it is a function of SharePoint and nothing else. It has absolutely no relationship to the free service of a very similar name that’s discussed below. The blog presents several key points to remember when thinking about SkyDrive Pro:

  • SkyDrive Pro is essentially a replacement to the old My Site feature that was available within SharePoint 2010 and 2013. It’s a place for users to store files they might want to share with others in the future. For instance, you might be working on a budget spreadsheet that needs constant updating, so you could save a copy to your SkyDrive Pro location and invite other users to read, view and update that copy on their own.
  • With SkyDrive Pro on Office 365, each user gets 7 GB of space that is not counted against the overall SharePoint storage quota that is part of the plan you pay for. For SharePoint Server 2013 on-premises installations, administrators can configure the SkyDrive Pro space quota on an individual basis. While you can buy add-on space to pool more available gigabytes for your overall SharePoint sites and workspaces on Office 365, you can’t buy more storage to extend SkyDrive Pro spaces.
  • There is a SkyDrive Pro client application, but at this point it’s available only as part of the Office 2013 suite. If you don’t have an Office 2013 license, you’re forced to use SkyDrive Pro through the browser just like most of your interactions with other parts of the SharePoint product.
  • The SkyDrive Pro client application behaves like the old SharePoint Workspace client application. It synchronizes the online content with an offline cache so you can still access files, documents and other objects from the site just like you were online, even if you are stuck without a connection somewhere.
  • SkyDrive Pro works only for Windows and Web browsers. There are no native client applications for other operating systems.

SkydriveThe CIO.com article states that SkyDrive Pro is definitely not a free-for-all when it comes to data storage. Microsoft has imposed the following limitations:

  • In your SkyDrive Pro library, you can synchronize up to 20,000 items, including folders and files;
  • No single file can be greater than 250 MB in size;
  • You can download files up to 2 GB from your library.

If you’re running Office 2013 you can remove the hooks within Windows Explorer that expose the space. Just issue the following command at the elevated administrative command prompt:

regsvr32 /u “%programfiles%\Microsoft Office\Office15\GROOVEEX.DLL”

Software for rentSkyDrive — referred to by Mr. Hassell as SkyDrive Free to prevent confusion, is a consumer service provided by Microsoft that works a lot like Dropbox. It provides up to 7 GB of free cloud storage where users can upload files that are then accessible from either a Web browser or any Internet connected device where the right client side extensions are installed. The article notes that consumers can part with some money for even more space above what’s allowed on the free tier.

These client extensions are available for the Windows desktop, through the Windows Store (for Windows 8 and Windows RT devices), for the Windows Phone and on Apple (AAPL) iOS, Google (GOOG) Android and Mac OS devices.

Cloud storageTo make things even more confusing, according to the author, users who subscribe to Office 365 Home Premium plans get an extra 20 GB of SkyDrive Free storage space.  Office 365 Home Premium, despite being an Office 365 product/service, has nothing to do with SkyDrive Pro. This extra SkyDrive Free space is not granted to any other Office 365 subscription plan—and there’s currently no way to increase the SkyDrive Pro space on Office 365 beyond the 7 GB quota. The blog offers a few takeaways when thinking about SkyDrive Free:

  • There’s no corporate control over what’s stored on SkyDrive Free. Other than preventing the client extensions from being installed on corporate-owned devices and blocking access to skydrive.com from your Internet connection, there’s no other way IT can control what a user stores on SkyDrive Free.
  • In Office 2013, SkyDrive Free is the default location where users are prompted to save documents and other objects. SkyDrive Pro spaces are not the default.
  • SkyDrive Free has absolutely nothing to do with SharePoint, won’t work with either SharePoint Workspace 2010 or SkyDrive Pro client applications, and can be used by shops that have no link to SharePoint whatsoever, even all-Mac shops with no Windows machines at all.
  • Finally, SkyDrive Free does not support advanced functionality such as document versioning, file alerts, quick preview and deeper Office client integration. That’s all exclusively reserved for SkyDrive Pro spaces.

SaaSMr. Hassell concludes that the idea behind both SkyDrive services is the same—a place to store documents, files and other things so they’re available from multiple places. But SkyDrive Pro is clearly oriented at businesses and provides enterprise features that are useful for collaboration, while SkyDrive Free is a consumer service available to anyone, for free, across a variety of platforms.

Category: Security | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
| April 25, 2013
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Windows XP & Office 2003 Support Ending

Windows XP & Office 2003 Support EndingTwo of Microsoft’s (MSFT) flagship services are going to no longer have any support as of April 8th, 2014: Windows XP and Office 2003. Microsoft is warning suggesting that companies who have not migrated from Windows XP and Office 2003 start the process soon. MSFT released the OS more than a decade ago (October 2001 to be precise).

MicrosoftOn their blog, Naked Security, Sophos says that Windows XP still holds a 39% market share on the desktop. What if you are still using XP or Office 20003? Microsoft simply says it means you should “take action”. There will no longer be any security updates or assisted support options, online or otherwise, through Microsoft.

The lack of any security updates means there will be “unchecked security and compliance risks” as well as a lack of support and updates that keep the software compatible with the newest technologies.

SophosSophos speculates that one of the security implications of the bad guys holding onto new Windows XP exploits until MSFT stops patching XP. There’s certainly the potential for a lot of havoc if 39% of the PC’s get infected by a new internet-propagating worms that target Windows XP systems, or even just an increase in Internet Explorer 8 browser exploits that could open the doors wide for all kinds of malware infections.

It can take up to 18 months for the average medium to large business to install new programs, roll out all the updates, and import all customer data, Firms may need to upgrade your PCs and retrain your staff to use newer, more dependable Microsoft products.

MalwareMicrosoft says this move comes after they introduced their Support Lifecycle policy in 2002. All of Microsoft’s products get 10 years of support – 5 Mainstream and 5 Extended – and once those ten years are up, the company encourages all users to move on to more recent products that will often fit the needs of an individual and a company more closely.

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Education, Inc.In my world, we have started to migrate off of XP to Win7, due to state mandated testing requirements. Does anyone else see the irony in the fact that the Gates Foundation is a backer of large-scale multi-state standardized online testing that forces school districts in 22 states to migrate off of WinXP, a known entity that most people have long gotten their ROI out of the perpetual licences to a new OS Win7 (Win8 HA) that they are pushing as a subscription.

 

 

Category: PC | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| April 23, 2013
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Business PC Not Dead Yet

Business PC Not Dead YetThe BusinessInsider says that the PC market imploded last quarter. They cite data from technology prognosticators IDC who reported PC sales fell 14 percent in the first quarter, which is worse than their forecast of a 7.7 percent drop. IDC claims this is the worst quarter for PC’s since they started tracking sales.

PC Shipments Q1 2013IDC blames Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 8 operating system for alienating consumers. The new tile-based interface is too weird for consumers, says IDC. Instead of buying new laptops or desktops, people are buying tablets and smartphones which serve as good-enough alternatives claims the article.

Despite the wave of doom and gloom in the headlines from Gartner (IT) and IDC,  at FierceCIO warns IT managers and executives to think  before they ditch their existing PCs fleet in favor of tablets and smartphones; or perhaps reallocate their budgets to migrate existing business apps for a tablet-only environment future.

FGartnerierceCIO makes the point that the decline in shipments pertains only to the consumer section of the PC market. According to Mikako Kitagawa, at Gartner: “Unlike the consumer PC segment, the professional PC market, which accounts for about half of overall PC shipments, has seen growth, driven by continuing PC refreshes.”

What’s more, this growth is taking place even though some regions already have passed the peak of their PC refresh cycles. And at half of overall PC shipments, the professional PC market is nothing to be scoffed at. On the other hand, the overall dip–despite the growth in the professional PC market–does speak to just how sharply the drop in consumer PC shipments has been according to the article.

Steve BallmerConsumers are clearly moving their content consumption from PCs to connected devices, such as tablets and smartphones. As far as enterprises should be concerned though, businesses are still buying PCs.

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Despite what many people wish, I still don’t see many ways in which tablets can replace the office PC. How do you run a 40 column excel on a 9.5 inch Apple (AAPL) iPad screen? Can you use Access on a consumer-centric tablet like the iPad?

 

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Category: Tablet computing | Tags: , , , , , , ,
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