Is Microsoft doomed? I’ll let you know when Windows 10 comes out.
A lot of folks believe that the Microsoft empire is doomed, and that the rise of touchscreen computing and mobile devices will lead it its inevitable downfall. This may very well be true; it certainly is true that to date, Microsoft’s attempts to enter the touch and mobile markets have been poorly received. Yet much [...]
The Googrilla Grows
I recently published the Googrilla in the Midst which posits that the influence and impact of Google Apps is largely underappreciated and untapped by the UC community. We are reasonably confident that the cloud in general, and Google Apps specifically, will continue to grow. We also are sure that UC and VoIP have a bright future and [...]
When things go wrong with Windows Azure
When things go wrong with Windows Azure I recently started with Windows Azure, and really tried to start digging into it today. Unfortunately, everything went wrong. Windows Azure is turning into one stubborn system to get to do much with. It all started with trying to redeem my coupon code for a free three month [...]
Don’t Count Microsoft Out of the Public Cloud Race Just Yet
Microsoft this week announced the general availability of Azure Infrastructure Services. This marks a notable course correction for Microsoft, which initially provided Azure solely through a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model. While many market observers assume that public cloud IaaS in the enterprise is now a three horse race between Amazon AWS, Rackspace and Google, they may [...]
CxO Talk: Microsoft, salesforce.com, CRM, and the science of hugging
This week’s episode of CxO Talk, with my co-host Vala Afshar, features top CRM analyst, Paul Greenberg, as our guest. Paul is widely known as the “godfather of CRM” and is a contributor to ZDNet. Here are important topics from the discussion: On Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Microsoft held its annual Convergence conference in New Orleans [...]
Big Data | Thinking Outside the Firewall
A few months back, Gartner placed big data at the peak of its hype cycle for cloud computing, meaning most big data products are solutions looking for a problem. I always find this bad entrepreneurial habit to be one of the most frustrating of our industry. Having recently joined Meltwater as head of marketing and [...]
Enterprise software and the curse of vendor sameness
Enterprise software vendors talk in pithy, some would say pseudo-sophisticated, language designed to impress prospects, customers, and influencers in the market. Almost all enterprise vendors use terms like the following as symbols to convey broader meaning, despite offering little or no content to the reader: Time to value Continuous innovation Accelerated solutions Big data Mobile first Increase [...]
Microsoft’s Cloud OS Play–A Logical Converged Cloud Offering
A week or two ago, Microsoft made a slew of announcements all aimed at creating a consistent story around hybrid cloud services. It’s a compelling product launch, and one which, frankly, takes Microsoft which was only a year or two ago one of the key whipping boys for the cloud cognoscenti, to a place of [...]
Bitnami, Hupstream & Basho Release VMs with Microsoft Open Interoperability VM Depot for Azure
Today Microsoft released, with partnerships with a number of companies including Basho, Hupstream and Bitnami, the VM Depot. I’ve always followed Bitnami, so it’s really cool to see their VM releases for Jenkins (CI Build Server), WordPress, Ruby 1.9.3 stack, Node.js and about everything you can imagine out their along side our Basho Riak CentOS image. [...]
HP Discover–Awesome Potential But Massive Challenges
I recently spent three days in Frankfurt attending HP’s European event, Discover. (Disclosure – HP contributed towards T&E for the event). Obviously the event was always going to be fascinating, coming as it did only a week or two after the bombshell around Autonomy and the large questions around both
What Will Identity Look Like in the Future?
At the defrag conference recently, I took part in a few sessions that looks at the broader role of identity in a world were more and more people use cloud-based tools. One of the sessions was led by Pat Patterson, Principal Developer Evangelist at Salesforce. In his session, Patterson drew a picture of the history [...]
Re:Invent Announcements–Boundary Introduces Pre-Emptive Monitoring
This week marks the first Amazon Web Services user conference. The AWS event, re:Invent, is being held in Las Vegas and given the massive awareness that AWS and its ecosystem has, we should see lots of product announcements from both Amazon themselves and ecosystem companies. First up is Boundary who is today releasing a new [...]
Dropbox, Google Drive, Apple iCloud, Microsoft SkyDrive; maybe they’re not apples after all?
Cloud storage product Dropbox is one of those tools that users tend to rave about. It’s deceptively simple. It’s pretty reliable. The value proposition is immediately apparent. It has paid tiers of usage that bring additional storage but (like other freemium beacons such as Evernote) the free offering is rich enough to be compelling, engaging, [...]
Surface & iPad Collision Course
Ok, I’d been looking around for a Surface I could try out. Even though I have my doubts about Windows 8 and especially RT I also am excited about a lot of the features that these operating system(s) have. But amid the parts that I hate and parts I hate, there is the simple fact [...]
Build 2012: Microsoft Takes The First Step Towards A Coherent Platform Strategy
This week I had a chance to spend some time at the Build 2012 conference, Microsoft’s developer conference. Though I didn’t get a chance to attend the keynotes or any briefings, I spent time talking to Microsoft employees, developers and partners attending the event. I thought I will share my take on Microsoft’s platform strategy based [...]
