Microsoft and Docker doesn’t make enough sense
Microsoft and Docker doesn’t make enough sense: Over at Fortune, Barb Darrow and Jonathan Vanian speculate on rumours that Microsoft might be sniffing around containerisation champion Docker. Docker has, of course, denied the rumours. But, more importantly, the acquisition just doesn’t make enough sense to justify the multi-billion dollar valuation. The project is open source. The […]
Public Cloud Economies of (Web-)Scale Aren’t About Buying Power
As you no doubt heard this week, Rackspace has announced the intention to focus on managed cloud. Inevitably this brought observations from many about RAX, and others, ability to compete effectively against the web scale public cloud giants: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. One of the commenters was Mike Kavis (twitter link), a long time cloud pundit […]
Excel-based reporting and ERP
Excel-based reporting solutions are becoming a bigger feature of the suite of Business Intelligence (BI) tools offered by midrange ERP vendors. It’s a trend that seems to make sense given the ubiquity of Excel, but could there be a downside? The rise of Excel-based reporting tools I’ve recently attended system demos for MS Dynamics NAV […]
Breaking Up Again, OneNote and I Must Go Separate Ways
Ok, psychologically one is supposed to tell the good news last and the bad news first. Well, I’m doing that backwards with this article. First things first, all the awesome about Microsoft’s OneNote App. Microsoft OneNote The cool thing is, after more than a few years, OneNote runs on pretty much runs on most mobile and desktop […]
Microsoft Corporate Vice President Quentin Clark discusses data, data platforms, and more
The Data Platform Group at Microsoft does a lot, from SQL Server and their Hadoopey HDInsight offering through to Business Intelligence and analytics capabilities which sit in or on top of the humble Excel spreadsheet. I’ve touched upon pieces of this whole before, in a 2009 podcast on Azure with Amitabh Srivastava (then Corporate VP […]
Amazon’s Cloud Price Reduction, A Desire To Compete Hard And Move Up The Value Chain
Recently Google slashed price for their cloud offering. Amazon, as expected, also announced their 42nd price reduction on their cloud offerings since its inception. Today, Microsoft also announced price reduction for their Azure offerings. Unlike many other people I don’t necessarily see the price reduction by Amazon as waging a price war against the competition. […]
Podcasting again… with StorSimple’s Marc Farley
I used to podcast pretty regularly, on this site and elsewhere. Then other things got in the way and, before I knew it, almost two years had passed since my last podcast here. Well, it’s time to put that right. I’m podcasting again, and I’ve got a nice pipeline of guests lined up over the […]
Cloud Model 2014: Hybrid, Google, Brokerage, Startups and The Enterprise
2013 has been incredibly eventful for the cloud industry, mostly for making itself an eminent presence in the mainstream IT market. Businesses of all sizes have made their ways to the cloud, confirming my 2013 predictions. Government agencies worldwide take the cloud seriously, as demonstrated by the CIA’s contract switch over to Amazon from IBM. […]
The Folly of Inside-Out Product Thinking
Inside out just doesn’t fit right Ever run into this deductive reasoning? Customers like our existing products and our company We are building a new product that reflects the priorities of a company executive Therefore, customers will like our new product It’s a clear violation of the First Law of Product: Customers decide what products they […]
OSCON : Conversations, Deployments, Architecture, Docker and the Future?
I wrote about my first day of OSCON “OSCON : Day 1, Windows Just Doesn’t Do Cloud Foundry… but, there’s a fix for that…“. The rest of the week was most excellent. I caught up with friends and past coworkers. I heard about people working on some amazing new projects. Some things I will try […]
Amazon, Microsoft and Google: The Cloud Leading Trio
Following several discussions with fellow bloggers and industry executives, I found it quite fitting that the natural cloud leaders are the top software and web giants: Google, Microsoft and Amazon. While Amazon’s AWS is The public cloud today Google recently reported that it is doubling its office space near Seattle, just miles from the campuses of Amazon and Microsoft, […]
The Rise of the Cloud Stack
Something changed this week in the enterprise software world. In an industry known for ruthless competition, a number of players – Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce and NetSuite – introduced partnerships that portend a very different future. In very un-Larry Ellison-like fashion, something akin to harmony was proposed, “when customers choose cloud applications, they expect rapid low-cost […]
Microsoft and Me
Regarding desktops, tablets, and smartphones – I am considering going pure Microsoft. That will mean two new mobile devices, and then switching to IE and Office 365. I will lose apps on my mobile devices and hinder my path to WebRTC. It will be a difficult transition. Why? It really boils down to two frustrations. […]
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 […]
