Microsoft

Decho provides cloud connectivity

Molly Bernhart — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:55:29 -0500

These days people use a lot of gadgets, both new and old, to get through their day. When they are jumping from laptops to smartphones people don't want to lose, and prefer to access the information on other devices, reports TechNewsWorld.com. Staying in sync isn't easy--just ask the creators of Apple's MobileMe.

Since EMC is the leader in dedicated storage, it only makes sense that the company is now venturing into the sync space with a new sync backup opportunity called "Decho," reports TechNewsWorld.com. Decho is comprised of the Mozy, a reliable and inexpensive cloud-based backup solution, and PI, a super secret sync technology from the mind of ex-Microsoft employee, Paul Maritz.

For more:
- read the article

Alfresco Open Source Barometer report released

Ron Miller — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:09:15 -0500

Alfresco released its third annual Open Source Barometer report this week and found that that companies were looking for a browser-based Web 2.0 experience and had no real preference where blog and wiki software were concerned. The survey questioned respondents (who are either joining the Alfresco community or evaluating Alfresco software) about their technology preferences in order to measure how companies are evaluating and deploying open source and proprietary software stacks in the enterprise. The survey was conducted with over 25,000 Alfresco community members worldwide, so it reflects the attitudes of the Alfresco user base, not necessarily the industry as a whole, but even given that caveat there were some interesting results.

The survey found, for instance, that most users evaluate open-source software on a Windows laptop, so these are not necessarily open source fanatics, just people looking at open source as an alternative. What's more the survey found that more than 50 percent were interested in Java and Ajax, while 92 percent had no interest in Microsoft Silverlight and 86 percent did not intend to use Microsoft's .Net development program. Yet a majority respondents chose Microsoft Office as the Office suite of choice. It's certainly interesting that companies evaluating and using Alfresco are Windows users, who are running Office, but their IT departments appear to be shying away from Microsoft solutions that lock them into being a Microsoft shop.

It's hard to say how this will affect other Microsoft enterprise offerings such as Sharepoint, one of the companies that Alfresco is clearly gunning for. While the survey is only a snapshot of the Alfresco community, it does give some insight into how companies are running proprietary solutions, including content management solutions, along side open-source offerings and it shows that there is greater diversity in the enterprise than we might have thought.

For more information:
See the survey website

Can Microsoft dominate web-based applications?

Ron Miller — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:18:48 -0500

Last week Microsoft unveiled a web-based version of Microsoft Office finally bringing the iconic desktop office suite online, but has it waited too long and will it be able to dominate online as it has on the desktop? Forrester Research analyst Sheri McLeish writes in the Forrester Blog that she thinks it's a big deal and that many customers will be waiting to see what Microsoft does. I'm not so sure.

The trouble with Microsoft, is not that they are going online or that their online approach is wrong, but the fact that the company has waited so long to develop an online strategy. While they plodded along, lots of competitors who have cut their teeth online have been establishing markets of their own. That includes the likes of Zoho, Google Docs, Transmedia Glide, Adobe and others; and all are offering reasonably-priced alternatives.

But McLeish thinks the market has been slow to evolve and she may be right. That may give Microsoft some time to play catch up and it would be unwise to ever count out a company with the resources of Microsoft. That said, many organizations are fed up with Microsoft lock-in and have been actively looking for alternatives. What remains to be seen is if Microsoft can win back the goodwill it has lost over the years. What's more, just because Microsoft has announced the products, it's unclear when they will be ready for distribution.

For now, it's better to test what's out there, then judge Microsoft's offerings on its own merits compared with the existing players when they have an actual offering to show us.

For more information:
- read the entire McLeish blog entry

Gartner and IDC predict bright future for SaaS

Ron Miller — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:52:53 -0400

A CIO.com article reports that both IDC and Gartner are predicting good things for the Software as a Service industry, and a huge boost in business over the next several years. This could explain why Microsoft wants a piece of this action and announced its own cloud computing initiative, known as Microsoft Azure, this week. When you look at the numbers, it's easy to see why Microsoft covets a share of these earnings.

Gartner predicts that SaaS spending will top out at 6.4 billion this year alone, then more than double to $14.8 billion by 2012. What's interesting is that Gartner sees much of this spending targeted at content, communications and collaboration. As companies grow more comfortable with a services model, they see it as way to save money and speed up enterprise software implementation cycles.

IDC paints an even rosier picture by saying the $16.2 billion spent on cloud computing this year will climb to a whopping $42.3 billion by 2012. The difference in numbers could have to do with how each company defines the space. Whether these predictions are accurate, or just wild speculation, it seems cloud computing is in a position to grow--especially over the next year as companies look for ways to reduce overall IT spending initiatives.

For more information:
-read the CIO.com article

Related Article:
When times get tough, get SaaSy

Open Text announces immediate support for Microsoft Azure

Ron Miller — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:48:54 -0400

Wasting little time, Open Text announced support for Microsoft Azure the same day Microsoft made the cloud computing platform public. Open Text's Azure support will be integrated into Open Text’s Enterprise Library Services. They expect products to be ready early next year.

Azure support by Open Text products will enable customers to manage Microsoft SharePoint content, Microsoft Outlook email and other business information they want to store on the Windows Azure platform. This allows users to apply records rules, archive content and address compliance mandates. Jens Rabe, Vice President of Open Text’s Microsoft Solutions Group says this should help drastically reduce the cost for companies to adopt content management, which has to be music to the ears of harassed CIOs trying to keep projects going in trying times.

"The advantage for Open Text is that we can decouple our value that we bring to the customers from overall investment consideration that involve the purchase of hardware. ROI calculations become a lot easier as storage becomes a non issue in the project plan, it has a fixed price tag associated to it that covers all setup and maintenance cost," Rabe says.

Open Text chose to go with Microsoft's cloud services because it saves them the expense and hassle of having to come up with a hardware infrastructure on on their own. "We're not a hardware company, our focus is on software. We have no intention to build up a huge infrastructure of hardware to support the kinds of services Microsoft is offering. A better strategy for us is to offer complementary software for what is in the market and offered by a major partner like Microsoft," says Rabe.

Microsoft unveils new cloud computing platform

Ron Miller — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:49:20 -0400

Microsoft made quite a splash this week when it announced its new cloud computing platform called Azure. The platform will give IT and vendors the ability to add web services to existing applications--something which Open Text has already announced it will do. It will also offer services similar to Amazon S3 such as online storage and off-premises intense computational computing. It's certainly a new approach for the software giant, which is being driven by Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect. Here's the Azure website.

Microsoft's Fast in trouble over questionable accounting practices

Ron Miller — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:03:54 -0400

Last week, Reuters reported that Norwegian police raided the headquarters of Fast Search & Transfer, an enterprise search company purchased by Microsoft earlier this year for $1.2 billion, for alleged accounting fraud. The irregularities reportedly happened prior to the purchase, but according to an August EContent magazine article, "the problems were no secret, even then." The charges involve announcing revenue when it didn't really have the business to support the claim, according to police quoted in the Reuters' article. Article

Gartner releases ECM Magic Quadrant report

Ron Miller — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:18:53 -0400

Gartner released its annual ECM market Magic Quadrant report this week and the big surprise was that Microsoft had been promoted from Visionary to Leader. This is fairly significant because it shows how much Sharepoint has penetrated the enterprise content management space. Just how much Microsoft is influencing the enterprise as a whole, however, is still open to debate.

Just this past week, Alan Pelz-Sharpe wrote in a post on CMS Watch that his research found that while Sharepoint had made significant penetration in the enterprise, it was mostly confined to Microsoft Office documents and not other types of content. What's more, nobody Pelz-Sharpe asked intended to replace existing systems with Sharepoint.

So what does this mean? Microsoft Sharepoint has a role to play in many enterprise content management mixes, but it's not going to replace other content management systems any time soon. It suggests that perhaps the strong growth we have seen from Sharepoint, although significant, could bottom out at some point, especially if companies begin to search for lower-cost replacements for expensive Microsoft Office licenses should the economic slow-down continue.

On one level, Microsoft has a right to be proud of this new designation by Gartner. It shows they are a true player in ECM. Still, be careful as a buyer not to read too much into it.

For more information:
- read the Gartner Magic Quadrant Report
- read Pelz-Sharpe's CMS report on Sharepoint

Pay attention to sharepoint electronic forms services

Ron Miller — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:51:25 -0400

CMS Watch suggested in a report released last week that companies using Sharepoint (and there clearly are a lot of you) should be taking advantage of the under-used forms service. CMS Watch, which is a vendor-neutral analysis firm concentrating on content issues, believes these forms, when used properly, can actually replace time-consuming and inefficient email-based processes. They recommend if you are using the Microsoft Office Sharepoint Service, aka MOSS, you should check out these forms. They are easy to create and incorporate into a simple workflow. The process still requires an administrator or developer--putting it into the hands of end users would be nice--but it does replace more complex Excel solutions for common enterprise tasks such as travel expenses.

For more information:
- here's a release on the report