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Ballmer Gives Shareholders - and Dell - Cause for Optimism November 20, 2009 
The early indicators that Windows 7 is doing well seem to be piling up. CEO Steve Ballmer gave that perception a boost at the company's annual shareholders meeting on Thursday, announcing that Microsoft "has already sold twice as many units of Windows 7 than any other operating system ever launched in a comparable time." Do the early numbers indicate that Windows 7 may be strong enough to cheer the shareholders of other companies -- namely, battered computer OEMs like Dell?
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EU Gives Oracle Extension to Build Sun Deal Defense November 20, 2009 
European Union regulators said Friday that they have extended until Jan. 27 a deadline to wrap up their antitrust review of Oracle's planned US$7.4 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems. The European Commission said Oracle had asked for more time "in order to have the opportunity to further develop its arguments in response to the Commission's concerns."
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Salesforce.com Pumps Up Volume of Workplace Chatter November 19, 2009 
Salesforce.com is marrying its cloud computing bona fides with its growing expertise in collaboration in Salesforce Chatter, a new application and development platform. The company introduced the product at its Dreamforce tradeshow and conference under way in San Francisco.
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Microsoft Forecasts Azure Skies for Jan. 1 November 18, 2009 
After more than two years of crowing about "software plus service" rather than Software as a Service for its cloud computing strategy, the finish line is finally in sight for Microsoft's Azure. The company announced Tuesday at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles that Azure will officially be available for all customers on Jan. 1, 2010.
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PaaS and the Democratization of Innovation November 18, 2009 
I was re-reading Eric von Hippel's excellent book Democratizing Innovation and found something in it that might help explain the popularity of cloud computing and Platform as a Service. I am on the way to Dreamforce and have little visibility into what Salesforce.com might announce in the next day or two, but no doubt there will be a lot about the cloud, so this might be a good opportunity to make my point.
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Cloud Security's Silver Lining: Q&A With ISF President Howard Schmidt November 18, 2009 
The Information Security Forum may bill itself as the world's leading independent authority on IT security, but the companies and agencies that its members work for are finding themselves more dependent than ever on its computer security expertise. Current trends that are expanding access to networks for companies and consumers are also providing more potential opportunities for IT's "bad guys."
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VMware Fuses Performance With Convenience November 16, 2009 
There's more than 50 new features in the latest version of VMware Fusion -- an application that allows Windows and OS X to run together in a virtual environment on a Mac -- but the one that has users raving is the big boost in performance. "I installed VMWare Fusion 3.0 just a few days ago," Leon Kotovich, president and CEO of AgileSequent told MacNewsWorld.
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Text Analysis and the Next Generation of BI November 15, 2009 
Text-based content and information from across the Web are growing in importance to businesses. The need to analyze Web-based text in real-time is rising to where structured data was in importance just several years ago. Indeed, for businesses looking to do even more commerce and community building across the Web, text access and analytics forms a new mother lode of valuable insights to mine.
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Exchange Server 2010: Microsoft Explains It All November 14, 2009 
The biggest change to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 was supposed to have been the introduction of something called "Unified Communications" -- the introduction of a singular console for the handling of all forms of digital communication, wrapping voice mail, instant messaging, and email into a single delivery system.
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IT's Perfect Storm: Managed Services, SaaS and Cloud Computing November 13, 2009 
In a previous column, I described why many IT professionals within small- and medium-sized businesses, as well as in large-scale enterprises, are beginning to embrace Software as a Service, and why managed service providers can't afford to ignore SaaS. A recent industry event brought my previous observations to life and added a new dimension -- cloud computing -- to these dynamics.
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FOSS' Sunny Place in the Cloud November 12, 2009 
Richard Stallman's now-famous warnings about cloud computing (his verdict in a nutshell: It's "marketing hype") sparked a fresh round of debate in the blogosphere this week, along with some outbursts of incredulity. Stallman "is a few bubbles off of plumb and gets weirder every year," Slashdot blogger hairyfeet told LinuxInsider.
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A Tale of Two Sages November 11, 2009 
Sage convened its fall user group meeting in Atlanta this week. The event was set in the cavernous Georgia World Congress Center, a complex of three starship hangars left over from the Intergalactic Olympics. The facility is beautiful and very big. Sage estimated attendance at between 2,500 and 3,000 people, but despite that number of people, the place looked underused.
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From Mainframes to I-Frames November 11, 2009 
I got a dose of reality last week when I took a briefing from TmaxSoft, a Korean company that specializes in mainframe conversions. I hadn't thought about a mainframe in a long time and assumed they were no longer an issue, but it turns out that they continue to live on. There are still 6,600 mainframes in operation in the U.S., according to TmaxSoft.
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Mobile CRM User, Know Thyself November 10, 2009 
With the proliferation of smartphones and similar handheld devices, it only makes sense that data -- especially customer data -- is following these devices into the field. The scenarios in which sales and field service people can use the data collected by CRM are many and, in a lot of cases, obvious. However, there are also many ways for CRM to go into the field.
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Microsoft Pushes UC With Latest Exchange Release November 09, 2009 
Microsoft on Monday announced the worldwide release of Exchange Server 2010. Exchange Server 2010 is at the heart of Microsoft's unified communications push. The idea behind unified communications is to let users contact other people based on their availability and communicate with them in the best possible way.
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Cisco Adds New Technologies to Collaboration Tool Chest November 09, 2009 
Cisco has introduced new technologies to its collaboration platform -- a product portfolio that encompasses its telepresence, unified communications and WebEx solutions. Among the additions are new hosted email offerings and integration with enterprise social software.
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