Negative Approach

Enterprise IT tends to see waves of interest and productivity related to new technologies that ebb and flow with interest from users and developers. Cloud computing in a variety of forms--compute power, storage, etc.--has been the recent poster child for reducing cost and complexity.

There is little question that users want to make their technology life easier, which is why cloud services have been embraced so heartily to date. And because users are interested in the cloud, large enterprise vendors are looking to capitalize on the interest and adoption.

This obviously makes sense. Corporations exist to make money. And … Read more

Microsoft plans to begin phasing out Unix and Linux platform support for its FAST enterprise search products, as of its next release.

According to a Thursday blog post from Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Bjørn Olstad, the team will be "investing in interoperability between Windows and other operating systems, reaffirming our commitment to 10 years of support for our non-Windows products, and taking concrete steps to help customers plan for the future."

Enterprise search remains a lucrative, if oddly fractured market. According to analyst firm Gartner, in 2008, software revenue (new licenses and maintenance revenue) in the enterprise … Read more

With Microsoft finally releasing the Windows Azure cloud operating system to the public earlier this week, Amazon Web Services (AWS) took just one day to offer new pricing reductions to re-establish the market price for cloud services.

Effective February 1, AWS is reducing prices by 2 cents per gigabyte based on the tiers of usage offer. Amazon also lowered rates for data transferred out of its Amazon CloudFront content delivery network, cutting rates by 2 cents per gigabyte. And while 2 cents may not sound like much, at the highest usage levels of 1,000 terabytes, that takes the cost … Read more

Analyst firm Gartner is out with five predictions for social software, the net of which shows that social media functions will both succeed and fail in the enterprise.

Gartner believes that social services will be embraced, but perhaps not in the way we thought they would. In boiling down the various social mediums into mechanics such as interpersonal communications or performance analysis, it becomes a bit clearer how these services will be adopted in the enterprise. It also gives a glimpse into areas start-ups can target to solve business problems.

Gartner's five social software predictions for 2010 and beyond: … Read more

Several months back, I spoke with Issac Roth, CEO of platform-as-a-service start-up WebappVM, about taking advantage of the cloud by moving to a virtual layer approach.

The idea behind this virtual layer is to enable developers to easily take Web applications to cloud environments--be they private, public, hybrid, or elsewhere in the ether.

On Tuesday, Roth and company are announcing the developer edition for their Cloud Application Platform with a newer, catchier name: Makara.

According to Roth, developers want to be able to get their apps up and running quickly but haven't had the ability to do so previously. … Read more

Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud computing service became generally available on Monday with very little flourish. And that might be because this first wave of Azure offerings is frankly a bit odd.

I am sure Microsoft will eventually figure out how to give its users options that are more obviously appealing (perhaps using Amazon Web Services as the model?), but in the near-term the options are not as clear as they could be.

It's still a positive for cloud enthusiasts that Azure has finally reached a place where Microsoft is comfortable offering it commercially. And if you're part … Read more

In a recent interview with Nikkei Electronics Asia, Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci made the case that the company has seen dramatic success in the PC market because it abandoned direct sales.

Acer has a huge market presence in Europe and Russia and has focused on market share over profitability, with an operating profit of just 2-3 percent, according to analyst firm Gartner. Thus far it's worked; Acer's global PC market share hit 21 percent in Q3 2009, just 1 percent behind HP and a percent or two above Dell.

Shocked? Me too.

Because PCs are commodities, Lanci argues that brand recognition and exterior styling are the most important factors for consumers. And obviously the products have to work well enough for consumers to continue to buy them. In fact, Lanci has used a similar argument in the past to suggest that "U.S. computer brands may disappear over the next 20 years, just like what happened to U.S. television brands."

Whether or not Lanci is correct, most observers agree that PCs and servers have become commodities. To some extent it's surprising to see Acer's "good enough" hardware make such large gains. This may be because the markets that are buying Acer products have less PC history, and newer machines are dramatically better than the computers and servers of 10 years ago.

In complete contrast, Oracle, with its newly acquired Sun hardware business, announced last week that it would go in the opposite direction and start selling direct in order to gain back the profit margin lost to VARs. … Read more

Between Apple's iPad (important but disappointing) and Oracle's explanation of how it will integrate Sun (goodbye, best of breed) this has been a big week in the technology landscape. And oddly enough, hardware, rather than software, is the area to pay attention to.

Now that Oracle has Sun hardware to sell, it took the wind out of the sails of many Sun value-added resellers who were effectively order takers. Oracle is notoriously good at wringing money out of customers in a way that makes it feel OK. It seems highly unlikely that customers will prefer to not buy … Read more

Research shows the demand for Linux talent is on the rise with some firms reporting a 50 percent increase in Linux-related jobs just in the last year. This is certainly good news if you already know how to work with Linux, and perhaps better news if you are looking for a new technical role.

The nonprofit Linux Foundation is looking to help meet this need with an expanded training program that includes a free Webinar series hosted by leading technical talent from the Linux kernel community and expanded classes in new locations around the world.

There are many Linux training … Read more