Guess How many Small & Medium Sized Companies This Microsoft Sr.VP Has Worked For?

Zero– and yet, he’s saying things here like “goodness happens” in the small and medium sized enterprise when certain Microsoft solutions come your way, such as the Windows Small Busienss Server.

In an interview with CRN at TechEd Ed 2005, Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Windows Server Division, confirmed that the company is mulling a Windows server optimized for medium-sized businesses. Microsoft defines that segment as companies with between five and 15 servers and 50 to 250 PCs.

“There’s opportunity to do things in this space,” Muglia said, noting that such a server would offer pricing benefits for medium sized businesses in the same way that Windows Small Business Server 2003 offers a favorable pricing structure.

Pricing benefits? Hang on. Add up the cost of human capital that has to be applied to this overbearing, way over the top Big Enterprise solution they are trying to foist on SMBs and you arrive at a completely different cost structure. Afterall, this application was built to kill Lotus Notes. Now that Notes is dead, it’s coming to an SMB near you… but examine it closely because it isn’t intuitive, isn’t easily navigable. If your business has an IT infrastructure that rivals GE or GM, this is your ideal solution.

Mr. Muglia would have a better feel for this perhaps had he ever worked at a small or medium sized company. See for yourself.

College, ROLM, then on to Microsoft in 1988.

Ipswitch Partner Coast Software Acquired by Watchfire

Just an update as reported in this mid-June issue of The Boston Business Journal that a Canadian company with which we have a partnership, Coast Software, has been acquired by Watchfire.

More on the implications of this to our end users and channel partners to come.

From the ‘Duh’ School of Management vs IBM

Interesting piece, available here, on the varying rates per hour for software written in India versus the U.S.

But to get this nugget, you have to plough through one of this weekend’s 6 million articles about a confidential IBM internal memo concerning IBMs plan to hire 14,000 more workers in India. Workers rights organizations see the similarity of that number and the number of US and West European employees being axed and, voila, we have an IBM conspiracy of some sort. Nonesense.

If the people who say some of these things would only read their own quotes:

“The significance of this is that it’s the same number that was announced as being cut earlier,” Montefusco said. “Once again, the company is looking at short-term profits and shoring up the bottom line because they’re not increasing revenue.”

Ralph J. Montefusco is a former IBM employee and union organizer for the Communications Workers of America.

IBM had about 6,000 employees in India in 2002 and more than 24,000 there as of last year.

McNealy Nails Trade & Business Press Bias

Every editor has a bias. And every writer has a bias. I don’t care how hard you all try to pretend. At least in the blogging world, there’s no pretension and everybody, at least, reads it all with a grain of salt.

That’s an excerpt from this Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle interview with Sun CEO and Co-Founder Scott McNealy… never at a loss for words. He’s the one who said (as noted here) that the merger of HP and Compaq would be like two garbage trucks colliding in slow motion.

Read full text for insight into the newfound love affair between Sun and Microsoft. McScary!

‘License’ To Steal?

High Tech Trade Group accuses Microsoft of wringing excessive licensing fees out of its settlement of the European Union’s landmark antitrust ruling

Here’s a real case example of how monopolies cost people real money. It’s from the Associated Press and you can read it all here.

Gist of the story is this:

Putin To Meet With Citi, Intel, IBM Execs

Execs from Citigroup… Alcoa… ConocoPhillips…Intel… IBM and News Corp… will gather for an audience with Putin in St. Petersburg on Saturday, according to a Russian media report.

Hey Vlad, ah, gee… how can I put this? I’m sure it’s an oversight, but Bill, you know, Gates… richest man in the world… guy who last week, as they say, let Saigon be bygones… well, where’s Bill’s invite?

Complete story here on Forbes.com.

A Reasoned Explanation for Redmond’s Current Hyperactivity: A ‘Holy War.’

Here’s perhaps the best, most pithy analysis of what makes Microsoft tick. It is by Howard Anderson who has been around forfever, has known Bill Gates for years, and has been following the industry since, well, it all began with things like CPM

Well worth a read, but here are a few core snippets:

Gates needs an Enemy of the Day the way you and I need water.

Gates’ new enemy is Google.

Search technology, in and of itself, doesn’t threaten Microsoft, but search technology as an engine to enter more businesses does. If you view Google as a platform for a variety of new services, then Google is a very real threat. With Netscape, all Gates had to do was bundle Internet Explorer and offer it for free to choke off Netscape’s air supply. But with Google, what is Gates’ solution when the competitor’s product is free, supported by advertising revenue and outrageously profitable? This is the reason this battle is so intriguing to Gates.

…Microsoft today is already fighting wars on several fronts: XBox vs Sony, and Sony is winning; Microsoft vs Linux, and Linux seems to be gaining; Apple and music (iTunes); Firefox (free) vs. Internet Explorer; BlackBerry. But all these are chump change compared with the Google Wars – with Gmail battling Hotmail, Google Blogger going head-to-head with MSN Spaces, Google PICASA fighting Microsoft’s photo management and Google Hello facing off with MSN Instant Messenger.

Great 3rd Party Review of Our New Product

This from Adfunk Tech Assist on our newly released WS_FTP Professional 2006. The link takes you to the whole piece, but here are some highlights:

Overall, WS_FTP Professional is a feature-wealthy application that will indulge power users.

Excellent file-transfer program. I recommend this application.

We like WS_FTP’s exceptional image-handling capabilities. The included thumbnail previews are nice, as is Active Edit, which lets you edit and remote images and other document types in a third-party app.

Thanks.

For The Channel: Have You Hurd This One?

Elliot Markowitz of The ChannelInsider, Ziff Davis Internet, has some things to say in this opinion piece with which we at Ipswitch wholeheartedly agree. In fact, this site seems like a good place for everyone in the channel to visit from time to time since it advocates hard for you. Here’s a brief example:

Enter new HP President and CEO Mark Hurd, of NCR fame.

As previously noted by Channel Insider columnists, Hurd needs to build a relationship with HP’s channel partners—and fast.

Partners need to know where he stands and what his channel religion, for lack of a better word, really is.

Wall Street may be happy it got an NCR gem, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to channel comfort.

Message Hurd, Loud and Clear!

Jim Prendergast: “Microsoft Supporter?” How The Spin Cycle Works Today

This started with seeing this unusual identifier in today’s Seattle Times:

Microsoft supporter Jim Prendergast disputed (former Federal Judge Thomas Penfield ) Jackson’s description of the software industry. “Five years later, the industry has certainly been competing as vigorously as ever,” said Prendergast, president of Americans for Technology Leadership.

Who’s he? What’s a suporter? What’s this Americans for Technology Leadership?
Americans for Technology Leadership is a broad-based coalition of technology professionals, consumers and organizations dedicated to limiting government regulation of technology and fostering competitive market solutions to public policy issues affecting the technology industry. We believe that this approach will ensure that all Americans are able to take advantage of the benefits of the technologies that are shaping the new economy.

Founding Member: Microsoft.

Now back for a brief moment to The Seattle Times article. What was it about and why invoke a quote by ‘Microsoft supporter Jim Prendergast?’

It was about the Judge talking too much again and saying his usual unkind things about the world’s largest software company. A brief excerpt (although you’ve heard it all before):

“Nothing has changed, to my observation, in the five years that have elapsed since my decision,” said Thomas Penfield Jackson, who retired last year as a federal judge. He said the settlement of the government’s case hasn’t lessened Microsoft’s power in the marketplace or changed its business strategy of trying to expand its monopoly.

“Windows is an operating-system monopoly, and the company’s business strategy was to leverage Windows to achieve a comparable dominion over all software markets,” Jackson said in Washington, D.C., at a conference sponsored by the American Antitrust Institute.

The guy has made a career of talking too much.

Microsoft ’spokesperson’ Stacy King, alternatively, may be making a career of saying nothing at all:

Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake said the company won’t comment on the former judge’s remarks.

Why bother. They have ’supporter’ (read:lobbyist) Prendergast to do the talking under the guise of an impressive, seemingly legitimate “Americans for Technology Leadership.”

See how it works?