Microsoft STB’s Cloud Vision: Rashomon in Reverse

June 17, 2010 by Leave a comment

By Charles King, Pund-IT, Inc.

On the surface, Akiro Kurosawa’s classic film Rashomon (based on the short story by Ryunosuke Akutagawa) qualifies as a conventional police procedural, set in 19th century Japan. While traveling to their home, a samurai and his wife are confronted by a bandit, who rapes the wife and murders the husband. But when the bandit is captured and tried for his crimes, the tale takes a psychological turn. The narratives of the event, as told by three living witnesses and the ghost of the samurai are not merely dissimilar; they are openly contradictory, thus forcing the other participants and the audience to determine who is lying, where the truth lies and why.

Modern day New Orleans, La. is 10,000 miles and 200+ years removed from 19th century Japan, but the story of Rashomon came to mind during Microsoft’s recent TechEd conference. During his opening keynote, Server and Tools Business (STB) President Bob Muglia offered conference attendees insights into the company’s vision of cloud computing, related products and services, and Microsoft’s long-term plans for the cloud. Up front, we were struck by the depth of the company’s efforts and the breadth of its goals; Microsoft doesn’t intend to simply be a player in cloud products and services but the leader in cloud-related development, strategy and solutions delivery. Read more of this post

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Microsoft Murky on Cloud Licensing

June 17, 2010 by

By Laura DiDio, ITIC

Microsoft did a very credible job at its TechEd conference in New Orleans last week, laying out the technology roadmap and strategy for a smooth transition from premises-based networks/services to its emerging Azure cloud infrastructure and software + services model.

One of the biggest challenges facing Microsoft and its customers as it stands on the cusp of what Bob Muglia, president of Microsoft’s Server & Tools Business (STB) unit characterized as a “major transformation in the industry called cloud computing,” is how the Redmond, Wash. software giant will license its cloud offerings. Read more of this post

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Just a Glimpse of Windows Phone 7

June 17, 2010 by Leave a comment

Roger Kay examines Microsoft’s much-needed new smartphone OS play. I’m delighted to welcome Roger to the blog.

Next Iteration of Microsoft’s Mobile Platform Connects Well with Backend Services

The much-missing Microsoft mobile effort was on display for a brief flash — which you could easily have missed if you sneezed at the wrong moment — during Server & Tools chief Bob Muglia’s speech at TechEd in New Orleans last week.

In his defense, Muglia is a Server & Tools guy and mobile phones are pretty tangential to his main businesses.  But one couldn’t help noticing a scattered quality to his presentation.  He just had so many areas to cover — each of which easily deserved its own keynote, if not a separate conference — that he could only give them the most succinct treatment individually.  But what he did show of Windows Phone 7 indicates that the effort continues apace and we can expect to see a fairly interesting platform later this year.  Microsoft’s position in the on-fire smartphone category has been eroding in recent years, victim of Apple’s success with the iPhone and the arrival of Android as a viable alternative platform.  Elsewhere and later at the conference, other company executives announced new marketplace policies and highlighted the business value of Windows Phone 7 in 10 mobile sessions. Read more of this post

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Oracle Exadata: Early Signs Promising

June 15, 2010 by 1 Comment

Exadata is looking good. In the past few months, I’ve had the chance to talk to several early adopters of Oracle Exadata V2, some in connection with a sponsored white paper Oracle has just published. It’s still early, but I see this product as a milestone, regardless of its commercial success. That is still to be determined, although I wouldn’t bet against it. How it will be affected by Oracle’s execution of the Sun acquisition is another open question, and the recent surprise layoffs, which showed that either the announced expectations were laughably off base or Ellison’s early announcements about  hiring plans were less than candid, don’t bode too well for the near term. Rob Enderle made some strong and provocative points in his guest post here. Read more of this post

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Microsoft Plays Where’s Waldo? With BI – Good Idea

June 10, 2010 by 6 Comments

In April, I was critical of the BI messaging I heard from Microsoft – as told, it was long on benefit adjectives and short on architectural clarity. But things have changed since then, and the Combined Tech Ed/Business Intelligence Conference made that very clear. Do I see more clarity because I now know more of the detail, and have internalized my own narrative? Likely. But it would be outrageously self-centered of me to think that was all. The fact is, the story is being told better, and there is much to tell. It needs to be told well because it’s complex behind the “simple” descriptions that underlie Microsoft’s ultimate value proposition: BI should be an easily consumed, context-aware service available to everyone, not a separate offering. Microsoft is tackling the continuing grand challenge of BI – expanding usage beyond the 20% of potential users that are BI consumers today. Read more of this post

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Attunity – An Independent Alternative For Data Replication

May 31, 2010 by 2 Comments

Attunity (ATTUF), a small OTC-traded company out of Massachusetts, is quietly building up its base, expanding a 1000-customer foothold in real-time change data capture (CDC) and data replication that has made it one of the few remaining independent players standing. With Oracle’s acquisition of GoldenGate and SAP’s announced plan to acquire Sybase, many firms are thinking about having an alternative supplier. Attunity’s competitors these days include iWay and Progress DataDirect - few firms can offer robust support for data sources like RMS, VSAM, NonStop SQL, Enscribe and Adabas as well as common RDBMSs like DB2, SQL Server and Oracle, and that leaves Attunity a relatively wide-open opportunity. Attunity recently announced a 53% year-over-year growth in license revenues; it’s profitable (although GAAP profitability, while in sight, has yet to be achieved) and beginning to repay its debt. With less than $2M in revenues, it may well find itself an acquisition target, to boot.Attunity logo

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IBM Impact Event – Process is King

May 30, 2010 by 1 Comment

IT vendors perpetually balance between “business” and “product” messages. And it’s a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” kind of problem. Take a mixed load of analysts and half will always think one of the dimensions got short shrift – and the other half will say exactly the opposite. So take my first impression of IBM’s Impact event, the WebSphere gathering, with a grain or twelve of salt: “IBM didn’t say nearly enough about product at Impact this year.” And there was much to say, so for me, it felt like a missed opportunity.

Analysts are spoiled creatures; I was annoyed that there was no analyst workroom, no power at our “special seating” (as if the good seats weren’t enough), bad connectivity on Day Two….as I said, spoiled. I try not to behave like a diva. Mostly I succeed. I did manage to remain focused enough to see clearly that business process has become the focus for the WebSphere gang – they’ve moved beyond an obsession with technology to focus on what we do with it. That’s a very positive step up. Read more of this post

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RainStor Ramp Rolls On

May 29, 2010 by Leave a comment

Click to see larger version

When I last spoke to Rainstor, a new round of funding had just come in and prospects seemed bright. It could hardly have happened at a better time. A recent Information Week study of 437 business technology professionals showed that more than half are managing over 10 TB of data, 7% managing 201-500 TB, and 8% more than 500 TB. The study says that “for the first time  enterprise storage architects are more worried about meeting capacity demands than they are about data security.” On the heels of the Economist’s recent assertion that more data is being generated than storage being built to contain it, the issue is more critical than ever. Read more of this post

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VoltDB – DIY OLTP. Open Source. Win.

May 26, 2010 by 5 Comments

In a seemingly perfect marriage of product and target market, database pioneer Mike Stonebraker’s new in-memory database company VoltDB has emerged from stealth mode using the open source model, soon to be open core. Its first release, GPL licensed Community Edition will appeal to developers who need blindingly fast transaction processing and are willing to do a lot of work themselves to get there – the do it yourself (DIY) database. Who better than the Gluecon community? Gluecon was the perfect place to do the formal roll out, filled as it is with hands-on folks looking to work with NoSQL products (like Cassandra, CouchDB, MongoDB, Riak, Voldemort, etc.)

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EMC World 2010 and IT Vendor Evolution

May 24, 2010 by 4 Comments

From Charles King, Pund-IT, Inc.

IT vendor conferences offer a variety of amusements and educational opportunities, and EMC World 2010 was no exception. But the most interesting aspect of this year’s event focused on how things have changed for EMC during the past year. Consider this: EMC World 2009 kicked off with a keynote co-hosted by company President and CEO Joe Tucci and VMware President and CEO Paul Maritz, emphasizing the companies’ common vision of virtualization as the foundation for cloud computing. Last week in Boston, Tucci used his solo keynote to highlight EMC’s notion of private cloud computing as the rightful future of enterprise datacenters and discussed the partnerships EMC is pursuing to make that vision a reality. Read more of this post

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