Hyper-V launches, let the battle begin
Microsoft announced this morning that their new virtualization platform, Hyper-V, has launched. NetworkWorld leaked the story last night (don’t they have an NDA??) and published a full story this morning. This dovetails with the buzz I started at NetworkWorld yesterday afternoon by claiming Hyper-V will kill VMWare. That started a religious war in the blogosphere overnight and there’s a great discussion going on over at BroadDev.
John Furrier called VMWare out while John Casaretto did a deep dive on his experience with VMWare and wondered if Hyper-V was all hype. Taken from my NWW article, “Hyper-V is a LOT more friendly for Windows admins and it doesn’t require any of the core Linux skills that installing and tuning an ESX server does. The combination of easy to use and free has been Google’s trademark strategy. Microsoft may have taken a page from their book on this one and I think it’s very likely to succeed.”
BroadDev – Unified Communications, Virtualization, Security, and Web 2.0
Since the UCStrategies UCSummit I’ve been working with John Furrier on a new project around Unified Communications, Virtualization, Security and Web 2.0. Together we launched BroadDev which stands for Broadband Developments. I’m excited about the launch and encourage my readers to jump over there and check it out. I’ll be posting anything topical there while maintaining this blog for personal and opinion ideas around whatever I’m thinking about at the time.
John and I will be working with a select group of bloggers for an always on technical and editorial experience. Dive in as we explore and hopefully clarify the worlds of UC, web 2.0 and convergence.
Cloud Computing: What happens when there’s a storm?
Amazon.com suffered outages on June 6th and 9th. Worst case scenario, you can’t spend your hard-earned money on books and trinkets. However an outage in the SaaS world could have widespread economic impact both for individual companies and the economy as a whole. Google had just such an outage earlier this week. …and it wasn’t the first time
Google wants companies to bring all their tools to the google cloud. From Microsoft Office replacements to email and who knows what other enterprise apps are next. It’s a great idea and leveraging the great power of the Google datacenter sounds great… until it breaks. How does a CFO explain to wall street that they missed their numbers because some cloud app had an outage at quarter end?
It’s not just limited to Google. Microsoft has a similiar solution that includes a limited version of Office Communications Server, Exchange and Sharepoint in their HMC 4.5 offering. That said, somehow I trust Microsoft knows how to keep Exchange running more than I trust Google to keep a hurried app designed for both individuals and coroporations up and running at 5 nines. Part of the problem is Google tries to be everything to everyone. All of its apps are directed to all classes of users from individuals through enterprise. Different classes of users have different needs, different requirements and different tolerances for learning curve. Simply put there is no single solution for everyone. Despite the hype, until Google realizes this they’re doomed to be a novelty in the business market.
Google, try not to fail, we’re all watching – 
Great Firewall of China Powered by Cisco?
According to an internal memo posted by boingboing and wired, Cisco sees China’s repression as a business opportunity. “The document is the first evidence that the networking giant has marketed its routers to China specifically as a tool of repression.” (wired) Understandably Cisco is backpedalling as fast as they can.
“It is very regrettable that one of our engineers quoted directly from Mr. Runsen Li, the Chinese government’s head of IT for the Golden Shield project in this internal presentation,” said Terry Alberstein, a senior director of corporate communications at Cisco. “They do not represent Cisco’s views, principles or its sales and marketing strategy or approach. They were merely inserted in that presentation to capture the goals of the Chinese government in that specific project, which was one of many discussed in that 2002 presentation.”
I’d file this under “We’re sorry we got caught”. Cisco is well-known for their aggressive sales tactics but no golden shield will protect them from the moral fallout on this one. I think the Chinese media blog said it best:
At the end of the day, though, Cisco has done a lousy job at explaining itself. We are left with many question marks. Their behavior and statements to date have given us little reason to believe that they care in any meaningful way about human rights.
PGP/GPG for GMail
My buddy Zep found a cool tool that integrates FireGPG seamlessly with Gmail and posted a great description on his blog. As if there weren’t enough reasons to move your personal account to Gmail, for many of us this is something we’ve been clamoring for for awhile. In an age where identity theft is an everyday occurrence there’s no reason not to encrypt your email. Personally, I send most client correspondence encrypted for obvious privacy reasons.
I’m really impressed how easy it is to use. There’s a dashboard with a Gmail tab that’s pretty much idiot-proof. I say that with a smirk, but it’s important. If only us geeks use it then there’s not much to be gained. We probably would have found another method anyway. The beauty of this solution is in its simplicity and ease of use.
It’s a Firefox extension and pushes itself right into Gmail. I wish they’d make a solution for IE7 as well since for better or worse it’s still the de facto standard web browser. You’ll note I said it’s a firefox extension. It’s not a key manager. For that you’ll need to download GNUPG or my preference, GPG4Win which also has a file encryption plugin GPGee and an Outlook 2003 plugin, GPGol.
Although I haven’t tested it, I’d guess this will work Google Apps hosted mail as well. That makes it an ideal solution for small business users that don’t have, or want, in house encryption expertise or to bring in expensive consultants.
What are you waiting for? All the tools are free and available with 2-3 quick downloads. I’ve walked a few very non-technical clients through this process already so if you have any questions please leave a comment or contact me directly.
The saga of MicroHooBook goes on
It’s sounds like a bastard apple product, but MicroHooBook won’t be announced at the Apple developers conference. John Furrier was the first to put 2 and 2 together and get Microsoft’s new strategy; buy only what they need of Yahoo and acquire Facebook.
No one has mentioned what I thought would be the key buzz. Buying Facebook makes Microsoft “cool” again. Arguably not since NT4 has Microsoft really been seen as cool or hip. Vista was supposed to be the trendy infusion Microsoft needed but fell flat. Facebook has so much market momentum Microsoft is hoping the platform can carry the whole company into the hearts of the internets. Buying only a portion of Yahoo gives Microsoft infinitely more value per dollar without the liability on Yahoo’s other properties that wouldn’t really synergize with Microsoft any way. So, the Yahooligans are happy.
This seems like a win all around, even for our buddy Carl Icahn who is likely to see a pretty good short term return on his Yahoo investment. It may not be the whale he expected if Microsoft purchased all of Yahoo but if he chooses to hold his shares he can use that leverage to help drive Yahoo in Asia where it is doing very well.
In the same vein, Kara Swisher published the full communication regarding Yahoo’s view of Microsoft’s view of Yahoo. Doesn’t this seem a little bit like a mouse asking a cat it’s thoughts right before it gets eaten. Yahoo being the mouse, Microsoft is batting at it like a toy prolonging the fun before it moves in for the kill.
Update: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook won’t be sold. However doth he protest too much? “You can tell, from our history and what we’ve done, that we really wanted to keep the company independent, by focusing on building and focusing on the long-term.” He’s already talking about Facebook being independent in the past tense. Thankfully John Furrier has more time than me today and is following the story realtime like CNN in Iraq during the “anyone named Bush” era.
Update 2: Facebook has ceased its search for a new CTO to replace Adam D’Angelo. Hmm, under what situation would they not need a CTO?
Jerry Yang / Yahoo smokescreens latest Carl Icahn / Microsoft move
…And that move is Checkmate. On top of of the official Yahoo response to Carl Icahn’s letter, Jerry Yang felt the need to add his 2 cents. His advice? Ignore it and it’ll go away! Taken from his email to all employees:
What can employees do?
We ask you to continue to put aside all rumors and speculation you may be hearing.
Kara Swisher has been on this since the beginning and has a great analysis of CARL ICAHN’s intial letter of intent to Yahoo with the best part being:
Nonetheless, I must ask: What are you smoking over there on the Left Coast?
When someone dangles more than $40 billion to anyone on Wall Street, we’d throw our mother under the wheels of the bus if we needed to to get it. Frankly, we would do it for $12.43.
In any case, your break with reality is my golden opportunity.
Regardless of Yahoo’s Roy Bostock’s posturing it seems Roy, Jerry and the rest of the board are soon to be in the unemployment line. Michael Arrington put it most bluntly in his post “Dear Yahoo: You’re Fired“. The key is, he’s dead on. Valleywag’s analysis of who own how much of Yahoo shows Bert and Ernie, I mean Roy and jerry, are virtually powerless to stop Carl from doing whatever he wants; including bending them over a table while Steve Ballmer comes in for the kill. (In the picture on the left, Steve and jerry do their best impression of playground “mercy“. photo credit to Kara Swisher and Boomtown)
Is Ballmer playing the role of Icahn’s puppeteer or is it just a convenient alliance in light of a win-win situation involving billions of dollars? I’d vote the latter, but they do make a formidable team!
Blackberry Bold Available Now!! sorta…
Earlier this week at the UCStrategies conference a peer (unnamed for his/her protection) was trying to show me something I think he knew I already knew about… It took me a day to figure out what was behind it, he was showing it to me on the new Blackberry Bold! Very cool form factor and usability seemed much improved over the pearl and similar models. I’m a tried and true Windows Mobile user, but this is a great release from RIM.
According to Engadget AT&T will get the Bold first for a retail price of $300. Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile will get it in September with the T-Mobile edition costing an extra $50.
Day 3 of the UC Strategies Conference: Bill Gates on Unified Communications redux
Here’s me at the UC Strategies UC Summit, taken with the IPEvo PoV. Not bad for a sub-$40 camera.
Most of the Microsoft small group presentation was “friend-DA” private so I’ll stay mum on the details. The majority of Eric Swift’s presentation was taken from Bill Gates’ OCS Launch presentation, but he talked about much more concrete functionality and roadmap. Without giving too much detail, there are some very compelling features coming to the OCS platform.
Michael Finneran is on stage beating WiMax to a pulp! It’s entertaining, but very US-focused. It’s an easy target after the Sprint-Clearwire debacle, but I never expected it to be huge in the US. WiMax is a great solution for developing countries and it’s certainly head and shoulders above the trendy metro wifi networks of last year. I’ll give Michael one thing, he’s darned entertaining. I tried to get a good shot but he was running all over the stage. It’s rare to see a traditional telecomm guy “get it” the way Michael does from a high level concept perspective.
Motorola came up midday. Despite knowing much of the inside story over there, I came away vastly unimpressed with their TEAM iniative. Engadget posted in March a prototype of the TEAM “devices”. In March they lacked phone functionality. Apparently they’ve now added that through a proprietary magic dual-band chip. I tweet’d “Motorola wants to pitch a story they can’t coherently explain” and even through the second presentation I’m not sure they have a good handle beyond a 50,000 foot concept. The various diagrams also show just how unsuccessful Motorola’s been in integrating Good Technology. For better or worse I think the TEAM concept puts to rest any speculation they will spin it back out. My guess it will stay with the handset unit post-split. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve long been a supporter of dual-mode phones with seamless roaming and I think it’s a great idea, but I think TEAM may be too narrow a solution to drive widespread adoption on its own.
Fellow blogger and twitter’r John Furrier had some additional thoughts on MS Live Mesh and the UC news today.
Marty Parker and Don Van Doren jumped up to explain the black art of demystifying ROI around UC. It was a great presentation I’m not sure I can summarize here. They also have some great worksheets and tools around calculating ROI that can only be found through them at UniComm Consulting. If you’re confused about UC ROI beyond the simple productivity calculations and diving into business process optimization they’re the resident experts and worth talking to. I did an interview with Don Van Doren tonight after the UCStrategies UC Summit. Keep an eye out for it tomorrow over at Hyperconnectivity.com.
Comcast acquires Plaxo
Today Comcast announced they’ll acquire Plaxo for somewhere between $150 and $170 million. A bargain by facebook valuation standards but would you really want to own a company best known for spamming all your friends the second you join? On the other hand it almost makes sense. Two of the most hated companies in media join forces in the only market they’ll ever be able to compete with the big boys in evil world domination. Michael Arrington posted a surprisingly expository analysis on TechCrunch.
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My Twitter Stream- alexlewis: Maybe add a lil La Fee Verte to the party tonight #absinthe March 17, 2010
- alexlewis: Great shave this morning. One of the best ways to start the day. Plan on ending it with irish coffee and whiskey! March 17, 2010
- alexlewis: @jonmck So you can't send SIP through it but should still work for reverse proxy of meeting content. Am I reading it wrong? March 17, 2010
- alexlewis: Great night of volleyball last night. Working a few different fronts today and looking forward to a massage tonight. March 17, 2010
- alexlewis: @jonmck I haven't seen anything. Then again, it was along time before I saw isa in print even though it was needed. March 17, 2010
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