Technology Industry Archive

The other day, I mentioned Forrester’s take on enterprise IT spending, at least in terms of software. Gartner has come out with its own study on IT spending, the the results look a bit more sobering. The first quarter of calendar 2009 saw a significant change in CIO spending outlook. In a survey of 900 CIOs, Gartner found “significant budget revisions” compared to the CIO...

More...

My colleague Michael Hickins wrote an illuminating post yesterday about big business ignoring Cisco’s united computing system, which is supposed to be a data center platform that could rival those of IBM and HP. That got me thinking about a number of news items and thoughts that have been kicking around, with tech vendors missing big success in all sorts of “additional”...

More...

Microsoft has announced a special edition of Windows 7 that won’t include Internet Explorer 8. The move is intended to satisfy European Union regulators and their antitrust investigation into the company. But, wait … there’s something really familiar sounding about all of this. Oh, right — this is exactly what Microsoft had once told U.S. regulators was impossible. Let me...

More...

Cisco’s designs on server domination lie in tatters on the data center floor. It turns out that it’s having far more trouble than reported convincing customers to even consider its plans for a unified computing system (UCS) that would rival other platform vendors like HP and IBM. Data centers figure heavily in Cisco’s growth plans, as evidenced by the huge introduction it gave...

More...

Paul Kedrosky got a lot of attention yesterday for a paper he wrote showing that venture funds are not providing investors with enough returns and suggesting that the venture capital industry should essentially right-size itself by half. The sector must shrink its way back to health if venture capital is to provide competitive returns and secure its own future as a credible asset class and...

More...

As proof that a combination of a large bank account and persistence aren’t everything, Microsoft is discontinuing its Microsoft Money software. The notification has officially been released: With banks, brokerage firms and Web sites now providing a range of options for managing personal finances, the consumer need for Microsoft Money Plus has changed. After suspending annual updates of...

More...

Rackspace, normally associated with server co-location and hosting services, will be using a hybrid approach to cloud computing, letting customers switch between hosted data centers and cloud computing resources. Although it may not appear as “pure” as what some other major vendors tout, the company is smart, honing in on the needs of the buyer in a way that will let enterprises...

More...

The Department of Justice is showing increasing interest in the settlement between Google, book publishers, and the Authors Guild. And the way debate is shaping up in the publishing community, what had seemed a PR stroke of genius for Google — make use of copyrighted material, wait to get sued, settle, and seem like a hero — seems more likely to turn into an expensive and messy...

More...

Microsoft fears Google with good reason. Why else would its chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, waste time trashing Wave, a collaboration application that Google hasn’t even brought to market yet? Microsoft realizes that the search leader has been on the verge of ripping a big hole in its ocean of customers for business applications; now, by introducing a connector between its Web-based...

More...

I have to disagree with the assessment of my colleague Michael Hickins that Microsoft changes to how it approaches network security will help Apple at all in getting into the enterprise. The problems Apple faces there are completely different, and the security issues are simply Microsoft in reaction to how the enterprise has already been changing security. First, to Apple’s problems. I...

More...