Solution providers and vendors met up at this year's XChange Government Integrator '08 conference in Washington, D.C. this year to honor the companies that prove that they understand the IT requirements of the public sector.
In this informal survey, we recognize twenty sites from the VARBusiness 500 that go beyond dull presentations to deliver appealing experiences for their users.
ChannelWeb picked 15 common beliefs about Microsoft and gave channel partners the opportunity to explain why they're more fiction than fact.
What's it mean for Dell?
It's not like Dell isn't completely familiar, from the top to the bottom, with EDS. Michael Dell plucked Stephen Schuckenbrock to be his services chief a little more than a year ago; Schuckenbrock had previously worked as Co-COO of EDS and was considered a hands-on guy at the company. In fact, Dell's hiring of Schuckenbrock caused minor speculation that Dell would buy EDS. In the end, Dell decided to move in another direction: buy smaller companies like MSP technology provider SilverBack and partner with the channel.
If Michael Dell had the counsel of a well-placed EDS expert on board like Schuckenbrock, and decided to partner with resellers rather than make a bid for EDS, there may have been good reasons. After all, for all its failings over the years, cash has never been a restraining factor for Dell if it wanted to make such a deal.
And then there's another issue. The last time HP made a King Kong acquisition, when it bought Compaq, it caused so much disruption (some might say distraction) at HP that Dell picked up significant market share from its Palo Alto, Calif.-based competitor. If the integration of EDS causes a similar amount of disruption this time, Dell now has official channel partners on its side to cause HP additional chaos in the market.
HP may be seeking to bring new data center business in through the front door, but, if Dell leverages partners correctly, the Round Rock, Texas-based company could steal it out the side window.
If, however, HP executes well on this deal and minimizes distraction (HP executives are already talking about finding cost synergies, which is often corporate speak for headcount reductions), then they could further push back Dell's long-held plan for building itself into a $10 billion-a-year services company.
The devil is in the execution and whether Dell's new relationship with VARs can make a difference.
But from the bureau's announcement, here's a nugget that might be of interest to those in the IT space in the U.S.:
Professional and technical services employment rose by 27,000 in April after showing little change during the first quarter of 2008. Computer systems design added 10,000 jobs over the month and employment in accounting and bookkeeping services edged up by 9,000.
The key question: Is this a leading indicator or a lagging indicator?
Companies including Intel, Dell and Lexmark, for example, began headcount reductions or some form of restructuring either last year or early this year - - ahead of the worst of the economic slump. While Dell and Lexmark may have acted more on pressure from the investment community, Intel appears to have shown enough foresight to have positioned itself for even a weak pricing environment.
Sun Microsystems, on the other hand, is moving in the opposite direction.
June 6 is the next jobs report, and perhaps then, after some more shakeout, we'll have a better idea of who are leaders and who are laggards.
In an online Q&A on the Ubuntu web site, Shuttleworth responded to an open-ended question about what's next for Ubuntu now that the most recent version, 8.04 "Hardy Heron," has been delivered. He replied: "if I can see a vision articulated by developers that I believe can actually deliver it . . which will put Linux ahead of the Mac or Windows in terms of experience."
He also spent considerable time talking about his desire to see Ubuntu become more commercially viable, and noted Canonical right now isn't profitable. The organization now provides Ubuntu free as a download and even provides free CDs with the Linux OS.
Ubuntu developers have been at least a little interested in Window-fying Ubuntu, to make it a more comfortable experience for end users accustomed to working in Microsoft Windows environments and, perhaps, hesitant to try Ubuntu. They've included some features to address that in the most recent Ubuntu release.
Shuttleworth also shot down a question about whether Canonical be aiming toward an initial public offering for investors: "no need for an IPO," he said.
Looking ahead, not to Ubuntu's future but to Shuttleworth's, one questioner during the session didn't exactly try to finesse one question, asking:
"Can we be confident that Ubuntu will continue as a successful legacy in the (hopefully never) situation that you were to fall under a bus?"
Said Shuttleworth, who once survived a trip into outer space, "I hope my demise would not be messy . . . in practice or in law."
He said he has made continuity arrangements for Canonical in his will.
Having had an up-close look at what was thought to be the release-to-manufacturing version of XP SP3 (colleague Samara Lynn reviewed it last week and I installed it this week on a Toshiba Satellite with no problems), I can say that SP3 will only reaffirm the love for XP. It appears easy and painless to install and works fine.
Microsoft is in a tough position and would be even without the possibility it could spend billions to buy Yahoo. Vista hasn't taken off with the critical praise that the company might have once believed was possible. Instead, people and businesses are committed to sticking with XP. The CEO of a technology manufacturer told me recently he won't let his own company switch from XP to Vista for the foreseeable future because the business already runs too well on XP.
The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant is stuck in an ether of formally ending XP's sale on June 30, while some PC manufacturer partners will still offer it pre-loaded on PCs on a "downgrade" rights basis.
If Microsoft wants to turn the situation around, it needs look no further than Coca-Cola. The soft drink maker had the ill fortune, in 1992, of changing the formula of its flagship product, Coke, to make it sweeter. The market hated it. People wanted their beloved Coke. With rival Pepsi charging hard, Coca-Cola blinked. The company brought back the old formula, called it "Coke Classic," dubbed the new stuff "New Coke" (it eventually disappeared) and the company lived to talk about it.
This isn't the first time someone has compared Vista to New Coke. (Check out this Google search.) While a lot of people will remember Coca-Cola's initial mistake, many tend to forget that, in the long run, its chief brand has endured and strengthened.
Could Microsoft learn a lesson from that? Could it announce that XP will live on, renamed as "Windows Classic?" Could it announce that it now has a roadmap for XP with SP 4, SP 5 and SP 6? And Vista will also have a place in the market?
Microsoft, publicly, still shows enormous confidence in Vista. But there are worse things for a company than to have two products in which you show enormous confidence - - even if one is classic and the other eventually just goes away.
But that quiet might not last, at least for the rest of the industry.
Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen has written a lengthy piece, based on questions and answers with a couple of experts, on what options are left for both Microsoft and Yahoo. His most intriguing conclusion: No matter what happens between those two companies, the days of hostile takeovers in the technology space are just beginning:
We are learning that hostile takeovers have arrived in our industry. This is the second major hostile takeover so far -- the other was Oracle's takeover of Peoplesoft -- but there will be more.
This is significant because historically hostile takeovers practically never happened in technology. Potential hostile acquirors assumed that hostile takeovers wouldn't work because the target company's employees would bail and the target company's business would collapse.
It turns out that as technology companies become larger and more mature, acquirors are becoming increasingly convinced that neither of these assumptions hold. . .
My bet is that hostile takeovers, particularly of larger and more mature companies, are going to become increasingly common in our industry.
The excitement may be just beginning.
If large mergers and acquisitions can prove distracting, how about large hostile takeovers? Andreessen is correct, in that there are really no templates for big hostile takeovers in technology. But those who can recall the hotly contested Hewlett-Packard-Compaq merger earlier this decade might also recall how steep a price HP paid in just distractions alone. While Ballmer may not care what Andreessen, his former rival, may have to say, he may want to drop and dime and give Carly Fiorina, HP's former CEO, a quick call.
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