ShadowRAM: February 27, 2006
Flickr user AndrewVDill posted on the online photo-sharing site a photo of a sign in a Manhattan deli window advertising: “Free buttered bagel. Compliments of Microsoft. All day.”
His question was: Why? Our guess: To get people to focus on the holes in the bagels, instead of those in its software. Just kidding. We have no idea why, but when people give away free stuff in New York, there are always suspicions.
Microsoft insiders are watching how well the integration of the Exchange Server group into the Info Worker realm proceeds. In late January, Microsoft said it was moving the e-mail server guys to the Real Time Communications group, which is in the Info Worker (aka Office) part of its house, where Outlook mail already resides. That means Exchange Server—like Content Management Server and SharePoint Portal Server before it—is no longer with the Server and Tools group.
One insider writes: “It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Exchange now that they’ve been merged in. Lots of nail-biting over there … no surprise, as badly as they’ve treated the Outlook guys over the years. :)” (The smiley was the worker’s, not ours.)
Salesforce.com can’t catch a break. Some might even say that CEO Marc Benioff, a follower of Eastern philosophies, is getting a bit of karmic payback for all his slams of old-line software.
The company’s fourth-quarter call last Wednesday was rudely interrupted when the Web conference just died—flatlined about 25 minutes in. Reporters were doubtless wondering whether the conference was running on the same Mirrorforce infrastructure Salesforce has been touting.
Some Juniper partners say Tushar Kothari and Bob Bruce aren’t getting a free hand to build Juniper’s enterprise channel strategy and whip the field sales force into shape, leading some to speculate that the two could depart. But both said they plan to stay put. “We have superb support from the company,” Kothari said.
Blogging has its critics (Michael Dell, for one, has just said no). But Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz continues blogging away with a sweet offer: If you use a Sun Niagara server on a free trial and blog about it, you might get to keep the thing.
Writes Schwartz: “If you write a blog that fairly assesses the machine’s performance (positively or negatively), send us a pointer; we’re likely to let you keep the machine. (And before you ask, the marketing team makes the decision about what qualifies for the promotion, not I—although I know they love drama, charts and compelling competitive analyses.)”
Well, that’s one way to compete with Dell!