Free Software Linux

Google set off an enterprise-tastic bomb last night when they announced the opening of Google Marketplace, an online store for business apps. Now, we can’t help but wonder, is Microsoft an impending casualty?  

It seems that, having lost its position as monarch of the world of computing, Microsoft has decided to become the industry jester. Last week I wrote about its amusing suggestion that we should all be taxed to clean up the mess its software has caused. Now we have this witty post on Microsoft's Port 25 site, which involves writing about open source software applications and the platforms they run on without mentioning “Linux” once.
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One of the many sad aspects of Sun's disappearance into the maw of Oracle is that many will see this as “proof” that its strategy of building on open source was a failure. But as Simon Phipps, Sun's former Chief Open Source Officer, rightly says in his valedictory blog post:
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The release date for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 is out and about, but not everyone is happy with some of the details. Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says the company has ambitions with this release for a fully functioning Office in the cloud.

The official launch date for SharePoint 2010 (news, site) is circling the net and like everyone else interested in SharePoint, we have marked our calendar with a great big exclamation mark.

Google’s made yet another purchase. Rumor has it this time they’ve spent somewhere around US$ 25 million on DocVerse (news, site), a San Francisco-based technology startup that allows people to collaborate on Microsoft Office files online.

For a company that is known primarily for the desktop, new comments by CEO Steve Ballmer that 70% of Microsoft’s employees are doing something "cloud-based or cloud-inspired" seems an odd shift in focus. But then, everyone is in a rush to the cloud these days. Why would Microsoft (news, site) be any different.

A recent paper released by Forrester Research (news, site) entitled SharePoint 2010: A More Viable Cloud Option argues that if you are looking at deploying SharePoint off the premises, with the introduction of SharePoint 2010 (news, site),  now is a good time to do it.

There’s obviously been a lot of talk and speculation since the Elliott Associates announcement. I had started drafting a post looking at the key scenarios and add my own take on how this could play out when I ran into Andy Updegrove’s take over here. Andy nails it. The only part that I’m not “in the boat” on is his take on the Microsoft importance. I actually wonder if this isn’t exactly what a certain person in Redmond wanted though I’ll keep my reasons to myself. ;-)

Here's an interesting piece about software in UK schools. There are a couple of remarks that although incidental, are incredibly revealing of all that's wrong with UK schools in this respect:

several people told me of contracts which meant that every time a school wanted to upgrade software, or even install something free like Mozilla Firefox, they had to pay a hefty fee to their contractor. That meant they were reluctant to change anything, with the result that software was soon out of date.
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This week in document management brings us plenty of Microsoft news including SharePoint (news, site) archiving in the cloud and a new secure cloud service to simplify doing business for the Feds.

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We know there is increasing competition for cloud-based services. But one of the biggest competitions — between Google (news, site) and Microsoft (news, site) — just got a little more interesting when a Microsoft written Hosted Services Comparison Whitepaper crossed our paths. Do you know which set of cloud-services is better? Microsoft thinks they do.

One of the decisive moments in computing history was when Microsoft was investigated for and found guilty of breaching US rules on anti-competitive behaviour. Microsoft's line in defending itself was that it was not anti-competitive, that this investigation was all down to desperate, failed competitors trying to take their petty revenge by setting the government on the company, and that it should be allowed to “innovate”, untrammelled by those silly governmental authorities that just don't understand all this groovy technology stuff.
On Open Enterprise blog.

It’s Friday and I am in a Microsoft (news, site) state of mind. Particularly when it comes to news about SharePoint or cloud offerings like this one: Microsoft will offer governments a version of its Business Productivity Online Suite that more secure and private than the current one.

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As I've noted many times, one of the big benefits of deploying open source is freedom from lock-in: using open formats that anyone can implement means that it is relatively easy to change supplier. That's not the case with Microsoft's code and formats, as the following sad saga underlines...
On Open Enterprise blog.