Last week was pretty busy. I went to a Lucent-Alcatel sponsored Clouderati party. Hung out with Reuven Cohen, George Reese, James Urquhart, Sinclair Schuller, Klint Finley, Alex Williams, Chris Gaun, Aneel Dash, Deborah Salons.
Also attended Forecast 2012, DeployCon, CloudExpo sessions.
The Microsoft Surface sort-of debut shows that the company is neither “all in” when it comes to tablet computing nor when it comes to its hardware partners.
Ballmer’s windy warm-up remarks about the Gates-Allen vision of “great software and hardware working together” provided one of those “uh-oh” moments in which you knew he was getting ready to drop the hammer on somebody. After fulsomely praising the company’s hardware partners, the hammer blow came: Microsoft would be going it alone with the Surface.
I haven’t received comments from any of Microsoft’s PC partners, so I don’t know how this announcement is being received by them. I can’t imagine it is being received well.
A successful vertically-integrated Microsoft product has now existed for several years with the Xbox. But, ironically, this is a specifically focused machine, in sharp contrast to the general purpose computing that Ballmer extolled as the basis of Microsoft’s success over the decades.
Having it Both Ways
Ballmer tried to have it both ways with this machine’s purpose. He consciously refrained from calling it a tablet, insisting that it’s simply the latest and greatest personal-computer iteration. It’s doubtful, however, that anyone will compare it to laptops, netbooks, or the latest portable Macs.
Perhaps we should compare it to the latter, though. It’s price point may force us to if a price point is ever announced. (Word is that will come when Windows 8 becomes official). Because as an iPad competitor, it seems to be, well, so Microsoft-ish.
The kickstand is such a kludge that even Ballmer drew attention to it in a semi-mocking fashion during the announcement. Contrast it to the iPad cover, which performs a kickstand’s function, among other things. Contrast the Surface’s attached keyboard with the iPad’s wireless keyboard, and a further aesthetic difference is apparent – and we know that Steve Jobs’ main criticism of Microsoft was its alleged lack of aesthetic sense and taste.
The inclusion of the standard keyboard and a stylus indicate that this is a PC as well. To me these are not negatives, because I write for a living. But weren’t they deemed unessential by the iPad’s Great Designer? Isn’t the point of a tablet that much of what most people do today doesn’t involve typing or using a Jeffersonian ink pen?
The Surface’s light weight – less than that of an iPad, I think – was a big selling point during Ballmer’s presentation. I’m not sure precisely how much the final products will weigh versus the iPad and portable Macs. I do hope it’s expressed in something other than grams, so that I can feel like a real American, and feel that the Surface has nothing to do with drugs.
My Decision?
I have no idea if I will buy a Microsoft Surface when it becomes available. But this I know: I will be so very happy to see a very lightweight portable computer such as this on the market, because for decades now I have been using and lugging around the same basic computing device.
One of the little-known facts of history is my presence on the editorial staff of Portable Computer, first published in 1982 and the world’s first credible source of information on the topic. Our launch issue had an interview with Adam Osborne. Over the decades, I have tried out hundreds and hundreds of systems.
It’s the Same Old Song
Today, netbooks are, in the final analysis, simply too small to be practical for my work. So my primary system weighs about nine pounds. It is fundamentally the same machine as the Data General One that I was using in 1985.
My latest machine is a lot faster, has a lot brighter screen than the un-backlit One, and can communicate a heck of a lot better than anything from 1985 – but when I travel, I am lugging the same bowling ball around the great and less great cities of the world. I am 27 years older, but my laptop weighs the same. These nine-pound hammers are a little too heavy for my size.
I will welcome a truly competitive market of 1- and 2-pound devices that don’t cost more than the per capita income of the Philippines, the country in which I was just based for a few years. I hope that the Surface succeeds, even as Ballmer’s presentation gave so many indications – breaking from partnerships, unfocused design, kludgey details, crashing during the demo, no price point – that it will not.
Virtustream’s private cloud solution is designed to provide secure, high-performance, enterprise-class cloud infrastructure services across private, virtual private, public, and hybrid implementations.
Virtustream this week announced xStream 2.0, a private cloud solution designed to provide secure, high-performance, enterprise-class cloud infrastructure services across private, virtual private, public, and hybrid implementations.
Available as software, stand-alone appliance, and as a managed service, xStream helps foster better management of mission-critical applications on clouds, the venture-backed, three-year-old company said. Those deploying may select a tailored mix of on-site private cloud, combined with off-site public and virtual private clouds.
SYS-CON Events announced today that Fortress ITX, a leading provider of network infrastructure services, has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 11th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 5–8, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
FortressITX is a Cloud Integrator serving the NY Metro area providing complete IT integration and unparalleled Hosted Exchange, Hosted PBX, Connectivity and Virtual Desktop Integration (VDI) services. FortressITX also provides industry leading broadband services to support your complex hosted infrastructure. In total, FortressITX provides comprehensive business IT services with an emphasis on Cloud technology designed to support the future of OaaS (Office as a Service).
Panzura on Tuesday announced that the company has closed a $15 million Series C funding round led by Opus Capital with participation from its existing investors, Matrix Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Chevron Technology Ventures, the investment arm of the world’s third-largest oil conglomerate. Opus Capital General Partner Carl Showalter will join Panzura’s board of directors. The new round of funding brings the company’s total backing to $33 million. «Panzura is honored to add the expertise of our new partners at Opus Capital, with the addition of industry veteran Carl Showalter to our board,” Randy Chou, CEO and cofounder of Panzura, stated, “and are encouraged by the ongoing support of our longtime partners at Matrix Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Chevron Technology Ventures.»
Following Gartner’s recent report on what it sees as the five key trends that will shape cloud computing strategies between now and 2015, here is my perspective on the impact cloud computing will have on an SME audience.
Gartner’s trends tend to focus on the larger organisations, typically 5000 seats and above, yet in the UK 99% of businesses are sub-250 employees and will have different requirements, benefits and considerations when looking to utilise a cloud platform.
Many customers are still confused about what the ‘cloud’ is and what all the hype and terminology means to them in real terms.
Having spent a great deal of time in discussions with such customers at events and meetings, I continue to find a lack of understanding and clarity past the surface level of the cloud being internet based.
Most cannot explain SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, private and public clouds, yet know …
This year’s Cloud Expo New York appeared to be double the size of last year. Not only were there more solution providers on the expo floor, there appeared to me quite a few additional sessions to attend. I felt even the session quality was better than last year, with more knowledge spread across various tracks, and it was obvious the expertise was well, more expert than before. There also appeared to be more attendees, and in greater diversity than the previous year. Of course, all of this improvement is most likely due to the simple fact the market for cloud computing is maturing rapidly. In fact, if there was one easy way to witness the growth of cloud computing, it would be simply through viewing the sheer growth of this conference over one year.
10th International Cloud Expo, held on June 11–14, 2012 at the Javits Center in New York City, featured four content-packed days with a rich array of sessions about the business and technical value of cloud computing led by exceptional speakers from every sector of the cloud computing ecosystem.
The Cloud Expo series is the fastest-growing Enterprise IT event in the past 10 years, devoted to every aspect of delivering massively scalable enterprise IT as a service.
We invite you to enjoy our photo album of the show – we’ll be adding new images all week.
Amazon AWS has announced the launch of their newest edge location in Sydney, Australia to serve end users of Amazon CloudFront and Amazon Route 53.
According the AWS, “This is our first edge location in Australia and with this location Amazon CloudFront and Amazon Route 53 now have a total of 33 edge locations worldwide. Each new edge location helps lower latency and improves performance for your end users. We have launched 8 new edge locations in 2012 and we plan to continue to add new edge locations worldwide.”
“An edge location in Australia has been frequently requested by our customers so we are excited to add this location to our global network. If you’re already using Amazon CloudFront or Amazon Route 53, you don’t need to do anything to your applications as requests are automatically routed to this location when appropriate.”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2t93F5ut_o
Mike Berthiaume talks about his journey to earning the coveted VMware VCDX Technical Design Certification. Find out about the process and challenges he encountered along the way. Mike is only the 84th person in the world to achieve this Certification. He joins an elite group of top experts globally.