On the theory that sometimes the best defense is a good offense, Microsoft struck out at the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch with a lawsuit on Thursday.
The suit tacitly acknowledges one of the most powerful objections to using cloud services, in which a megavendor like Microsoft stores much of the most vital data for millions of customers in, virtually, one place. While centralizing that data under one vendor's control brings powerful cost efficiencies and delivers enterprise-class features for small customers and even home users, it also becomes an extremely attractive target for criminal hackers, spies and government investigators. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on April 14, 20160 comments
Bring your own device (BYOD) usage is widespread, popular with companies and users, and largely mysterious when it comes to security, according to a new survey of 800 security professionals worldwide.
Conducted by Crowd Research Partners within the Information Security Community on LinkedIn, the survey was sponsored by Bitglass, Blancco Technology Group, Check Point Software Technologies, Skycure, SnoopWall and Tenable Network Security. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 30, 20160 comments
When support for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 expires on April 12, Microsoft partners will have more choices than ever as far as Microsoft-approved migration paths for their customers. Many of those choices would seem very strange to those partners' 2005 or 2006 selves, who moved those customers onto SQL Server 2005 in the first place.
The first option is an old-fashioned approach -- upgrading customers to SQL Server 2014 or getting them ready for SQL Server 2016 when it is generally available later this year. Also familiar from the old Microsoft playbook is a parallel campaign to attract Oracle customers to the SQL Server platform. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 24, 20160 comments
For our next print issue, we're working on a story about Microsoft partners and the Internet of Things. Are you already making money in IoT? Or do you have an idea where there's a pretty good Microsoft partner opportunity in IoT? Let's talk. E-mail me at sbekker@rcpmag.com.
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 24, 20160 comments
Microsoft's statements about its philosophy around the data held in its cloud matter.
As one of the two or three largest hyperscale cloud operators in the world, and one that is always angling to store more of its customers' data in Azure and its other services, Microsoft has an outsized influence on global perceptions of the cloud and on how closely technology companies and governments should work together. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 21, 20160 comments
Google is doubling its bug bounty for Google Chromebook.
Once controversial, bounty programs reward security researchers for reporting the vulnerabilities they find to the vendor rather than publishing the flaws publicly, exploiting the vulnerabilities themselves or selling them on the black market. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 16, 20160 comments
Tiffani Bova, an influential channel analyst who had the ear of senior Microsoft channel executives, has left Gartner for a newly created evangelism position at Salesforce.com.
Bova's sessions have been a staple of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) for years, and she was a regularly featured speaker at more intimate Microsoft partner gatherings. Microsoft was only one of her many clients, and she presented at dozens of other companies' partner gatherings. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 08, 20160 comments
Channel entrepreneur and Workspace-as-a-Service expert Michael Fraser is looking for beta partners for a new cloud workspace platform.
The startup is called Infinite Ops Inc., based in Mountlake Terrace, Wash., a suburb of Seattle. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 07, 20160 comments
Opening what could be a new market opportunity for managed service providers, LogicNow recently acquired iScan Online Inc.
For now, LogicNow is primarily positioning the acquisition as a play for its IT professional customers. While many technologies perform automated vulnerability scanning, what's interesting about the iScan approach is that it focuses on quantifying the dollar value of at-risk data.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on March 03, 20160 comments
Microsoft's massive licensing partner, SHI International Corp., has acquired the professional services piece of a much smaller Microsoft partner this week to bolster SHI's post-sales services capabilities, especially around Office 365 and other Microsoft cloud products.
The deal for the 18-person professional services division of Winston-Salem, N.C. area-based Eastridge closed on Monday and was announced midweek. The amount that the global technology provider paid for Eastridge wasn't disclosed. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on February 25, 20160 comments
Managed service providers serving small-business customers got a new backup and disaster recovery appliance option this month through a partnership between Buffalo Americas and StorageCraft Technology Corp.
The TeraStation StorageCraft Recovery Center 25 is a new joint offering aimed at end-user companies with about 25 employees. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on February 25, 20160 comments
For the upcoming March issue of RCP, we tried to fill an entire iPhone screen with solid Microsoft business and productivity apps and found more than enough. (The same exercise probably would have worked with an Android phone and Google Play.)
Since putting Word, Excel and PowerPoint onto competitive stores, Microsoft has continued to load those stores with useful apps. To name a few, we found Outlook, Yammer, Skype for Business, Sway, Delver, Power BI, OneNote, Office 365 Admin, OME Viewer, Comp Portal, Dynamics CRM and Groups, among others. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on February 22, 20160 comments