Skip to main content

Home/ Groups/ Cloud Productivity Platform Wars
Rss Feed
Sort By: Most Recent | Popular Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
10More

It's Time for Microsoft to Reboot Office - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...ft-to-reboot-office-1444155726 Office-365 Office-Productivity
shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • The target customer for much of Office’s evolution is corporate. But there are 15 million people who pay $70 or more a year for Office updates—and countless more who, like me, have bought Office for a home computer.
  • There’s a generational divide at work here: A survey last summer by the tech firm BetterCloud found that companies whose employee base averaged between 18 and 34 were 55% more likely to use Google than Office; those who average 35 to 54 were 19% more likely to use Office.
  • I'm a transactional lawyer, been using Word since 2002, and I think it's a terrible word processing program.  But we're stuck in it - there's no way out.MS has never fixed the two core horrible problems in Word - Styles and Section Breaks.  They should be removed from the program completely - there is no way to "fix" them.Before you say that they can be learned -- and I have indeed learned them -- here's the reality:  No one but me -- and I mean not one single lawyer or secretary I have ever worked or emailed with -- works correctly with Styles or Section Breaks.  Our long documents are emailed to the lawyers for the other parties, they make changes in their own, different Styles with additional manual formatting, and the documents become a mess.  Since we save and re-use our documents, I have to spend a lot of time cleaning them up, only to see them messed up again by the end of each deal.  And Styles can break by themselves.Word is junk.  Still inferior to 1996 WordPerfect.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Thom - We still have WordPerfect on our office PCs.  We stopped using it because all our clients have only Word.  And no one has WordPerfect.  So what good does it do to make a document in WordPerfect when no one else can open it or revise it.We're stuck with Word, and it is awful awful awful. It was a shock how bad Word was when we switched from WordPerfect in 2002, and Word gets worse with each iteration.And it's not just Styles and Section Breaks; it's so many other things.I could do and edit macros in WordPerfect.  Not Word.Automatic numbering in Word is a failure, and Word does not play nice when we buy "add-ons" to try to fix that.Word does NOT incorporate an Excel spreadsheet easily, and Word's tables are below primitive.Word cannot even capitalize correctly in "Title Case", but WordPerfect could in 1996.
  • What Microsoft needs to do is fix some of the issues it's had for years - creating robust numbered/billeted lists that don't mysteriously change format - word styles that just work instead of changing anytime a word in that style is bolded. I spend more time fixing templates than I do using them in some instances. Word should look at Adobe FrameMaker for some methods on how they could simplify the application while making it more robust.
  • Fowler is correct that workplaces are the bread and butter of Office. Many home users who aren't students really don't need a complete office suite. But they never did - that's nothing new.
  • @Kevin Morgan, the problem is that everyone uses Office and Word.  They are compatible with offices across the world.
  • @Timothy D. Naegele @Kevin Morgan I think that the problem is that users (neither companies nor individuals) have pushed for standard formats such as open documents.  When you are tied to a particular standard, you are stuck with the platform.
  • @Vance Burks  Vance there are several very specific examples of things that make my teeth grind right here in Mr. Fowler's article.  I ran into exactly the same things. The biggest thing that bugs me about Office 365 is that you never know whether your document, or your edits are going to be there when you come back.  It relates to their decision to hold back the full feature set of the product, and the way they sync.  It's a flawed product architecture. With Google docs, it's sticky and I know that no matter what, my doc and my edits are going to be there when i return.  Also there are the annoying, unnecessary prompts - detailed in this article.  They are sort of Microsoft's signature, a symptom of their culture. I lived in Woodinville-Redmond for almost two years, and I never once met a happy Microsoft employee.  Well, there was one he has 18 patents and worked there for 25 years.  Then they fired him, and now he's unhappy too.  It's a very messed-up company. Unhappy culture.
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Apr 16
     
    "I've purchased the latest Microsoft Office for every computer I've owned. It was a foregone conclusion. Dating back to when Word was white type on a blue screen, I used it so often I could recite the shortcuts. (Thesaurus? Shift-F7.) But Microsoft has run out of reasons to keep me paying. How we get work done on computers has fundamentally changed. For the new Office 2016, Microsoft wants you to pay $150 for collaborative capabilities that others already do better, free. It brings little new to people who rely on deep features in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Its mediocrity led me to a larger conclusion: It's time for Microsoft to press Control-Alt-Delete on the whole concept of Office. My relationship with Office started to sour as smartphones carried my work everywhere while my Office files stayed in the cubicle. I began emailing myself instead of fretting about scattered .doc files. Google ran with the work-anywhere idea early. Its free Web-based word processor and spreadsheet allow people in different locations to edit a document together. With Google Docs and Sheets, there's no more emailing drafts back and forth."
6More

The Real Power of Platforms Is Helping People Self-Organize - 0 views

hbr.org/...s-helping-people-self-organize Uber
shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • It’s also interesting to note that Uber doesn’t expect exclusivity from its extended labor force. Many people who drive for Uber also drive for competing services like Lyft. That lifts a key constraint — namely that the company must optimize a fixed amount of a worker’s time. Drivers opt-in to drive the schedules that work best for them — maybe the free time they have between dropping kids off at school and then picking them up. For others, they may opt to work 12-hour-long days. There is no central actor setting the rules such as having to manage artificial constraints like a fixed eight-hour workday. Nothing is pre-planned and everything is left to the market to come up with efficient solutions.
  • they focus on creating a market where people with cars can connect with people who need rides.
  • How does Uber handle the holiday crunch? They let the market solve that issue through surge pricing. At peak times, prices rise — which reduces demand AND increases supply of drivers. Sure, some folks consider this price gouging at times. But it’s interesting to see how the higher fares create incentives for more drivers to hit the roads to meet that demand. Problem solved, again without any preplanning.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • It so happens that open source software works very similarly to Uber in terms of stoking active participation beyond any one company’s boundaries. Contributors choose to participate on a project. They may have a job or be in school. Regardless of what they do, they voluntarily opt in to a system, which self-organizes based on the need at hand. As with Uber, there is no preplanning of resources or scheduled shifts; everything is self-organized by volunteers interested in tackling that job at that time.
  • If these participative systems can solve complex optimization problems without central planning, like managing Uber’s logistics or developing the open source Linux kernel, what else can they do? Traditional institutions as we know them today will not exist in their current forms in twenty years. The boundaries of the traditional corporation are becoming more and more porous as the value of centralized planning and coordination declines. That’s a truly disruptive development and something that every organization, regardless of industry, should be paying attention to.
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Apr 16
     
    "Uber, the car-sharing service, has become ubiquitous. It's now a multi-billion-dollar global business. It's even become a noun of sorts - uberization - which people use to describe a disruptive change to a staid industry ripe for innovation (though, to be sure, the popularization of the word "disruptive" means that it is often used in ways that the concept's author, Clay Christensen, didn't intend). But I would argue that the real reason Uber is disruptive is because it is reshaping how we can think about organizing people, not cars. Uber has shown how you can actually empower many thousands of people to self-organize to tackle a task (shuffling people to their destination in this case) without the preplanning that is the norm in traditional enterprises. Put another way, Uber's business model extends a very complex supply chain beyond the boundaries of a corporation in a way that creates real results without any planning in advance. That is a remarkable example of how technology will reshape how we organize to get work done at scale in the future. For context, I worked at Delta Air Lines for many years before I joined Red Hat, the open source software provider where I am now CEO. When I was at Delta, we spent enormous resources in terms of time and money on planning. Airline operations are a huge optimization challenge. There are hundreds of planes, thousands of pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, and ground crews that must be properly deployed for the system to work efficiently. We needed to process reams of data using expensive and sophisticated software and computers to predict demand, know the capabilities of each aircraft type, and to understand each work group's constraints. We also had an army of PhD-caliber people whose full-time jobs involved figuring out this puzzle in a way that we could still make money. Uber's value chain has a similar optimization challenge - it needs to deal with variable demand, thousands of drivers,
2More

A Top Silicon Valley V.C. Explains Why Slack Drives Him Crazy | Vanity Fair - 0 views

www.vanityfair.com/...ins-why-slack-drives-him-crazy John-Lilly Greylock-Partners
shared by Gary Edwards on 23 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • I’m an investor in a company called Quip. The idea is, if you take Microsoft Office—Word and Excel—and re-do that with modern mobile materials, what does that look like? Suddenly you get this document-construction tool that’s infused with real-time notification and touch-screen collaboration, and it feels much more alive than typing a Word document.
  • Gary Edwards on 23 Apr 16
     
    "John Lilly, a partner at Greylock Partners, invests in companies that zhuzh office productivity tools for today's mobile worker. He sits on the board of Quip (a more collaborative Microsoft Word) and Figma (an Adobe Photoshop for the sharing generation), among others. He also led Greylock's investment in Dropbox, along with its stakes in Tumblr, acquired by Yahoo in 2013, and Instagram, which Facebook bought in 2012. Before joining Greylock in 2011, Lilly was C.E.O. of Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox, the Web browser that quietly grabbed share from Microsoft's then-dominant Internet Explorer in the early 2000s. While Lilly is betting on a new generation of Microsoft antagonists, he explains why he isn't writing off the software giant, how new tools will change the way we work, and why he finds Slack so vexing."
4More

Microsoft's phone business is in free fall - 0 views

www.engadget.com/...microsoft-q1-2016 Microsoft-numbers
shared by Gary Edwards on 22 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Microsoft is also seeing some gains in its non-Windows related businesses, like Office, Azure and other cloud-based endeavors. Office revenue went up by 7 percent in the commercial sector and 6 percent in the consumer sector, thanks in part to growth in Office 365 adoption. Indeed, Office 365 itself experienced a huge growth, with a jump of 22.2 million consumer subscribers. Azure revenue grew by a whopping 120 percent.
  • In fact, CEO Satya Nadella's decision to push Microsoft's ambitions in the cloud may have saved the company from trouble ahead as it should be able to eke out a living for itself while other PC businesses flounder. For instance, Intel, which makes the bulk of its money with chips for PCs, is having to cut 11 percent of its workforce since the PC market is dying so rapidly.
  • The company also reported that Xbox Live monthly active users has grown by 26 percent year-over-year to 46 million people, and that search advertising revenue has gone up by 18 percent.
  • Gary Edwards on 22 Apr 16
     
    To no one's surprise, Microsoft isn't turning much of a profit from its phone business. According to its latest quarterly report, the company saw a dip of mobile revenue by as much as 46 percent. It sold 2.3 million Lumias over the past three months, which is a 73 percent drop from this time last year. Sadly, this is an ongoing trend; last quarter, it reported a phone sales drop by as much as 54 percent. Still, the company is making money. Revenue was $20.5 billion while net profit was $3.8 billion. Microsoft also saw growth from its Surface segment, which grew by $1.1 billion over the past three months. That's up 61 percent year-over-year. The company credited the surge in Surface sales to the Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book, but there's no word in its report exactly how many of those tablet computers it sold. Windows OEM revenue dipped by only 2 percent, which outperforms the PC market.
10More

On the Road to Recap: | Above the Crowd | By Bill Gurley - 0 views

abovethecrowd.com/...on-the-road-to-recap VC
shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • New potential investors might also be surprised how few Unicorn executives truly understand their core unit economics. One easy way to spot these pretenders is that they obsessively focus on high level “gross merchandise value” or “multi-year forward bookings” and try to talk past things like true net revenue, gross margin, or operating profitability. They will even claim to be “unit profitable” when all they have really done is stopped being gross margin negative.
  • These companies will one day need real earnings and real profits, and if the company does not proactively address this, you should not be giving them millions of dollars in late stage financings.
  • Perhaps the biggest mistake untapped investors will make is assuming that because there are branded investors already in the company, that the new investment opportunity must be of high quality.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • They use the reputation of the other investors as a proxy for due diligence. There are multiple problems with this shortcut. First, these investors are “pot committed.” They invested a long time ago, and without your money their investment is “at risk.”
  • Second, as discussed, they are already full and nervous. They didn’t call you before when they built their reputation.  Why are they friendly now?
  • The reason we are all in this mess is because of the excessive amounts of capital that have poured into the VC-backed startup market.
  • This glut of capital has led to (1) record high burn rates, likely 5-10x those of the 1999 timeframe, (2) most companies operating far, far away from profitability, (3) excessively intense competition driven by access to said capital, (4) delayed or non-existent liquidity for employees and investors, and (5) the aforementioned solicitous fundraising practices.
  • More money will not solve any of these problems — it will only contribute to them.
  • The healthiest thing that could possibly happen is a dramatic increase in the real cost of capital and a return to an appreciation for sound business execution.
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Apr 16
     
    "April 21, 2016: In February of last year, Fortune magazine writers Erin Griffith and Dan Primack declared 2015 "The Age of the Unicorns" noting - "Fortune counts more than 80 startups that have been valued at $1 billion or more by venture capitalists." By January of 2016, that number had ballooned to 229. One key to this population growth has been the remarkable ease of the Unicorn fundraising process: Pick a new valuation well above your last one, put together a presentation deck, solicit offers, and watch the hundreds of million of dollars flow into your bank account. Twelve to eighteen months later, you hit the road and do it again - super simple. While not obvious on the surface, there has been a fundamental sea-change in the investment community that has made the incremental Unicorn investment a substantially more dangerous and complicated practice. All Unicorn participants - founders, company employees, venture investors and their limited partners (LPs) - are seeing their fortunes put at risk from the very nature of the Unicorn phenomenon itself. The pressures of lofty paper valuations, massive burn rates (and the subsequent need for more cash), and unprecedented low levels of IPOs and M&A, have created a complex and unique circumstance that many Unicorn CEOs and investors are ill-prepared to navigate."
1More

Office 365's corporate takeover is imminent | InfoWorld - 0 views

www.infoworld.com/...rate-takeover-is-imminent.html Office-365
shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Apr 16
     
    "For the past two years, I've been doing a road show about Office 365 with Mimecast to businesses of all shapes and sizes in America and Britain. At the beginning of the show, when I asked the audience, "Who of you has moved or is looking to move to Office 365?" not one hand went up. Fast-forward to a week ago, and more than half the hands went up when I asked the same question. This shift is happening much faster than I would have predicted. [ Considering the move to Office 365? Take these crucial steps before, during, and after for a successful migration. | The InfoWorld review: Office 365 fails at collaboration | Stay up on key Microsoft technologies with the Enterprise Windows blog and Windows newsletter. ] There is no doubt that the driving force behind this shift is Office 365's Exchange Online component. I hear that rationale from everyone I talk to. And it's not only the people I talk to: A recent Gartner survey showed Exchange was overwhelmingly cited as the reason to move to Office 365. Oddly enough, OneDrive for Business was the second motivator, but it was also one of the biggest disappointments thus far. Why? Because, as my colleague Galen Gruman has shown, OneDrive for Business works only partially. Some organizations are motivated by Office 365's preconfigured SharePoint Online to assist with document collaboration and workflow, though the on-premises SharePoint remains much more capable. Skype for Business is making headway for instant messaging and conferencing as well, though it continues to be iffy in multiplatform environments. Then there are the productivity apps -- Word, Excel, and PowerPoint -- which Microsoft has made work well not only in Windows but also in iOS, in Android, and in OS X. Keep in mind that none of this means Office 365 has triumphed over Microsoft's on-premises services. On-premises Exchange -- IT's biggest reason to adopt Office 365 -- is still the leading email server by far. But over the next year or so, we will see
2More

The dumbest things Bill Gates ever said - Business Insider - 1 views

www.businessinsider.com/gs-bill-gates-ever-said-2016-4 Bill-Gates Microsoft
shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • "One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities," Gates wrote in a memo to Microsoft in 1998.
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Apr 16
     
    Must read fun!
2More

You Want to Build an Empire Like Google's? This Is Your OS | WIRED 16 hours ago ... Now... - 0 views

www.wired.com/...t-build-empire-like-googles-os google-BORG Kubernetes Meso CoreOS
shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • The Container Revolution The move comes amid an enormous revolution sweeping information technology, one in which big-name companies and startups alike aim to recreate Borg for the rest of the world. Alex Polvi, who runs one of these startups, CoreOS, describes the revolution with a hashtag: #GIFEE, or Google Infrastructure For Everyone Else—which is even catchier. In addition to Mesosphere and CoreOS, a company called Docker is pushing this idea alongside the biggest names in cloud computing: Amazon, Microsoft, and, yes, Google.
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Apr 16
     
    A fascinating explanation of the secret Google OS known as the BORG. Meso and CoreOS are efforts to emmulate the BORG, but in 2014 Google open sourced the BORG foundation in a project known as "Kubernetes". What makes the Borg so incredibly more efficient then "Virtualization" is the use of "containers". Containers can run on the bare metal BORG OS, or, they can run on top of a Virtualized OS.
9More

Survey: Businesses Keen on Office 365 Despite Some Qualms -- Redmond Channel Partner - 0 views

rcpmag.com/...ice-365-business-adoption.aspx Office-365 Gartner
shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Office 365 is Microsoft's unified product now. It has evolved quite a bit from the time when the Office suite of applications was first introduced in 1989, Cannell explained. Some capabilities are only available through Office 365 services, such as Groups, Delve and Office 365 Video, he added.
  • The use of Microsoft's 2013-branded products topped the roster among the current survey respondents. SharePoint Server 2013 was used by 47 percent. Exchange Server 2013 was used by 38 percent. In the 2014 study, Microsoft's 2010-branded products had topped the list, Cannell said.
  • The most important Office 365 capabilities included Exchange Online for e-mail and calendar use. In second place was OneDrive for Business, with Office 365 ProPlus ranking third. Office 365 ProPlus is the suite of Office applications offered with various Office 365 subscription plans.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Cannell said he was surprised by OneDrive for Business' top ranking among the survey participants, particularly because it has had some syncing issues. However, he also noted that Microsoft recently announced some improvements along those lines.
  • Office 365 services aren't exactly doing away with the server products. For instance, the survey results aren't indicating strong results showing that Exchange Online adoption has cut into Exchange Server on-premises use. Exchange Server use only decreased by 5 percentage points compared with Gartner's 2014 study result. Cannell speculated that hybrid Exchange use might be an explanation for this somewhat unexpected finding.
  • Organizations should limit the use of OneDrive for Business until it's been proven in the enterprise. Until recently, the OneDrive for Business storage service has been considered broken, although Microsoft has implemented a next-generation sync client to improve it, Cannell said. He recommended testing it before adoption.
  • Organizations still need to develop Office 365 management competencies. In particular, back end systems are still complex to administer, Cannell said. Organizations should test to see how well the service is performing globally, too, he added.
  • Organizations should plan to implement hybrid integration with Office 365 services. Take hybrid integration seriously as it will be a normal state of affairs going forward, Cannell said. Gartner thinks that all enterprises should plan to implement single sign-on directory integration.
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Apr 16
     
    "Enterprise adoption of Microsoft's Office 365 suite is very high, according to a recent poll of IT decision makers by market researcher Gartner Inc. About 78 percent of the survey's participants reported their organizations are either currently using or planning to use Office 365 software and services. That figure represents a 13 percentage-point increase from the results of Gartner's last Office 365 study, which was published back in 2014. The results were described in Web presentation Thursday by Larry Cannell, an analyst with Gartner's Technical Professionals Group."
9More

Office productivity: Has Microsoft blown it? | ZDNet - 0 views

www.zdnet.com/...ctivity-has-microsoft-blown-it Cloud-Productivity-Platform
shared by Gary Edwards on 16 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Microsoft Office quickly became as much a part of office culture as beige cubicles and office parks, and with the coming of Sharepoint at the turn of the century (trojan horsed free into many companies) we entered the golden age of digital filing cabinets to keep Office docs in. This was genius business strategy by Microsoft: for decades Office has been the golden goose and the de facto business standard 'productivity' tool... extending it to Sharepoint storage infrastructure created another gusher of revenue.
  • Throughout the dot com era, the web 2.0 read/write web era and the explosion of mobility and digital first strategy Microsoft have arguably held the office productivity market back in order to protect the Office golden goose revenues to spectacular financial success.
  • Waves of innovative collaboration software have attempted to loosen this business culture chokehold, with minor incursions made by 'Storage as a Service' vendors, although that area has become a costing race to the bottom.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • This brilliant business strategy and marketing hypnosis of the business world by Microsoft is now showing some signs of wearing off as the digital era matures and more people finally start to realize how anachronistic and bureaucratic document driven workflows are.
  • The question is how much longer this can endure as Microsoft's power wains at the center of the office productivity business world.
  • Windows phone has failed - it wasn't even mentioned in the early stages of yesterday's earnings call - and Lync/Skype are old hat in unified communications.
  • Dynamics was until recently a very small facet of Microsoft's world but is being beefed up to compete in the wide open customer relationship management world, Azure is doing well in the cloud infrastructure world but in a very fast moving and quickly evolving space with tight margins.
  • After years of stifling innovation in collaboration, the pace of digital may have finally caught up with Microsoft and left them exposed for now.
  • Gary Edwards on 16 Apr 16
     
    "Office productivity: Has Microsoft blown it? Microsoft has dominated the 'office productivity' tools market for decades and is a de facto way of working in most companies. Having significantly held back innovation in the last 10 years, Office is arguably reaching the end of its useful life as modern digital tools make it look like an old bureaucratic anachronism."
1More

Software is eating innovation: How trapped is your company? | ZDNet - 0 views

www.zdnet.com/...has-software-eaten-innovation Cloud-Productivity-Platform
shared by Gary Edwards on 16 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 16 Apr 16
     
    "Startups and corporations alike are distributing free software that would have been worth millions a few years ago to gain visibility and use case credibility, but software is an ever cheaper resource... I added '(paying)' in the Drucker quote above for a reason... Last year I wrote a piece here praising and ruminating on Microsoft's brilliant business strategy in perpetuating document work flows to keep their 'Office' suite cash cow producing vast seat licensing riches. You can't blame Microsoft for perpetuating their paying business model, only yielding to threats by either buying them (Yammer, for example) or making their competing products free to scorch earth competitors out of existence by starving them of revenue (One Note to knock out Evernote). What's good for Microsoft and other high-tech vendors isn't necessarily good for their customers in an era where differentiation and innovation are ever more key in order to 'create a paying customer.' As legacy enterprise software value depreciates and becomes ever more brittle and cumbersome as it ages, a great deal of thought has to go into what unique architecture will differentiate and provide competitive advantage going forward. Innovative marketing penetration of digital channels buys time but isn't core digital innovation."
2More

Microsoft's Path Is Leading to a Connected World -- Redmondmag.com - 0 views

redmondmag.com/...microsofts-path.aspx Productivity workplace microsoft
shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • The Xamarin story isn't about building flashy consumer games or apps to sell for 99 cents; rather, it's a route to building line-of-business apps that tie into enterprise databases (on-premises or in the cloud) and then deploying those apps to a fleet of business users who don't have to be tied down to a single platform. Your new enterprise search app can run on an iPhone, an iPad Pro, any current Android device, or a Windows Phone or tablet.
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Apr 16
     
    "Back in Microsoft's early days, Bill Gates and Paul Allen devised the mission statement that became the formula for their company's success: "A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software." Fast-forward a few decades and the playing field has changed. For starters, the notion that we can get by with just one computer at home and one at the office is downright quaint in 2016. Then there's that word software, which brings up images of shrink-wrapped retail packages and CD jewel boxes. Today, most modern development is aimed at creating apps that are lightweight and easily available for modern mobile platforms. And even traditional software is morphing into services, managed in the cloud and available from just about anywhere with Internet access. Microsoft Azure services are gradually replacing on-premises servers, and Office 365 subscriptions are eating into the market for perpetual Office licenses. Put it all together, and I suggest it's time for Satya Nadella's Microsoft to adopt a new mission statement: "A connected world, filled with intelligent devices running Microsoft services and apps." The company's latest financial results suggest that Microsoft is living up to that mission statement. The Intelligent Cloud segment, which combines traditional server products and cloud services like Microsoft Azure, is top dog in Redmond. In the first half of fiscal 2016, Microsoft's combined commercial cloud businesses grew 70 percent compared to the previous year, and that growth rate shows no signs of stopping. To get to that point, Microsoft had to get rid of the mindset that Windows was its most important product. And, indeed, that's happening already. Aaron Levie, CEO of Box and a Silicon Valley veteran, told me recently that he thinks Microsoft has mastered the art of "openness." The result is a series of moves that would have been unthinkable even five years ago, with a steady stream of apps for iOS and Android, including Office 365 rele
7More

Microsoft Vs. Google And The Battle For Workplace Supremacy - ARC - ARC - 0 views

arc.applause.com/...icrosoft-enterprise-cloud-apps Productivity workplace microsoft
shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • The young prefer Google while large, old enterprises go for Microsoft.
  • Microsoft Vs. Google At Work: Age Is A Factor In what will come as surprise to nobody, size and experience matters. The report found that larger, older organizations prefer to use Office 365, while newer companies—startups, for example—prefer to use the Google suite of office tools. IT teams at companies that use Office are five times as large as those that work on Google Apps, although project collaboration between employees is more likely with Google—84% of large enterprises that have switched from Office to Google Apps report that they have experienced a rise in worker interactions.
  • In addition, companies who have a workforce aged between 18-34 years of age are 55% more likely to use Google Apps than Office 365, a scenario that the authors of the report believe is linked to the fact that most youthful entrepreneurs have grown up with Google. Office 365 users, on the other hand, are likely to work for companies that have been using the various iterations of Office for many years—the majority of which will be using the local version installed on their workplace PCs.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The report also found that the age of the customer was a significant path to adoption of either suite of tools. Companies that were founded, say, in 1982 were more likely to use Office 365 and adopt a cautious attitude to cloud adoption—hybrid as opposed to full integration—while the cloud-centric Google Apps was found to be the preferred option for organizations founded after 2010 whose workforce was filled with Millennials.
  • Back in February of this year, Google stated that it wanted to take 80% of Microsoft’s customers. BetterCloud doesn’t see that as happening in the near future but lines of engagement are certainly being decided.
  • “Office 365 organizations are easing into the cloud, allowing employees to choose their preferred working style, rather than abruptly shifting to a cloud-only workplace,” the report said. “Google pushes organizations to undergo transformational change, deploying Google Apps rapidly and over the course of a weekend, or in the case of a larger organization, several weekends.”
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Apr 16
     
    "As a means of measuring for how technology is being adopted in the marketplace, the most common metaphor is usually war. Companies are always involved in battles for consumers, new products are launched at strategic dates in the calendar and there is often an overwhelming sense that victory must be achieved at any cost. In the software sector battlefields are vast, ongoing and filled with casualties. More often than not, the definition of who has won and who has lost is blurred-victory is defined by market share and by how and by whom the technology is being used. In the last decade, there has been a war in the workplace, especially when it comes to the integration of the cloud into daily working and collaboration practices. Both Microsoft and Google want to be the dominant players in the arena, but it appears that neither side can currently claim total victory."
4More

Workplace Productivity Battle Being Won By Microsoft - ARC - ARC - 0 views

arc.applause.com/...doption-increases-in-workplace Productivity workplace microsoft
shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Google Apps is still favored by small companies—deemed to be those with less than 500 employees—with 22.8% of respondents using the tools available, as compared to the 21.4% who have installed Office 365. Once you get past that employee level, however, Microsoft is dominating the space.
  • Office 365 is used by 30% of enterprise-level companies as part of their working practices, a 500% increase from 2014. Google Apps only accounts for 15% of the market, although it is worth noting that both cloud apps have grown from a 5% share only 12 months ago. Private companies tend to go down the Google route, 24% compared to Microsoft’s 21%, but 34% of publicly-traded organizations go for Microsoft over the 22% that use Google.
  • Cloud adoption is at an all-time high and Microsoft is winning over Google. The surprise is that large corporations, even in heavily regulated industries, are gaining confidence in using cloud apps. The increased focus on security, including the emergence of third-party security services from cloud access security brokers , are filling critical gaps, paving the way for broader adoption of cloud apps in the enterprise.
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Apr 16
     
    "Microsoft's Office 365 is winning the hearts and minds of the workplace, overtaking Google Apps as the preferred productivity tool by an increasing number of business enterprises, a recent report says. According to the second annual Cloud Adoption Report conducted by cloud access security broker Bitglass-subtitled Episode II: Attack of the Clouds and bizarrely using Star Wars as a recurring theme-Office 365 has trebled its user adoption rate in the space of a year from 7.7% in 2014 to 25.2%. Over 34% of organizations with between 500 and 1,000 employees use the Microsoft tool, as opposed to 21.9% who work with Google Apps For Work, an indicator that the authors of the report say confirms that cloud applications are now a significant player. Following a survey of almost 120,000 global companies-both small and enterprise level-the report said that there had been a rise of 20% from last year in the number of businesses that employed a cloud application as their prime productivity tool. In 2014, 28% of respondents used the cloud with that figure increasing to 48% 12 months later. Granted, the sample size had also risen from 80,000 in the first survey, but the results bear out a perception that cloud-based solutions will become the norm."
2More

Enterprise Productivity Apps Are Dominated By Google And Microsoft - ARC - ARC - 0 views

arc.applause.com/...rkplace-productivity-apps-data Productivity
shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • “Our data revealed some very interesting findings,” wrote Okta’s director of analytics and big data Cathy Tanimura and content manager Katie Hahn, in a blog post. “Traditional on-prem software companies are successfully reinventing themselves in the cloud. Enterprises continue to build out their library of applications with new and emerging apps. And, no app is invincible.”
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Apr 16
     
    "Google Apps and Microsoft's Office 365 compete to be the workplace productivity tools of choice. But they are not mutually exclusive as most companies find room for both. A report by cloud identity and mobility management company Okta said that 40% of its customers used Google Apps and Office 365 on a daily basis. According to Okta's 2016 Businesses @ Work report, different departments within a corporate infrastructure are happy to use different parts of the apps for specific tasks such as email or spreadsheets. Around 30% of "overlappers" use Office 365 for Excel, Word and PowerPoint while Google Apps is used for email and inter-office collaborations. Certain industries prefer one to the other, Okta said. Around 82% of financial companies and 77% of biotech firms use Office 365. Google Apps is used by 50% of Internet-centric companies. Office 365 is the dominant force in IT, nonprofit, construction, healthcare and telecommunications. Google Apps is the preferred tool in marketing/advertising and education. Software companies are almost split down the middle-around 27% use both, while Google Apps is used by 38% of companies compared to the 35% who go for Office 365."
3More

Something Big is Happening With Snapchat: Why Businesses Shouldn't Wait to Get Started - 0 views

blog.hubspot.com/...snapchat-business-update SnapChat Technology-evolution
shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • On their own the features are interesting, but it's the message behind the features that really caught my attention. Together, these features amount to a very clear benefit: The removal of limits to how you communicate with others remotely. Think about it: Every other app or device we use for communication requires a certain category or format of that communication. Phones are great for long-form audio. SMS is great for text and sometimes images. Other messenger apps are great for short form messages and transactional conversations. But before this release, no single app or device optimized for all the ways humans communicate: long form, short form, audio, video, text, photo, and drawing. Which means that Snapchat, for now, is actually pretty special.
  • "It lets private conversations morph between mediums depending on what users want to show or tell," explains TechCrunch editor-at-large Josh Constine. "Snapchat is positioning itself as the most vivid, human way to chat.” And it's doing so in a single, simple interface.
  • Gary Edwards on 04 Apr 16
     
    "There's a funny pattern of awakening that tends to happen when a technological advancement sneaks up on us. It starts with a mess of confusion. We don't understand the technology or its purpose: "I don't get Twitter. Why would I want to know what you had for lunch?" It then evolves into miscategorization: "The iPhone is actually a pretty crummy phone." We get so caught up in definitions, we almost miss the larger leap that's occurring: "Why would people use messenger apps when you can just text?" Then, finally, we get it: "The iPhone is not a phone at all. It's an everything device. And Twitter is not about lunch. It's about removing the barriers to real-time publishing." While we're busy missing the big picture, a rapidly growing niche of early adopters is diving in. Early adopters don't get distracted by the need to categorize or define the technology. They just use it. And in repeated agenda-less use, the bigger picture becomes clear. This same pattern is happening today with Snapchat. Hang with me. Don't roll your eyes just yet. I'm going to pay it off. I've been a Snapchat doubter for a while now. Like many others, I relegated it to a fad or a niche service for a subset of a subset of the population. I'm beginning to realize I was wrong."
2More

Why it's so easy to ignore your to-do list app but get distracted by Twitter | TechCrunch - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...-but-get-distracted-by-twitter Cloud-Productivity-Platform
shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • After some time to reflect and apply rational thought to the situation, I’m here, in the midst of a symphony of push notifications, writing this instead. I’m going to talk about my fight against Twitter and my failing productivity, the apps and systems with which I’ve tried to keep myself in check and the psychology behind why we build an aversion against getting things done.
  • Notifications kill our ability to do focus work
1More

3 ways Airtable for iOS can help you ditch spreadsheets | CIO - 0 views

www.cio.com/...lp-you-ditch-spreadsheets.html Spreadsheet Relational-Database iOS
shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Apr 16
     
    "The free Airtable database app for iOS has an edge over spreadsheets, and it lets you easily collaborate with other users. It may be overkill for some people, but its flexibility in storing and sorting data could be invaluable to others." It's been nearly three years since Bento, an easy-to-use database app for Mac and iOS, joined the digital junkheap. During that time, I hadn't seen anything that can truly replace Bento - until I tinkered with Airtable. Airtable is a free iOS app that recently received a big upgrade. It has the look and feel of a spreadsheet app, such as Numbers or Excel, but it has a relational database engine as well. (Airtable's Android app is currently in beta, there's a Google Chrome app, and you can use Airtable's website to create and edit your databases.) New features include the abilities to share records via email, search the database template gallery, and create calendar events from date fields.
10More

The biggest threat to patent reform: The Apple/IBM/Microsoft coalition | VentureBeat | ... - 0 views

venturebeat.com/...ew-appleibmmicrosoft-coalition Patent-Trolls Patent-Reform
shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • The cost of trolling, on the other hand, is minimal. Trolls also typically render themselves litigation-proof by creating shell companies with no assets, should they fall into legal trouble from a wrongful suit.
  • Fee shifting It is nearly impossible for a startup to find the resources to fight a patent suit. The promise of seeing some of that money back at the end makes securing the resources easier. Meaningful fee shifting will discourage the most egregious actors — those without meritorious cases — from suing in the first place; and joinder provisions are necessary to make sure that the real party in interest — the one that really owns the patent — can be held liable for the trolling activities of shell entities are also essential. In other words, no more hiding behind shell companies.
  • Heightened pleading Patent trolls benefit greatly from asymmetry of information. They are able to file suits with vague and limited information, leaving companies with no choice but to consult a lawyer about the scope of the threat they face. Most startups don’t have an in-house lawyer at all, let alone one who specializes in patents. Those bringing suits should set forth the basic framework of their case — who owns the patent, what product allegedly infringes the patent, and what parts of the patent are at issue. This would, at minimum, give startups a basic and common-sense understanding surrounding the threat, allowing them to make more informed decisions on how to proceed.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Fee shifting It is nearly impossible for a startup to find the resources to fight a patent suit. The promise of seeing some of that money back at the end makes securing the resources easier. Meaningful fee shifting will discourage the most egregious actors — those without meritorious cases — from suing in the first place; and joinder provisions are necessary to make sure that the real party in interest — the one that really owns the patent — can be held liable for the trolling activities of shell entities are also essential. In other words, no more hiding behind shell companies.
  • Heightened pleading Patent trolls benefit greatly from asymmetry of information. They are able to file suits with vague and limited information, leaving companies with no choice but to consult a lawyer about the scope of the threat they face. Most startups don’t have an in-house lawyer at all, let alone one who specializes in patents. Those bringing suits should set forth the basic framework of their case — who owns the patent, what product allegedly infringes the patent, and what parts of the patent are at issue. This would, at minimum, give startups a basic and common-sense understanding surrounding the threat, allowing them to make more informed decisions on how to proceed.
  • Discovery reform Discovery is one of the most onerous and expensive parts of patent litigation. When startups face companies solely in the business of licensing and litigation (e.g., oftentimes a patent troll), they find themselves facing outrageously expensive motion practice that has little to no impact on their adversary. Reasonable limits on initial discovery will help incentivize startups to fight the trolls in court. This will, by default, incentive those trolls to only bring meritorious suits.
  • Demand letter reform Patent trolls are legally able to send vague licensing demands, full of threatening legalese, and startups are again left with no information to understand the scope of the threat they face. Demand letters should include concrete information on the patent holder’s claim to give recipients needed information; and demand letters sent in bad faith should be actionable. Those senders should not be able to take advantage of the patent system and extort money from high-growth companies that are rebuilding the economy.
  • Customer stay exception Startups can sometimes find themselves facing expensive litigation for a product they obtained from someone else, or they might find their customers facing suits for using their products. In either instance, startups need tools — like robust stays — so manufacturers and suppliers can step in and join the defense. The harm resulting from the patent troll epidemic does not just impact startups; it creates an environment where startups have a negative impression of the patent system and are therefore significantly less likely to positively engage. A recent study from the National Sciences Foundation found that in the information sector (which includes software, Internet, and Data processing) only 10 percent of companies found utility patents either “very” or even “somewhat” important. We need comprehensive patent reform to level the playing field for all innovators so they are no longer victimized by a litigation system stacked in favor of trolls. The legislation must realign the patent system with its founding principles — to incentivize innovation and the progress of technology. This includes protecting patent owners’ rights along with the rights of those facing patent threats. To be clear, there is nothing in the Innovation Act, or other proposed legislation, that would stop a legitimate patent holder from bringing a meritorious case for infringement.
  • Final word So why are companies like Microsoft, IBM, GE, and Ford trying to slow down this legislative process? Simply put, spending millions of dollars on patent resources has proved a good way to make money and to shut out their competition — high-growth, disruptive, and nimble startups. We must not let these entrenched interests get in the way of fixing a broken system.
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Apr 16
     
    "There's a new coalition in D.C., and big players like Apple, DuPont, Ford, GE, IBM, Microsoft, and Pfizer have all signed up. Unfortunately, launched on the day the Senate was supposed to take up the latest effort to reform the patent system, the coalition's sole purpose appears to be an effort to derail the important strides we've made toward fixing the patent troll problem via the proposed Innovation Act legislation. So what is it about the Innovation Act (and other legislative proposals being discussed in the Senate) that this coalition thinks will harm both their businesses and ability to build innovative products? These companies were all startups themselves once, and protecting startups that cannot afford to protect themselves from patent trolls is at the heart of the Innovation Act. The startups being targeted by patent trolls have less than $10 million in revenues. They are in no position to hire a patent lawyer to understand the scope of the threat they face - let alone pay the millions of dollars it would cost to take case to court. Even worse, startups are too often short on talent, so they do not have the luxury of using their current employees to read and understand vague patents with "fuzzy boundaries". Today's trolls send out scores of demand letters that make vague assertions of patent infringement while requesting "licensing fees" of $100,000 or more. The cost of trolling, on the other hand, is minimal. Trolls also typically render themselves litigation-proof by creating shell companies with no assets, should they fall into legal trouble from a wrongful suit. We need real reform that will stem the tide of the troll epidemic, while maintaining protection for patent holders to enforce their legal rights. This is precisely what the current proposals would do."
« First ‹ Previous 61 - 80 of 193 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page