Microsoft se sube a Internet, a su manera. Un Vista virtual...?

BITS BLOG.

Steve Ballmer Maps Microsoft's Cloud-y Future By Saul Hansell March 20, 2009, 11:40 am

Comments on March 20, 2009: at 1:00 pm "Shareholders don't get fed by percentages," he said. Mr. Balmer still doesn't seen to get it, particularly in this time of economic turmoil. It should all be about providing increased value to consumers, not increasing share holder profit. That is why corporate IT deployments are migrating to alternative platforms away from Microsoft. Simply re-bundling a bunch of existing applications is a marketing ploy, not a technology advancement. — Darth at 3:33 pm People don't care what technology is behind an application. They care if it's easy to use and fulfills their business requirements. I still don't see how using MS cloud computing is going to benefit me when I'm already collaborating via Skype, GoToMeeting, YouSendIt and Gdocs. Additionally, we already have unified messaging with the Asterisk Linux telephone platform. The subscription costs for GoToMeeting and YouSendit are minimal and Skype and Gdocs are free. I don't need to switch to an expensive subscription model on MS to compete with these applications. Also, MS Office is great but having recently forked over $750 to create Gant charts on MS Project sucks. — Mike E

Saul Hansell/The New York Times A diagram, by Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, of its cloud computing strategy

Look at the picture above. It's an original Steve Ballmer created before my eyes on the wall of a conference room here at The Times. Simple, isn't it? Well, that's the point that Mr. Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, was trying to make when he drew it. I was talking to him about Microsoft's plans to offer companies cloud computing services — software that will run on Microsoft's new network of big data centers. As I learned about the Azure system, Microsoft's new cloud operating system, I started to wonder if it is overly complex. I asked if Microsoft was risking taking on too much, as it did with Longhorn, the operating system rewrite that led to the ill-fated Windows Vista. "It's not anything like Longhorn," Mr. Ballmer said. "And it's not really that complicated." He jumped up, grabbed a marker and drew a big black rectangle divided into smaller rectangles on the white board. "This is what we look like in the data center," he said. He was referring to all of the software Microsoft currently sells to run on corporate servers and the tools to develop them. That currently is a $13 billion-a-year business for Microsoft (22 percent of its total revenue) and its fastest growing segment. All of those products, Mr. Ballmer said, are being rewritten so customers can run them on Microsoft's computers in addition to their own. "Anything that has been a server needs to be a service," he said. So in the center box he wrote "Windows Server"—the company's core product for data centers. "Windows Server becomes Windows Azure," he said. That is going to be a service that will let companies build applications to be run from Microsoft's data centers. The next block up represented SQL Server — Microsoft's database product. "I'll bet by the time we're done, if I win, this will be called SQL Azure," he said, implying a bit of a branding debate. Nearby were boxes for Microsoft's other server products — Exchange for e-mail, SharePoint for collaboration, etc. The trapezoid at the very top of Mr. Ballmer's picture represented Office and other PC software products that it sells to big companies, much of it meant to interact with the server software, like Exchange. As he has before, Mr. Ballmer insisted that these PC programs are not all going to be replaced with Web sites, like Google Docs or Gmail. "Everyone says 'You have to run in a browser.' That's nonsense," he said. "When you run in the browser, you are not running HTML, you are just downloading code to the browser instead of downloading code to the PC." What is important, Mr. Ballmer argued, is giving Microsoft software the ability to use the Internet as needed. For example, corporations will be able to start their own social networks to enable employees to work together better. You'll use this network from within Office. He also suggested that the move will increase Microsoft's earnings from corporate services. That's because it will be able to charge both for the software itself and Microsoft's service to operate that software on its own machines. The company's costs will rise and its profit margins will fall as it builds out its data centers. Software, after all, has remarkable margins because it doesn't really cost anything to deliver an additional office license to a corporate client. But Mr. Ballmer said that Microsoft will still come away with more dollars in profit for every worker using its cloud-based services than it does from software. "Shareholders don't get fed by percentages," he said. So far, little of this is actually making money for Microsoft. It started selling the early version of cloud-based Exchange and SharePoint services last year. And it is testing its new systems with big companies including Coca-Cola Enterprises and Nokia. But Mr. Ballmer said he didn't think Microsoft was behind its potential rivals. "This is all so early," he said. "It's early for Amazon. VMware is just barely there. We're barely there. Google isn't there yet." Most of these companies don't have much experience selling to big companies, he said. "It took us 10 years to establish our enterprise capability and this company, Google, hasn't really begun to focus," Mr. Ballmer said. "We understand what the enterprise needs: security, compliance, archiving." That's why I keep wondering about the scope of what Mr. Ballmer is trying to do. Azure and the related products are meant from the start to have all the features that a multinational company might need to run sophisticated applications. His picture may well look simple to chief information officers who see in it a mirror of the software they already buy from Microsoft. I said one more time to Mr. Ballmer that his approach seemed much riskier than that used by Google and Amazon, which can start by offering simple services and then can build them up over time. Mr. Ballmer replied he was quite confident that Microsoft's "story is right." He added, "We are taking the complexity out, not the capabilities."

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Copyright by the New York Times 2008

Convergencia de celulares y computadoras.

TECHNOLOGY.

Computer Makers Prepare to Stake Bigger Claim in Phones By ASHLEE VANCE Published: March 15, 2009.

Minh Uong/The New York Times The computer industry has hit upon its Next Big Thing. It is called a phone. Emboldened by Apple's success with its iPhone, many PC makers and chip companies are charging into the mobile-phone business, promising new devices that can pack the horsepower of standard computers into palm-size packages. The companies are also shifting gears because their technological feats of the last two decades — smaller laptops with faster chips to deliver snazzier graphics — no longer impress consumers, who increasingly find their three-year-old computers adequate for everyday tasks. "The action is really with the smartphones where everyone is competing to cram the most features into a phone," said Linley Gwennap, a veteran chip industry analyst and head of the Linley Group. "I think of PCs as just kind of boring these days." The new smartphones promised by PC companies will, among other things, handle the full glory of the Internet, power two-way video conferences, and stream high-definition movies to your TV. It is a development that spells serious competition for established cellphone makers and phone companies. Apple was the first to spot a sleepy industry, shaking up the handset category two years ago with the iPhone. Until recently, the handset makers were the ones reacting to the iPhone — and then with me-too products. Now fellow PC makers are announcing plans for smartphones in a variety of sizes, shapes and abilities. Acer, the big PC manufacturer, has gone from offering no cellphones to selling eight new models, with more to come this year. "The smartphone market is the natural direction of our long-term mobile strategy," Gianfranco Lanci, chief executive of Acer, a Taiwan-based company, said as he announced the products at last month's World Mobile Conference in Barcelona. "We're just taking on another dimension." Dell has also worked on prototype phones but has not committed to making a new product. And Asustek, the company that was first to market ultraportable laptops known as netbooks, has new smartphones coming.

A mobile internet device based on Nvidia's Tegra chip.

The suppliers to the PC industry have also started shifting to the new market. Intel announced a deal to supply the cellphone maker LG with chips for new mobile devices. Nvidia, the PC graphics-chip titan, signed a deal to provide three smartphone makers — which supply handsets to brand-name manufacturers and carriers — with its new Tegra processor. "The rise of the smartphone and things like graphics and 3D images weren't important when the incumbents built this business," said Michael Rayfield, the general manager of Nvidia'smobile business unit. "This is a once in a lifetime deal where a huge market changes the things that are important to it." With smartphones and PCs taking on many of the same functions, there is certainly a fear among PC makers that if they do not get into cellphones, cellphone makers will start building PCs. Acer has characterized the smartphone business as a volatile battlefield, saying it needs to fire first and go after the cellphone makers before they come after it. Indeed, Nokia, the world's largest cellphone maker, has said it is weighing whether to get into the PC business. The convergence of the two devices has long been predicted, but it took a confluence of industry changes for it to begin in earnest. For decades chip manufacturers rushed to leapfrog one another with faster processors, and computer makers scrambled to squeeze more functions into smaller boxes. But ever-faster chips eventually become impractical. Their blazing speed requires vast amounts of power and cooling. The smartphones give the PC makers a chance to extend their newfound expertise in creating low-power products. In particular, Acer hopes to ride its success selling laptops and netbooks into the mobile phone market through a mix of new software and wireless data plans. It is working on software that will link all of its portable products together, synchronizing e-mail, contacts, media files and other information among the products. This could open up a way for carriers to sell more wireless 3G data services to consumers, since they could offer a single plan covering multiple devices. It is an extension of the model that Dell and others are already trying, in which carriers essentially give $400 netbooks away to consumers in exchange for two-year contracts to data plans. Such plans can cost as much as $1,500 over their lifespan. Deals that cover laptops as well as phones could prove troublesome for existing cellphone companies, as it would offer consumers a suite of products that were tightly integrated and supported. In addition, PC manufacturers come from an industry very familiar with low profit margins and tight cost structures, and would bring those pressures to bear on established cell manufacturers. "Acer has learned to live and prosper on very thin margins," said Aymar De Lencquesaing, the head of the company's smart hand-held business group. "I think we bring this kind of experience to a market that has perhaps has not yet had to endure similar rigor." Both Acer and Nvidia have promised very low-cost smartphones, threatening the most lucrative part of the cellphone makers' business.

Josep Lago/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A smartphone model called DX-900 by Acer.

At the same time, the phone market has been bombarded with operating systems from Microsoft, Google and Intel. There is a concern among longstanding players in the industry that operating systems and phone designs are becoming commodities, and that the barrier to entering the marketplace is lower than when mobile-phone manufacturers were building each handset from scratch. This gives companies like Motorola and Nokia an entirely new set of problems besides falling sales and shrinking margins. "It's cataclysmic for the phone guys, who were used to playing golf on Wednesday afternoons," said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, a research firm. "Those times start to look pretty good now." Not that such a move will be easy for the PC makers. The PC industry has a spotty record for expanding into consumer electronics. Dell stumbled with its MP3 player, and Hewlett-Packard's line of televisions failed to catch on with consumers. Both products have been discontinued. Also, the established mobile-phone makers have longstanding relationships with carriers, which remain reluctant to provide customer support for a wide array of devices from myriad manufacturers. Beyond that, traditional cellphone companies do not want to compete with the likes of Microsoft and Intel, which have grown over the years to dominate the PC business. Perhaps most critically, traditional phone and mobile chip companies have expertise in making phones that work. "It has to be a good cellphone first," said Ed Snyder, an analyst with Charter Equity Research. "This is about as far away from PCs as raising elephants."

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Oportunidades en tiempos de crisis NYT

Opinion.

Why Bad Times Nurture New Inventions By The Editors. March 13, 2009, 6:51 pm

With consumer confidence plunging, the jobless rate rising and the gross domestic product falling at a rate second only to the decline seen in the 1982 recession, there's little hope of good economic news anytime soon. But some economists and historians point out that such fallow ground can make a fertile bed for seeds of innovation and invention. What kinds of businesses thrive in recessionary times? How do entrepreneurs get a running start in a recession?

1-The Upside of the Worst of Times Amar Bhidé. Is the Glaubinger professor of business at Columbia Business School and author of "The Venturesome Economy." The deck gets reshuffled in a recession as habits are re-examined and patterns of behavior are broken, perhaps to greater degree than when things are humming along at a steady state. And that's what creates business opportunities. With a downturn, overall incomes, consumer spending and capital expenditures fall, but not to the same degree for all individuals, products or businesses. A 3 percent drop in aggregate income doesn't mean that everyone's wages fall by 3 percent. Some will lose their entire paycheck, others will keep what they have and a fortunate few even get raises. Recessions don't stop new ventures — they may even help. The same is true with consumption: we may spend a lot less on new houses but a lot more on new Kindles and iPods. These changes can provide a powerful stimulus for entrepreneurship. About 20 years ago, I studied 100 founders of Inc. magazine's 1989 list of the 500 fastest growing private companies in the U.S. Virtually all of them had started between 1981-83 in the midst of an awful recession. But that didn't prevent those founders from starting a new venture — in fact, in many ways it may have helped. Several had lost their jobs, so they weren't risking steady employment — and they were able to hire employees who didn't have great job prospects on the cheap. Landlords offered leases without asking too many questions about credit histories. Suppliers were willing to wait to be paid. And even though the old economy and the rust belt was in a deep slump, the personal computer was taking off, and with it opportunities not only for new hardware and software makers but also for retailers, resellers and even magazine publishers. More than a third of the founders I studied had started computer-related businesses. What were the worst of times for the economy as a whole turned out to be one of the best times for resourceful and opportunistic entrepreneurs. 2-Wool Suits, Canned Goods and the P.C. Scott Reynolds Nelson,. Is a professor of history at the College of William and Mary, is the author of the forthcoming "Crash: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Panics." America's financial panics have often been the periods of its most interesting commercial and logistical innovations. Plummeting commodity prices combined with new observations about manufacturing or trade often suggest new solutions to old problems. Some of our most storied brands today were born in depressions a century or more ago. In 1815, Britain and her allies had just defeated Napoleon. With the demobilization of the British Navy, British wool manufacturers had thousands of pre-cut wool jackets on their hands. To rescue themselves from bankruptcy in the British Depression of 1815-1816 they started the biggest Navy surplus sale in the history of the world. In 1819, 1873 and the 1970s, new inventions helped pull parts of the nation out of depression. Thousands of pre-manufactured wool coats were sold at auction in New York City. A small firm called Brooks Brothers bought them up, added civilian buttons and sold them on Cherry Street at closeout prices. Wholesalers were outraged, arguing that these manufacturers, auctioneers, and cheap vendors offered goods below cost, and should be jailed. Rather than jailing them, New York City imposed flexible regulations on New York's auction houses. By 1818, $16 million worth of goods were sold by New York's 43 licensed auctioneers. The $305,000 in proceeds financed a state-supported canal to Lake Erie. America's Panic of 1819 came on the heels of the British Depression, but the Erie Canal made New York's fortune after it was completed in 1825. The Great Depression of 1873 saw banks around the world paralyzed, making loans to industries impossible. France, Prussia and Austria-Hungary responded to the crisis by imposing tariffs on cheap American grain. They neglected to impose tariffs on manufactured food: tins of beef, beef extract, fruits, and vegetables. That made it possible for half a dozen industrial canners, who had made fortunes during the Civil War providing canned goods to Union soldiers, to create national and international markets. The names fill our pantries today — Van Camp, Libby, Swift, Heinz, and Armour. They advertised heavily, and relied on federally supported railways to transport their food over long distances. These canned goods fed the British Navy, allowed the settlement of Argentina, Western Canada, and the Australian outback. And so the American manufactured food industry succeeded where most others failed in the 1870s. Two bankers tightly connected to the beef industry — the Lehman Brothers and Marcus Goldman — rode out the financial storm and prospered because they were not diversified, but clung to the Anglo-American cattle market. The oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 hammered the American Midwestern manufacturing belt that had flourished in the 1870s. During that time, federal investment in military research expanded rapidly. Military designers hoped to design control chips small and rugged enough to withstand the electromagnetic pulse generated by a nuclear weapon. Hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in these high-speed integrated circuits. Sun Belt cities in central Florida, Texas, and Southern California became the most important centers for this research. By the early 1980s it became clear that these tiny chips could be used for miniaturizing dozens of small appliances: the personal computer, the Walkman, and the portable phone. The Sun Belt became the fastest-growing region in the nation. In 1819, 1873 and the 1970s, new products helped pull particular regions of the nation out of depression. New marketing and branding tactics and government support of new infrastructure helped make innovation possible.

Photo, left to right: Naum Kazhdan/The New York Times, Paul Sakuma/Associated Press. Personal computers and canned foods were some of the inventions nurtured in recessions past.

3-The Merits of Parsimony Rita Gunther McGrath, Is an associate professor of management at Columbia Business School, is the author of "Discovery Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity." With business as usual off the table in a recession, people become more open to new and efficient ways of doing things. And they're forced to show more entrepreneurial discipline — you have to expend imagination before spending money. Boom times can be fatal to entrepreneurial success. Tough times can make for good startups and boom times can sometimes be fatal to entrepreneurial success. We can all remember how young businesses that attracted too much capital blew it during the dot-com era. After that bust, the merits of parsimony and growing the business step by step were rediscovered, ushering in smarter startups. For instance, Michael Mountz, founder of the robot manufacturer Kiva Systems, got started in 2003 by leveraging the talent of his M.I.T. colleagues to build a prototype from off-the-shelf parts in 30 days. He was able to get just enough initial financing from private investors to demonstrate the concept and land his first customers. Since then, Kiva has enjoyed rapid growth in sales to big name clients like Staples and Zappos. Some services may also have an easier time finding an audience than when times are flush. Consider the eagerness with which many consumers are unplugging their expensive cable subscriptions and turning to innovative on-line entertainment offerings, like Hulu. By some accounts, Hulu is poised to generate $200 million in revenue and has attracted over 3 million viewers in only two years of operations. Some industry pundits claim it will surpass YouTube in revenue by next year. It wouldn't be surprising to look back on this period as the starting point for a new generation of entrepreneurs.

4-Board Games and Other Escapes Don Kelly, a former chief of staff for the United States Patent and Trademark Office, is a patent agent and a licensing professional. Inventors and innovative entrepreneurs should be smiling. That timeworn proverb about "an ill wind that blows no good" truly applies in an economic downturn. No doubt, in garages across the country, innovators are hard at work as opportunity bangs on the doors. Answering the call, however, will require them to step back and take a hard look at the current environment. Corporations are desperate for great ideas to boost their bottom lines, but they are most interested in products that can rapidly and inexpensively dovetail into their current manufacturing regimen. This is no time for major capital investment. Companies also want something that will sell easily within developed markets. There's no cash for huge ad campaigns. Consumers' needs and priorities have changed, as well. With ever-tightening household budgets, people are looking for cost-cutting innovations and affordable escapes or distractions from their own private depression. Inventors will note domestic trends toward Internet shopping, clever board games that supplant high-cost entertainment systems, inexpensive household comforts, new gadgets that enhance consumers' homes and automobiles — both of which will be with them for awhile. The majority of economy-altering and enduring innovations have emerged from the workbenches of small business entrepreneurs and independent inventors. They have proven their worth through good times and bad, and they'll do it again.

5-Sell What They Need Martin Lindstrom is the author of "Buyology: The Truth and Lies About Why We Buy." What do Lindt chocolate, the Rubik's Cube, French perfumes and a pair of Wellies have in common? They've all had increased profits during this recession. The number of products getting these results, however, is small and getting smaller by the day. These brands, which may weather the storm, offer some hints for start-up businesses. Two concepts apply. First don't ask consumers what they want; figure out what they need. (No one knew they wanted an airbag, but they knew they wanted safer cars.) In recessions, affordable, small luxuries, like chocolate and perfume, hold their own, as do cheap entertainments like movies. Second, practical features give consumers a reason to make a purchase. Wellington boots sell because they're useful — and have clever designs. Products that protect our assets and homes also do well, like anti-virus software. Shopping doesn't stop in recessions, but consumers need a reason beyond just impulse.

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Google Voice, todo un telefonazo

Google Voice, todo un telefonazo Por FRANCIS PISANI (SOITU.ES) Actualizado 12-03-2009 16:57 CET Google Voice, el servicio de telefonía por Internet (tan esperado) ya está disponible. Una pasada. Se trata de una integración, de gran alcance, de servicios de telefonía por Internet (VoIP o Voice over IP) con los servicios de telefonía clásicos. Todo apunta a que no tardará en aparecer otro Google Voice en Android, su plataforma de telefonía móvil. Entre sus utilidades, os cuento las más interesantes: Número de teléfono único Desde este número "real", asignado por Google, podemos gestionar el resto de nuestros números telefónicos, redirigiendo las llamadas al aparato que nos resulte más cómodo en cada momento o a todos a la vez. Como este número "real" es de acceso gratuito, lo lógico es tenerlo de por vida. Un filtro nos indica de quién proviene la llamada antes de cogerla o, si lo preferimos, la redirige a un buzón de voz. Gestión de mensajes de voz (voicemail) Esta facilidad tiene los servicios de transcripción automática de voz a texto y envío de mensajes de correo electrónico para avisarnos de la llamada. Todo gracias a un software que afina por si algo no va según lo programado. Teleconferencias gratuitas. Los participantes llaman a vuestro número, aceptáis la llamada y empieza el juego. Llamadas gratuitas Entre usuarios de cualquier número en Estados Unidos (y Canadá) y tarifas comparables a las de Skype para el extranjero (parecen más baratas en algunos casos). Gestión de SMS. Los mensajes que recibáis en vuestro número de Google Voice se pueden redirigir al móvil que queráis (o a varios) y guardarse indefinidamente. También se pueden estructurar en forma de conversaciones. Mensajes personalizados para los principales destinatarios Por ejemplo: (al jefe) "Estoy en una reunión con un cliente y en cuanto termine te devuelvo la llamada" u "Hola, mamá. No te puedo contestar porque ahora mismo estoy a punto de empezar a hacer los deberes con mis compañeros, pero no te preocupes, que todo bien". (Dominique Piotet, mi coautor, ha respondido a mis llamadas durante varios meses con respuestas como "estoy a punto de ponerme con mi nuevo capítulo" o "Buenos días, Francis. Ando con la promoción de nuestro fantástico libro". Mi socio y yo nos valemos de él desde 2006, puesto que se trata de un servicio lanzado originalmente por GrandCentral, empresa absorbida por Google en 2007 (lo podéis consultar en estos posts y sobre todo en la entrevista a Vincent Paquet, uno de sus fundadores). A Google le ha llevado dos años volver a hacer todo el sistema y añadirle algunas novedades especialmente apreciadas (como la gestión de SMS, por ejemplo). [De momento, el servicio sólo está disponible para los usuarios de Grand Central]. He aquí lo que dicen David Pogue, del New York Times, Leena Rao, de TechCrunch, Om Malik, de GigaOm y el comunicado oficial de Google, así como la lista de sus atributos.

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