Oracle exec shuffle

The top ranks of Oracle are shifting. Chuck Rozwat, head of all  development at the company is taking a year off to attend Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, an Oracle spokeswoman confirmed Thursday. Continued »

Top Five WPC Lessons

1: Sales of Business Productivity Online Suite are sad.  First clue? The 250 free seats offered to WPC 2009 attendees. People applauded that news but some of the more um–realistic–VARs in the crowd said it’s may be the only way to get some actual users online. VARs hate BPOS because Microsoft owns the customer relationship and VARs can’t co-brand it or bundle it with their other services.  HATE it, 18% margin the first year or not. Continued »

Microsoft VARs: Do you know where your TPAM is?

Microsoft is moving its Telephone Partner Account Managers (TPAMs) into distribution.

The company told several of its VARs at the Worldwide Partner Conference this week that the TPAMs will soon be working out of distributors’ support organizations but performing most of their same tasks.

One VAR who’s been briefed said that makes sense giving the imminent rollout of Windows 7–which will mostly be an OEM sale–bundled with new machines. To put the TPAMs at the distribution point of the PCs themselves makes sense, he said. He said his TPAM will now work out of Ingram Micro’s Buffalo support center.

One caveat to all this happiness: He suspects that this may mean fewer market development funds (MDF) will flow, but he’ll wait and see.

Office apps glut coming

So, Microsoft’s go-to-market plan for Office Web Applications is to give them away to consumers. Check. Got it.

And, it will give volume licensees of on-premises Office 2010 rights to use Office Web Apps on premises.  No check. Don’t get it. Continued »

What they’re tweeting at the Microsoft WPC

By Colin Steele

The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2009 kicked off today in New Orleans, and partners have been busy discussing this morning’s news on Twitter (using the hash tag #WPC09). Here’s a collection of some of the best tweets of the day so far:

@elfederiko: Who cares about Chrome os, is just a Linux with a Browser, come on ppl,! Windows 7 is here! Continued »

Win 7 RTM and other hits from WPC

Bill Veghte may be moving on from his Windows leadership role, but he was in New Orleans with a vengeance Monday morning, promising Windows RTM for this month as planned and reiterating the new desktop OS’s ability to drive partner services dough, particularly in deployment planning.

Continued »

Report: Microsoft tries to sell Razorfish

Microsoft is reportedly trying to sell off Razorfish, the digital ad service to a large consortium of advertising agencies. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company is trying to offload Razorfish–but with the condition that the acquiring company buy ads on Microsoft properties.

The news comes as Microsoft kicks off its annual partner conference–where many of the companies old-line partners think it is unduly fixated on Google and online ad services at the expense of some of its core technology businesses.

SAP cuts LinkedIn recruiting deal for its partners

SAP partners can now use LinkedIn’s recruiting service for a deep discount to find and hire talent.

Continued »

You too can ‘friend’ Azure

For those who can’t get enough of Microsoft Azure, Microsoft (or someone) has thoughtfully set up a Facebook page for the future set of hosted services. It hasn’t been updated since April, but what the heck?

Sinofsky on the rise at Microsoft

Steven Sinofsky, a Microsoft long timer known for driving efficient–and secretive–Office 2007 and now Windows 7 development efforts, got promoted. Yesterday, he was named president of the Windows division. Tami Reller, CFO of that group, now picks up marketing as well. Bill Veghte, the senior VP who lead the marketing, sales and strategic planning charge will assume another–as yet unnamed–role.