Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Thursday 8 October 2009, 2:03 PM
MS and Novell: Relationship 'exceeding expectations'
Microsoft and Novell are close to completing the sales targets that formed part of their alliance, three years into the five-year deal, representatives from the companies said on Thursday.
Speaking at an IP Expo seminar in London, Novell's Microsoft alliance director Steve Harris and Microsoft's strategic partnerships chief Michael Croney said the results of the virtualisation-centric arrangement had exceeded expectations.
"Microsoft has sold $220m [£137m] worth of Suse Linux subscriptions for Novell," Croney said in the seminar, referring to the element of the Microsoft-Novell pact whereby Microsoft paid Novell $240m for subscriptions it intended to resell to its customers.
Speaking with ZDNet UK after the presentation, Croney said there was "a general feeling within Microsoft that the Microsoft-Novell alliance has produced better results than anticipated and this is reflected in the broadness of the alliance, and the increased focus on different technological components that were not anticipated at the outset". He pointed to the work on Moonlight — an open-source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight rich media technology — and directory federation as examples of this.
In August last year, Microsoft agreed to resell up to another $100m worth of Suse Linux subscriptions — it has bought already $25m worth and will continue to buy more subscriptions in $25m chunks, depending on how sales go, Croney said.
Harris said subscription sales were "more successful than [Novell] anticipated", while Croney said the extra subscriptions ordered showed "the partnership has exceeded [Microsoft's] expectations".
Asked about the impact on the Microsoft-Novell relationship of Microsoft's virtualisation interoperability validation with Red Hat, announced on Wednesday, Croney said his company was "very pleased" about the validation, but Microsoft would still recommend Suse Linux over Red Hat Enterprise Linux to its customers because of intellectual property issues.
Whereas a fundamental element of the Microsoft-Novell deal was Microsoft's agreement to not sue Novell over alleged IP infringements in Linux, Croney said "Red Hat have not tried to address the IP assurance issue at all".
Harris reacted to the Microsoft-Red Hat deal by saying it was no surprise to Novell. "No technology can be maintained exclusively by any technology company these days," he said, adding: "We have already moved on, for example to managing that technology" — a reference to Novell's release of a product that allows Microsoft's management tools to monitor Suse Linux.
Speaking at an IP Expo seminar in London, Novell's Microsoft alliance director Steve Harris and Microsoft's strategic partnerships chief Michael Croney said the results of the virtualisation-centric arrangement had exceeded expectations.
"Microsoft has sold $220m [£137m] worth of Suse Linux subscriptions for Novell," Croney said in the seminar, referring to the element of the Microsoft-Novell pact whereby Microsoft paid Novell $240m for subscriptions it intended to resell to its customers.
Speaking with ZDNet UK after the presentation, Croney said there was "a general feeling within Microsoft that the Microsoft-Novell alliance has produced better results than anticipated and this is reflected in the broadness of the alliance, and the increased focus on different technological components that were not anticipated at the outset". He pointed to the work on Moonlight — an open-source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight rich media technology — and directory federation as examples of this.
In August last year, Microsoft agreed to resell up to another $100m worth of Suse Linux subscriptions — it has bought already $25m worth and will continue to buy more subscriptions in $25m chunks, depending on how sales go, Croney said.
Harris said subscription sales were "more successful than [Novell] anticipated", while Croney said the extra subscriptions ordered showed "the partnership has exceeded [Microsoft's] expectations".
Asked about the impact on the Microsoft-Novell relationship of Microsoft's virtualisation interoperability validation with Red Hat, announced on Wednesday, Croney said his company was "very pleased" about the validation, but Microsoft would still recommend Suse Linux over Red Hat Enterprise Linux to its customers because of intellectual property issues.
Whereas a fundamental element of the Microsoft-Novell deal was Microsoft's agreement to not sue Novell over alleged IP infringements in Linux, Croney said "Red Hat have not tried to address the IP assurance issue at all".
Harris reacted to the Microsoft-Red Hat deal by saying it was no surprise to Novell. "No technology can be maintained exclusively by any technology company these days," he said, adding: "We have already moved on, for example to managing that technology" — a reference to Novell's release of a product that allows Microsoft's management tools to monitor Suse Linux.
Thursday 8 October 2009, 12:53 AM
Sony Ericsson's Satio and Aino miss beat, point
I have just returned home from one of the oddest musical events I have been to.
Framed by the media launch of two keenly anticipated handsets that may or may not be the saviours of their manufacturer, Sony Ericsson, it was a condensed performance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, as executed by luminaries of the UK dance and hiphop scenes including Goldie, Sister Bliss, Kano, Scroobius Pip, Layo & Bushwacka and Ms Dynamite, along with, y'know, actual violinists and stuff. See my review after the bit about the phones.
I attended the first announcement of Sony Ericsson's Idou 'phone' back in February, at Mobile World Congress. The event was the first expression of the manufacturer's entertainment-centric strategy, which it hopes will change the fact that its core market — the music-and-snap-happy mid-end — is currently in thrall to the iPhone and its many imitators. In fact, the Idou as presented in Barcelona was a blatant copy of Apple's handset.
The Satio and Aino — the results of the Idou strategy, eight months down the line — don't look much like it. Well, perhaps a bit, but still quite Sony Ericsson. For some inexplicable reason, they are based on Series 60, an end-of-line platform.
They each have strengths and weaknesses. The problem is, each one's strength is the other's weakness.
The Aino is the smaller of the two, a slider phone. It operates in two modes: closed and open. In the latter case, the user interface is based on the physical keypad. Closing the handset takes you to the media mode, which is operated (rather well) via touchscreen. The two modes are completely separate. When you open the phone, all touchscreen functionality disappears, no matter how much instinct tells you to keep on tapping. That said, the device feels great in the hand and seems to be of very good build quality.
The Satio has a 12-megapixel camera — the Aino has a piddling eight, but I should mention that I'm firmly in the anything-above-five-megapixels-in-a-phone-is-a-waste-of-time camp, so hey, it's all the same to me. It does not slide — it is a pure touchscreen device, with a consistent user interface (yay). It feels like a rather hollow camera with phone functionality (boo).
So yeah, about that music. All the above-named DJs, producers, singers and rappers, mixed together, created music that was serviceable, reminiscent of past glories — both of Vivaldi and of the artists involved, none of whom is achingly current — but ultimately bland and pointless.
While it is impossible to avoid, it seems a bit flippant to equate the music with the technology. If anything, they had the opposite problems: the music was the result of many ideas being mashed into one thing that disappointed, while the Satio and Aino were the result of one decent idea being split into two, in a disappointing kind of way.
The question is, would Sony Ericsson have been better off launching its Android handset first?
That device is only set to arrive next year, but the Satio and Aino have landed in a market exploding with applications, web-centricity and customisability. The stats clearly demonstrate that the smartphone is threatening to take over from the so-called 'featurephone' (a rather silly industry term used to pretend that a certain handset is most useful for its camera or media player, rather than its ability to help the user communicate with people).
Sony Ericsson's strategy is to stop dividing its Cybershot and Walkman brands, and build a good camera and good media player into each phone. Hence, the new handsets are each trying to be the ultimate featurephone. In this they may succeed — and I kind of hope they do, because someone out there needs to be making decent cameraphones — but they may have missed the point.
The phone industry has seen a fundamental shift since the iPhone launched, and in late 2009 the future belongs to Apple, Google and maybe — we shall see next year with the rebirth of Symbian, and let's not forget Maemo — Nokia.
Tonight's extravagant event felt a bit like a last gasp. Hopefully it wasn't.
Framed by the media launch of two keenly anticipated handsets that may or may not be the saviours of their manufacturer, Sony Ericsson, it was a condensed performance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, as executed by luminaries of the UK dance and hiphop scenes including Goldie, Sister Bliss, Kano, Scroobius Pip, Layo & Bushwacka and Ms Dynamite, along with, y'know, actual violinists and stuff. See my review after the bit about the phones.
I attended the first announcement of Sony Ericsson's Idou 'phone' back in February, at Mobile World Congress. The event was the first expression of the manufacturer's entertainment-centric strategy, which it hopes will change the fact that its core market — the music-and-snap-happy mid-end — is currently in thrall to the iPhone and its many imitators. In fact, the Idou as presented in Barcelona was a blatant copy of Apple's handset.
The Satio and Aino — the results of the Idou strategy, eight months down the line — don't look much like it. Well, perhaps a bit, but still quite Sony Ericsson. For some inexplicable reason, they are based on Series 60, an end-of-line platform.
They each have strengths and weaknesses. The problem is, each one's strength is the other's weakness.
The Aino is the smaller of the two, a slider phone. It operates in two modes: closed and open. In the latter case, the user interface is based on the physical keypad. Closing the handset takes you to the media mode, which is operated (rather well) via touchscreen. The two modes are completely separate. When you open the phone, all touchscreen functionality disappears, no matter how much instinct tells you to keep on tapping. That said, the device feels great in the hand and seems to be of very good build quality.
The Satio has a 12-megapixel camera — the Aino has a piddling eight, but I should mention that I'm firmly in the anything-above-five-megapixels-in-a-phone-is-a-waste-of-time camp, so hey, it's all the same to me. It does not slide — it is a pure touchscreen device, with a consistent user interface (yay). It feels like a rather hollow camera with phone functionality (boo).
So yeah, about that music. All the above-named DJs, producers, singers and rappers, mixed together, created music that was serviceable, reminiscent of past glories — both of Vivaldi and of the artists involved, none of whom is achingly current — but ultimately bland and pointless.
While it is impossible to avoid, it seems a bit flippant to equate the music with the technology. If anything, they had the opposite problems: the music was the result of many ideas being mashed into one thing that disappointed, while the Satio and Aino were the result of one decent idea being split into two, in a disappointing kind of way.
The question is, would Sony Ericsson have been better off launching its Android handset first?
That device is only set to arrive next year, but the Satio and Aino have landed in a market exploding with applications, web-centricity and customisability. The stats clearly demonstrate that the smartphone is threatening to take over from the so-called 'featurephone' (a rather silly industry term used to pretend that a certain handset is most useful for its camera or media player, rather than its ability to help the user communicate with people).
Sony Ericsson's strategy is to stop dividing its Cybershot and Walkman brands, and build a good camera and good media player into each phone. Hence, the new handsets are each trying to be the ultimate featurephone. In this they may succeed — and I kind of hope they do, because someone out there needs to be making decent cameraphones — but they may have missed the point.
The phone industry has seen a fundamental shift since the iPhone launched, and in late 2009 the future belongs to Apple, Google and maybe — we shall see next year with the rebirth of Symbian, and let's not forget Maemo — Nokia.
Tonight's extravagant event felt a bit like a last gasp. Hopefully it wasn't.
Wednesday 7 October 2009, 5:40 PM
Red Hat and Microsoft support mixed virtualisation
It is now possible to deploy supported virtualisation environments that combine Red Hat Linux with Microsoft Windows Server, the two companies have announced.
Late on Wednesday, Red Hat and Microsoft said they had completed interoperability testing and validation between the two companies' virtualisation software and operating systems. They first said they planned to do so back in February.
The two firms are offering joint support for:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, using the Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor, with Windows Server 2003, 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 guests.
- Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 host with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4 guests.
Microsoft products certified on Windows Server and Red Hat products certified on RHEL are also supported.
"Red Hat customers have the flexibility to run their applications in environments that span from bare-metal servers, to virtualised servers, to public clouds — and this additional support will broaden their deployment choices even further," Red Hat corporate deployment chief Mike Evans said in the companies' statement.
Windows Server virtualisation chief Mike Neil said in the statement that the support would let customers "confidently deploy new applications and services".
Late on Wednesday, Red Hat and Microsoft said they had completed interoperability testing and validation between the two companies' virtualisation software and operating systems. They first said they planned to do so back in February.
The two firms are offering joint support for:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, using the Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor, with Windows Server 2003, 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 guests.
- Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 host with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4 guests.
Microsoft products certified on Windows Server and Red Hat products certified on RHEL are also supported.
"Red Hat customers have the flexibility to run their applications in environments that span from bare-metal servers, to virtualised servers, to public clouds — and this additional support will broaden their deployment choices even further," Red Hat corporate deployment chief Mike Evans said in the companies' statement.
Windows Server virtualisation chief Mike Neil said in the statement that the support would let customers "confidently deploy new applications and services".
Tuesday 29 September 2009, 5:23 PM
US government to let Icann go, reports say
The United States government will on Wednesday announce it is relinquishing most of the control it currently exerts over Icann, the organisation that runs the internet's core domain systems, the BBC reports.
The ties between Icann and the US government have long been a sticking point for many other countries, who are pushing for a true internationalisation of the internet. Issues that could be affected by the upcoming announcement include domain names in non-western scripts, the policing of the internet and the introduction of new domain extensions.
In July, the European Commission called for the US government to let Icann become accountable to the whole of the world, and argued that the end of the current agreement between the two parties — which will take place this Thursday — would be a natural point for this to occur.
However, according to the BBC:
...it is unlikely that the new agreement will sever the links between the US government and Icann entirely.
Rod Beckstrom, president and chief of the organisation, said in a letter to Congress last week that it would seek to maintain a "long term, formal relationship with the United States Government".
The ties between Icann and the US government have long been a sticking point for many other countries, who are pushing for a true internationalisation of the internet. Issues that could be affected by the upcoming announcement include domain names in non-western scripts, the policing of the internet and the introduction of new domain extensions.
In July, the European Commission called for the US government to let Icann become accountable to the whole of the world, and argued that the end of the current agreement between the two parties — which will take place this Thursday — would be a natural point for this to occur.
However, according to the BBC:
...it is unlikely that the new agreement will sever the links between the US government and Icann entirely.
Rod Beckstrom, president and chief of the organisation, said in a letter to Congress last week that it would seek to maintain a "long term, formal relationship with the United States Government".
Tuesday 29 September 2009, 3:55 PM
3 won't currently stock the iPhone
If your head is spinning over the clash of tenses that is involved in that headline, you're not the only one, and don't blame me.
Here's what we know for sure: O2 has stocked the iPhone for two years; Orange will start stocking it later this year and Vodafone will join the party early next year. T-Mobile has no iPhone-related plans.
The only operator left is 3, so we asked them if they were going to carry Apple's handset. Here's the response:
We look to offer customers great value for money with fantastic handsets and very competitive tariffs. We will not currently be ranging the Apple iPhone. We've got several strong handsets coming soon that we know our customers will love, which offer an excellent mobile internet experience at affordable prices.
Unless 3 is deliberately engaging in linguistic yoga, I think we can take that to mean they're staying away from the party.
Here's what we know for sure: O2 has stocked the iPhone for two years; Orange will start stocking it later this year and Vodafone will join the party early next year. T-Mobile has no iPhone-related plans.
The only operator left is 3, so we asked them if they were going to carry Apple's handset. Here's the response:
We look to offer customers great value for money with fantastic handsets and very competitive tariffs. We will not currently be ranging the Apple iPhone. We've got several strong handsets coming soon that we know our customers will love, which offer an excellent mobile internet experience at affordable prices.
Unless 3 is deliberately engaging in linguistic yoga, I think we can take that to mean they're staying away from the party.
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