Windows 8 and Surface Going Nowhere Fast

Jun Dong-soo, president of Samsung’s memory chip division, doesn’t think much of Microsoft’s latest efforts:

John Paczkowski, Windows 8 No Better Than Vista, Says Samsung Exec

“The global PC industry is steadily shrinking despite the launch of Windows 8,” Jun said. “I think the Windows 8 system is no better than the previous Windows Vista platform.”

No better than Vista? Too cruel, too cruel.

And Jun was just getting started. That Vista quip was part of a one-two sucker punch that ended with a slag of another one of Microsoft’s big new efforts.

“[Microsoft’s] rollout of its Windows Surface tablet is seeing lackluster demand,” he said. “Meanwhile, previous vigorous pitches by Intel and MS for thinner ultra-books simply failed and I believe that’s mostly because of the less-competitive Windows platform.”

A brutal commentary on Windows 8, which has so far utterly failed to catalyze PC sales. 

When will Microsoft’s board finally get rid of Ballmer?

Source: allthingsd.com

10 March 2013 9 Permalink

Sarah Lacey Wants The Cloud To Work

Somehow I missed this post from Sarah Lacey in December, when Yammer crashed for a day, and Pandodaily’s entire work flow crashed along with it.

Sarah Lacey, Dear Yammer and the entire cloud wave: If you expect companies to use your software, it has to work

Let this be a warning for companies trying to run their business on freemium cloud apps. And as a business owner, here’s my response to cloud companies: If you expect me to run my company on this, it has to work. I don’t give a shit how pretty the UI is. I don’t give a shit about your mobile app. I don’t give a shit how cutesy your name is or if your company has a mascot of some cute animal. I don’t give a shit if I’m paying you or not paying you. It has to work. And should something go wrong, you owe me some sort of communication letting me know when it’ll be back up.

In the early years of Salesforce.com, the users would go apeshit if the service was down at all. This was even before the era of social media when venting was a lot harder, but the outcry was still huge. CEO Marc Benioff used to sigh and point out that the software was up more than 95 percent of the time — something that users should be impressed with.

But the message was loud and clear: If you want us to stop using on premise software and use this instead, it has to work. Back in those days, people used the analogy of electricity with on-demand or SaaS or Cloud software. You just turn on the light switch, and there it is! Like magic! If that’s the pitch, you have to deliver with the reliability of electricity or plumbing or whatever your utility analogy is.

And because Benioff understood selling to customers and marketing, he got this. And Salesforce got rapidly better.

The problem with so many of the new generation of software moguls and the obsessive move to the “consumerization of enterprise” is that they don’t know how to build enterprise-grade software that doesn’t crash. As consumers who just want to Tweet witticisms, we can forgive a Fail Whale. When a Fail Whale can bring your business to its knees, it’s simply not acceptable. It’s when launch first and iterate later will cost you your entire customer base.

Especially enjoyed the description of her team trying out a bunch of alternatives to Yammer, desperately trying to get up and running again.

And this one-liner:

Using Chatter is like watching your dad trying to moonwalk. “Hey, look, kids! We can be cool and social too!”

Source: pandodaily.com

3 March 2013 11 Permalink

Two Teensy, Weensy Numbers That Say A Lot

Two stats almost collided in my stream today, with one similarity: small numbers that say a lot. First, an astonishingly small proportion of Facebook users — 0.067%  — in the Facebook Governance Vote. That’s a hundreds of millions shy of the 300 million self-imposed requirement for Facebook to take any notice of the results. Which, of course, might be the result Facebook wants.

A second minute number comes from a study from Chitika that shows 0.13% of North American tablet traffic is coming from the Microsoft Surface tablet, which you could try to spin as ‘slow initial uptake’ but which I call ‘death eating a soda cracker’.

Source: The Huffington Post

11 December 2012 6 Permalink

Yammer Pushes To Be The ‘Enterprise Graph’

At Yamjam 2012 today, Yammer has announced the next iteration of its enterprise platform plans, called the Enterprise Graph. Yammer is a leading work media player, and was acquired earlier this year by Microsoft for over $1B.

This new generation of Yammer’s API is designed to allow enterprise software vendors to embed Yammer functionality into their apps. This is a real parallel to the Facebook platform strategy, and the idea is similar, allowing others to embed specific bits of Yammer functionality — such as activity streams, follow and like buttons, and pages —within those third party apps.

This functionality reminds me of Socialcast Reach, but a few years after that pioneering approach (perhaps a few years too early).

Obviously, Yammer and Microsoft are pushing aggressively to become the platform of choice for enterprise apps to become social, trying to take the high ground in the new battlefield in the work media marketplace.

29 October 2012 22 Permalink