Enterprise adoption of SharePoint is rapidly on the rise: A new survey from document management company Global 360 reveals that 90 per cent of the survey's 886 respondents currently use SharePoint, with eight per cent using SharePoint 2010.
It's a little ironic that the main focus of yesterday's Internet Explorer 9 beta launch event in San Francisco was to de-emphasize the browser itself.
Microsoft has unveiled the beta version of its latest web browser Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), but for the vast majority of corporate IT managers and their users, this is a complete non-event.
Corporate IT managers have more fundamental upgrade issues to think about. They are still trying to decide if Windows 7 is worth the cost of upgrade, so thoughts of rolling out IE9 are a long, long way off, claims ICT consultancy firm Ovum in a press statement.
Microsoft will issue a blanket software license to nonprofit groups and journalist groups outside the U.S. after the New York Times reported that Russian police have used software copyright raids to seize computers of activist groups.
Microsoft NZ is offering assistance to its partners in the Canterbury region who have been affected by the recent earthquake.
Managed partners and enterprise managed customers will receive free priority technical support via phone.
Microsoft NZ managing director Paul Muckleston says there is still room for improvement for its engagement with industry and the Government.
Last year the G2009 deal between the Government and Microsoft – negotiated every three years to give agencies software discounts on Microsoft products – fell over and Government procurement policy released after that indicated a cooling of relations with the software giant.
There isn’t a blueprint for being a CIO, says Mike Clarke, CIO of SkyCity Entertainment Group. CIOs, more than any other chief officer position, are faced with hugely conflicting objectives, he says.
Small and medium business marketing manager Jared Pedersen and former consulting service team member Sean Croon have received the Outstanding Achiever award in Microsoft's Circle of Excellence programme.
Croon recently moved to Canada to work for the vendor.
Windows 7 momentum is slowly but surely spilling over into the corporate world as long-frozen tech budgets begin to thaw and new PCs are purchased.
Research firm Forrester predicts that enterprise-wide adoption of Windows 7 will pick up in the second half of 2010 as IT managers develop upgrade strategies and test their applications.
Microsoft director of marketing and operations, Paul Muckleston, will be appointed managing director on Thursday, August 2.
He replaces Kevin Ackhurst who is moving to Singapore to take up the position of vice-president Sales and Marketing for Asia Pacific.
Microsoft’s Kevin Ackhurst is moving to Singapore next week to become the vendor’s vice president of sales and marketing for Asia Pacific.
Ackhurst says the local business has been successful in the past couple of years, but admits strong relationship building was needed at the outset of his term and there is more work to be done.
Microsoft has outlined its Asia-Pacific strategy in regards to public sector vertical markets.
Microsoft NZ managing director Kevin Ackhurst is moving onward and upward in the organisation, to become vice-president of sales and marketing for the Asia-Pacific region. He will be based in Singapore.
Christchurch technology firm Tait Electronics has become the latest flag-bearer for Google Apps, after switching all of its nearly 1000 staff world-wide from Microsoft software to Google's "cloud-based" email and calendar applications.
Information systems manager George Elder says it appears the firm will save money, but he cannot say how much.
"When you replace five different mail servers with one standard, then potentially you avoid the need to upgrade those and apply patches and maintain those for the future."
The main motivation was that Tait employs staff "all around the world" and had several mail servers in different locations, he says.
"Collaboration in the international environment was the major driver. This has enabled us to move to a single mail system, accessible from anywhere, and have a common calendar for all of our people."
Migrating to Google Apps was reasonably straightforward, he says. One of the challenges - cited by other Google Apps users - was migrating terabytes of archived email to the new system.
Many staff were familiar with Gmail, but some had to get to grips with the different way Google Apps collates emails. Google Mail catalogues emails in threads - conversations between users - rather than in a linear manner.
Elder says some people love threading and some hate it.
"It is something we would like to see made optional. Definitely people who are not used to threading, they find it a little bit more difficult.
"The people who are extremely heavy users of mail have probably had the most difficulty working with the change because it is different to what they are accustomed to.
"For us, the thing that is working best is Google Calendar." Google Mail was more reliable than Tait's own email system, he says.
"We believe we now have a more secure environment."
Elder is confident its contract with Google would let Tait switch provider, if required.
"They keep open a window for us to do that for a fixed period of time after the contract is finished.
"We could take other actions if we wanted, such as making our own copies of all mail independently, but then we would eliminate some of the benefits, as we would need to maintain our own data centre capability to do that."
Microsoft New Zealand has announced the finalists in the Partners’ Choice CIO of the Year award, a new prize introduced at this year’s partner awards.
The three finalists are Air New Zealand's Julia Raue, Neville Richardson of Les Mills and Rob McNaughtan from Mighty River Power.
The awards are split into four sub-categories – Solution, Individual, Partnering and Supreme.