Stories by Shane O'Neill

Microsoft's new desktop vitualisation initiatives announced last week are a long-anticipated move to make desktop and application vitualisation easier and cheaper for enterprises. But it's also part of a broader Microsoft strategy to capture market share from vitualisation arch-rival VMware.
Desktop vitualisation is still a nascent technology, but it does offer the kind of flexibility and ROI that enterprises are looking for, especially ones that are migrating to Windows 7 and are worried about application incompatibility. Microsoft's desktop vitualisation model, including VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure), promises to rein in desktop costs, improve security and management and speed up the delivery of new applications.

With Microsoft SharePoint 2010 due in the first half of this year, the time is now for enterprises to assess the suite's new features for both end-users (blogs and wikis) and IT pros (app management, backup and recovery).
But there's one big complicating factor: Simply managing existing SharePoint 2007 is more than a handful for IT departments.

Windows 7 may have helped propel to record levels, but many enterprises are still slowly, carefully deploying the OS, if at all.

With Office 2010 set to launch in June, businesses of all sizes are considering if it is worth the money and hassle to upgrade, especially for small and midsize companies that never moved from Office 2003 to Office 2007.

If you're looking for someone who has road tested Windows 7, pull up next to BMW IT executive Bernhard Huber.
Huber started testing Windows 7 in its beta phase about a year ago and continued putting it front of BMW users through an internal pilot program that grew as Windows 7 reached its RC (release candidate) and RTM (release to manufacturing) milestones.

With Windows 7, Microsoft (MSFT) aims to please both consumers and businesses large and small.
Wait a minute - small?

When you're a technology mongrel like Microsoft, challenges are constant - and 2009 was chock full of them. It was a tumultuous year that saw the software giant's first widespread layoffs and its worst quarterly revenue earnings ever.
Yet there were some rays of sunlight flickering through the clouds. Windows 7 survived its many pre-launch milestones and launched successfully in October; search engine Bing debuted with aggressive marketing and innovative features; the launch of Windows Azure pulled Microsoft's cloud computing strategy together; Office, Exchange and Sharepoint software continue to own the enterprise; and Microsoft's public presence on television improved with the Laptop Hunters, Windows 7 and Bing ad campaigns.

Last week, research firm Gartner released a PC sales forecast that initially sounded like good news for Microsoft and its hardware partners, but likely indicates trouble ahead.

This is the time of year to be thankful for the good things in your life: family, friends, health, a job, a smartphone, a virus-free computer.

For all the stories about enterprises holding off on Windows 7 deployments, Windows XP's dominance in the enterprise is at the beginning of the end, says one industry analyst.
This will not happen overnight, writes Forrester analyst Benjamin Gray in a new research report, but there are enough reasons for IT managers to "shake the status quo, and finally end Windows XP's corporate reign".

Despite enterprise affinity for the sturdy and reliable Windows XP, it's all but inevitable that Windows 7, shipping this week, will see significant business adoption in 2010. That's due to both Windows XP's age and the timing of PC hardware upgrade cycles. Analysts at research firm Gartner expect corporate demand for Windows 7 to gain full momentum by the end of 2010.
Consequently, Gartner recommends strongly that businesses start testing for Windows 7 now, citing that mainstream support for Windows XP ended in April and any support for XP from ISVs (independent software vendors) will dry up toward the end of 2011. In other words, if you stall, you will end up in a support crunch, Gartner says.

As companies of all sizes consider what portion of their IT infrastructure and business applications to move to the cloud, Microsoft has one word of advice: Balance.
In an interview this week, Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's Business Division, which produces the Office software, stressed that companies will find the most success by accessing data through Web browsers and mobile devices when appropriate, in balance with desktop applications on a PC.

With the arrival of the Bing search engine and the Microsoft-Yahoo search partnership, it's been a hectic period for search - not that you'll see market leader Google sweating.
With a united front building against its cash cow search business, Google is playing it cool.

The biggest challenge to the Microsoft-Yahoo search partnership may not be Google the company as much as Google the habit.

After a year and a half of negotiating, Microsoft and Yahoo announced a search deal partnership this morning that will make Redmond's new search engine, Bing, Yahoo's search platform and put Yahoo's sales force in charge of handling both companies' search advertisers.