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Early this morning, we received an announcement from Amazon the company is launching a pilot for EC2 customers to allow your enterprise organizations to move existing Microsoft Windows Server licenses to Amazon and receive a proper discount for the new EC2 instance. The offer is open until September and is being called a pilot by the companies to test the waters and pattern for hosting Windows within Amazon. Sponsor The note from Amazon is on the Windows Server license mobility prompts immediate action: "Dear Amazon EC2 Customer, We are excited to announce the immediate availability of the Microsoft Windows Server® License Mobility Pilot, which enables customers with Microsoft Enterprise Agreements (EA) to migrate their existing Windows Server licenses to Amazon EC2. By moving existing licenses to the cloud, you can leverage licenses that you have already purchased to reduce your cost of running Windows On-Demand or Reserved Instances by up to 41%. Microsoft will stop accepting new enrollments for the pilot on September 23, 2010 so it is important to act quickly. To participate in this pilot, Microsoft requires that your company meet the following criteria: * Your company must be based (or have a legal entity) in the United States * Your company must have an existing Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) that is valid for a minimum of 12 months after your entry into the pilot * You must already have purchased Software Assurance from Microsoft for your EA Windows Server Enterprise, Datacenter, and Standard licenses * You must be an Enterprise customer (Academic and Government institutions are not covered by this pilot) Once you have enrolled in the pilot, you will be eligible to run your Windows Server licenses in Amazon EC2 for the next 12 months following your sign-up. You will still be responsible for maintaining the appropriate number of Client Access licenses and External Connector licenses needed to operate your EA Windows Server licenses. To learn more about this pilot or sign-up, please visit http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/windows-license-mobility-pilot . We hope that you take advantage of this new pilot!" By clicking that
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Act Now. Amazon and Microsoft Launch Windows Server License Mobility Pilot
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Watch this battle unfold. The virtualization wars are just getting started. On one side we have Microsoft, which announced changes in its licensing structures this week. The change reflects an understanding that the customer wants full access to its virtualization platform and not be charged a tax for that right to access it on a PC, no matter if it is at work or in their home. And in true fashion, Microsoft is on the attack, Citrix at its side, in a full on fight with VMware for the virtualization market. Sponsor On the VMware side, we see a company ready to move into Microsoft's customer base by offering more than virtualization as witnessed with its recent acquisition of Zimbra. VMWare is gearing up to tap into the Microsoft Exchange market by combining its virtualization technology with the Zimbra email platform. Microsoft Offers Some Flexibility Historically, Microsoft has charged for separate licenses to access Windows operating systems in a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment. Until now, there would be separate licensing fees for people to access their virtual desktops from secondary devices like home personal computers. The licensing issue in all of this gets complicated pretty fast. According to Simon Bramfitt: "Right from the start Microsoft showed that it had been listening to its customers' feedback. As of July 1st Microsoft is rolling Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD) into the Windows Software Assurance (Windows SA) program. This means that anyone with Software Assurance can deploy desktops locally or in the data center at no additional cost. At the same time Microsoft is extending the remote access rights so that remote isn't tethered to a single PC in the primary users' home. This awareness of the fact that users want flexibility around when and where they work is the key element that has been missing from Microsoft's virtualization strategy since day one. If this wasn't enough, Microsoft is introducing a new desktop virtualization license called Windows Virtual Desktop Access (Windows VDA) costing $100 per year per device and aimed at organizations who are using endpoints that do not have a Windows SA license - Contractors PCs, devices that are do not run Windows (e.g., thin-clients, smart phones and Apple Macs) and yes, PCs with OEM licenses. Hang-on, isn't that just the same as the old non-SA VECD license? More or less, yes; it's certainly cheaper, although at $100 per year not by much. What's more important is that Windows VDA is now a first-class citizen in the Microsoft licensing hierarchy with all the benefits of Software Assurance (e.g., 24x7 support, upgrade/downgrade rights), and as a desktop virtualization license it gets the same extended roaming rights offered to the a full member of the SA club." VMWare, in smart retort, praises Microsoft for the move and bowing to "intense customer pressure." Raj Mallempati , director, product marketing, calls it an opening for VMWare View. You know it's competitive when you see this kind of rhetoric: By loosening up the restrictive desktop virtualization license policy (VECD), Microsoft has finally bowed to intensive customer pressure. This validates the acceleration in demand in the desktop virtualization industry that VMware helped start and continues to lead. Microsoft's move here is extremely positive for the industry. But what is Citrix part in all of this? At the beginning of the year, VMWare offered the opportunity to exchange Citrix XenApp licenses for VMWare View. In response, Microsoft and Citrix announced a partnership this week aimed right at VMWare with some pretty attractive licensing deals. The promotion intends to undercut VMWare by reaching into its customer base with offers to trade in as many as 500 licenses in exchange for a Microsoft integration offered with Citrix. To kick it off, the two companies plan a 100-city tour. But what this really represents is Microsoft providing some flexibility in its virtualization licensing agreements. That move alone will help open up the market. And VMWare? The company has 80 percent of the virtualization market. Any move on its customer base should be expected. VMware's vision for Zimbra is another matter. That's a battle it is taking right back to Microsoft - square on its home turf. Discuss
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The Virtualization Wars: Microsoft and Citrix v. VMware
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Despite the proverbial "the customer is always right," the relationship between the customer and the company has long been organized for the benefit of the latter. But the ability for companies to completely control this relationship has disappeared. Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management , a report from the Altimeter Group released earlier this month, serves to help companies and organizations understand the changing territory. The report offers a thorough framework with which companies can strategize their adoption of social CRM projects. Sponsor Based on research with companies who have pioneered an embrace of social technologies for relationship management, the report lists 18 use cases that serve as entry points for social CRM efforts. These include social customer insights (tracking customers' preferences via social media sites like Facebook), rapid social marketing response (defending the brand in real-time), and crowdsourced R&D (eliciting real-time feedback to enhance innovation). The report rates each use case by its market demand and tech maturity, indiced to help organizations see which might be the most expedient and appropriate entry points for their social CRM endeavors. It also lists vendors to watch, pointing out that there is currently no single tool to help organizations track customer data and customer conversations in a world of rapidly changing social technologies. The report has six recommendations for organizations: Breathe social. Complement existing CRM processes. Measure social CRM projects on business goals rather than solely on engagement. Be prepared for rapid change. Find other social CRM pioneers. The most important, perhaps: Act now. The report cautions companies against falling even further out of step with customers by not engaging with social technologies to expand their CRM processes. Well-researched and with clear definitions, the report could also help companies avoid undertaking social CRM projects merely for the buzz. Discuss
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'Breathe Social': The New Rules of Relationship Management
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Google launched an application marketplace today comprised of services from third-party providers that integrate with the Google Apps ecosystem. The news has been anticipated for some time. In particular, it shows how much Google is embracing open-standards and leveraging its search and Google Apps platform to attract third-party developers. Sponsor Google made the announcement at its Google Campfire One event tonight. The emphasis Google is putting on the enterprise is apparent in how much attention the company put into the event. Over and over we heard that Google passed the 25 million customer mark over the weekend. It is that mark that Google is using as its hook for attracting developers to its platform. Developers will be charged $100 to join the program. With that entrance fee, they may add as many apps as they wish to the Google Apps Marketplace. The marketplace supports OpenID to provide a single sign-on for developers. Authorization is integrated into the platform. The customers get access through OAuth, the open standard for authorizing users. A "manifest page" is the foundation for the service. The developers provides information when adding the application to the marketplace that identifies it. Developers then provide additional information about the product. The system is a controlled. Application developers submit the app for approval, which might take a few days. Intuit provided an example of how the system works by showing how payroll could be managed. The customer accesses the account. With Google Apps integration, the customer accesses an account where they have the employee information. It's that collected contact network that is then integrated with the payroll application. Atlassian showed how Studio, its project management application, would integrate with GMail and Google Apps. Again, if the company is standardized on Google Apps, the information is available through the network. Manymoon is another project mangement application that was demonstrated. It uses Google Apps to develop features such as a calendar, showing how a startup can leverage Google Apps to add features to its service. Other companies that were a part of the initial launch include Socialwok and Appirio . At its core, the marketplace is built upon Google's search capabilities. Google Apps can be extended with applications. In turn, developers have access to the built-in capabilities of Google Apps. Perhaps the greatest value to customers will be if they are centralized on Google Apps. If so, they can get some pretty powerful capabilities of the marketplace. Discuss
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Google Launches Apps Marketplace for the Enterprise
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Juniper Research has come out with more analysis that shows just how big the mobile enterprise market will be for cloud computing. According to Juniper, the advent of collaboration tools will mean that 130 million enterprise workers will use the mobile cloud by 2014. Sponsor The steep climb will be in part due to the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings from companies like Google and Microsoft. The rise is already evident as more people adopt smartphones. In particular, Juniper points to the iPhone and the App store as catalysts for the growth. People are using their iPhones to use a variety of applications for the work they do.The report also cites the iPhone user interface and how it has spurred adoption and lead to a higher level of quality in smartphones across the wider market. The report also cites how cloud computing providers have opened up their API's, which in turn has attracted waves of developers. The benefits to developer and customers are cited as reasons why we will see the surge. Developers can easily deploy applications to the cloud. And the greater variety of offerings drives a higher customer base. In February, Juniper predicted that mobile cloud computing will grow to $9.5 billion by 2014. Discuss
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How Many Enterprise Workers Will Work in the Mobile Cloud? Try 130 Million
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