back to article Microsoft promises resellers bumper 2013 with total line-up refresh

Microsoft closed down its Worldwide Partners Conference in Toronto with a promise that the coming year will provide the best year yet for its resellers, with a complete refresh of its ecosystem to restore Redmond's future. "For the very first time, every single product in our portfolio is getting refreshed and relaunched in a …

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  1. Doug 3

    does marketing see marketing

    what I want to know is if those marketing people saw what was said as marketing and how much they really think is true?

    seeing through all the fluff, it's too little too late the way I see it. But Metro everywhere is too much to many places so that'll hurt them too.

  2. N2

    VM Ware

    If we cant buy it, bash it?

    1. Phoenix50
      Thumb Down

      Re: VM Ware

      What are you saying?

      One company is criticising another company, who also happens to compete in the same space as them?

      Whatever next?

  3. Tom 35

    Microsoft as investing in improved partner rebates and rewards he said

    We have to pay people not to laugh at Windows 8.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Smells like desperation

    Azure has only grown by 100 % in 12 months? What's this from $ 50 to $ 100? And if all the profits in the enterprise marketplace are going to Oracle and IBM then the strategy looks fundamentally flawed. They obviously have an offering their customers cannot refuse.

    The BYOD* bandwagon is really starting to role now with one of my customers moving to certify the i-devices for work within the corporate network. And I noticed the other day that the total market share of IE has dropped from around 50 % in May to 35 % today. I haven't done much more detailed research so this is purely anecdotal but this is for a fairly representative Fortune 100 corporate website. Previous analyses over the last 2 years has seen a gradual decline combined with a shift between versions but that is alarming.

    Squeaky bum time in Redmond!

    1. Phoenix50
      Thumb Down

      Re: Smells like desperation

      "I haven't done much more detailed research so this is purely anecdotal".

      No shit? You've posted FUD wothout anything to back it up?

      Got anything else while you're on a roll?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Smells like desperation

      Squeaky bum time...

      And a football analogy:

      Microsoft FC, usually a perennial title contender, will end up with zero silverware, drop out of any European competition qualification spot, and face an exodus of talent.

      At press conferences, the manager/assistant coach keeps on telling supporters, sponsors and the media to calm the feck down. The future will be ever so bright, and the football club is in a 'transition period'.

  5. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    WTF?

    A Land War in Asia

    "For the very first time, every single product in our portfolio is getting refreshed and relaunched in a 12 month cycle - that's unprecedented. It's the largest release cycle in our history and the energy and the momentum from that is unbelievable."

    All the alarm bells are ringing.

  6. sam tapsell
    Mushroom

    Lockin avoidance

    Sounds like companies have a choice to avoid 12 months of unnecessary upgrades. I dont think Nokia realised when they jumped into bed with windows phone how much end consumers hate microsoft. There is no way back for them, because the people at the end of the chain want out. I want to get the NHS on open source software and kickstart the UK IT economy.

    1. RICHTO
      Mushroom

      Re: Lockin avoidance

      Microsoft product cycles are 10-15 years. Much better than most Open Source products.

      Open Source is the last thing the NHS needs, expensive to run and integrate, and clunky to use. They also have sensitive data, so putting the most insecure OS in the world ever in Linux in that environment is hardly a great move. For instance SUSE 10 is now on 3500+ vulnerabilites - see Secunia.org

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I love those DB comparsions, because they are absurd

    IBM DB2 and Oracle are in a completely different league than Microsoft. It is like saying that a bicycle is less expensive than sports cars. Obviously. MS SQL only has 8k blocks, can't do contiguous paging, has shitty compression and therefore performance, only runs on the least reliable OS on the planet, is missing a bunch of indexing functionality, can't scale well, doesn't have any decent clustering functionality, etc, etc..... I also wonder how they came up with that pricing. DB2 is generally less costly than Oracle.

    1. RICHTO
      Mushroom

      Re: I love those DB comparsions, because they are absurd

      Did you just arrive in a Dolorian? http://www.tpc.org/tpce/results/tpce_perf_results.asp

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I love those DB comparsions, because they are absurd

        Wow, that is irreverent even by El Reg poster standards. What is the point? That TPC has MS SQL benchmarks, including zero clustered benchmarks to prove my point.

  8. GrantB
    FAIL

    Admission of failure?

    "There will be no more security updates and resellers needed to spend all the time between now and then upgrading to Windows 7 rather than waiting for 8, he urged".

    Seems like a pretty clear message; Win8 will fail bad, but you will make money by moving everybody from XP to Win7, until Win9 has been cooked. All they need to do with Win9 is turn off Metro by default, so will be less than a year away.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Admission of failure?

      Haha, true, Microsoft is kind of the every other OS vendor. XP was decent, Vista was garbage, Windows 7 looked a lot like XP. Now Windows 8 will be garbage, so Windows 9 will revert back to Windows 7... which is XP.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Admission of failure?

      The thing is, no one cares if Microsoft improve Windows. All people need to do is open a web browser and maybe productivity apps, assuming they are not also on the browser. XP is more than fine forever.

      1. Phoenix50
        Thumb Down

        Re: Admission of failure?

        Uh huh - you mean like the following other products are fine forever:

        VHS Tapes

        Steam Locomotives

        Analog Radio

        Woolworths

        Dullard.

    3. Phoenix50
      Thumb Down

      Re: Admission of failure?

      Nah, that's not it.

  9. This post has been deleted by its author

  10. PyroMoth

    Abandon ship!

    Microsoft's big relaunch seems to have been inspired by $9.3bn of out of touch research, which no one dares challenge.

    The PC as a device for the consumption of media, has been destined to become more portable ever since the phone. Unfortunately for MS they released the equivalent of the first analogs, massive, impractical and expensive. Nokia were initially great, one of the first to have introduce a camera, gps maps, video calling, downloadable apps, etc. But their implementation stagnanted and Apple took the lead.

    Microsoft wants to get back into this game, home pcs will be marginalized at an ever increasing rate, and so will their profits.

    The problem is they are panicing, rather than innovate and take portable media to a new level, they are using their remaining assets as collateral.

    I'm willing to accept a fair amount of business use is media consumption, but not all, and certainly not for the folks creating the media, or maintaining the backend systems. By forcing unproductive elements of Metro upon them, it makes it far less painful for them to switch to other platforms.

    It's probably too late to make Metro disruptive enough to succeed, so the only thing the shareholders can hope for is a quick fail, and reconciliation as a smaller, business oriented, service provider.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Whatever Mr Turner's smoking, I sure want some of it too!

    An ex-Wal Mart guy is now the COO of Microsoft?

    This does not bode well.

    Microsoft is a sinking ship, and the captain is telling everyone that everything is alright, do not panic, do not rush for the lifeboats, and keep arranging those deck chairs...

    1. RICHTO
      Mushroom

      Re: Whatever Mr Turner's smoking, I sure want some of it too!

      The market leader by miles with ~90% market share is a sinking ship? Interesting concept. Can i have some of whatever you are on? It must be good stuff...

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