On Jan 14, 9:11 pm, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> Nortel Files for Bankruptcy, Victim of Falling Sales (Update5)
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Nortel Networks Corp., North America’s biggest maker of telephone equipment,
> | filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S., a victim of the global credit
> | crunch and declining sales.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=a8E1VQ1yRq8k&refe...
I wouldn't call Nortel a "Microsoft Buddy". Their switches and
routers were powered by Linux.
The Telephone companies dragged their feet in the transition to Voice
over IP. The result was that cheap Linux appliances such as those
used by Vonage, and cheap Unix appliances such as those used in Cable
Modems, have provided inexpensive VoIP directly to consumer end-
points. Other vendors have set up Linux or Unix VoIP servers such as
Skype and Net2Phone. For $20 a year, you can even get a USB thumb-
drive sized Linux server that does the VoIP interface, converting
traditional telephone signals to USB VoIP packets which get sent
through your PC's connection.
In addition, features such as Go2Meeting and voice-chat and video-chat
which use Instant Messaging transports, have also reduced the demand
for high end telco switches. Finally, the telephone companies
themselves are being squeezed by competition from Cable as well as
Fiber to Home and Fiber to Apartment services.
> Huge Oracle Layoff Won't Be the Last
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Oracle employs 84,000 people globally. An 8,000-employee layoff would amount
> | to about 10% of its workforce.
That's a big group. One of the challenges today is the shift from
simple databases to complex integrations in combination with server
virtualization. There is a shift from the Inman model of one big huge
database holding the entire enterprise data warehouse to star schemas
in which external vendors such as SalesForce.com might carry key
information about prospects and customers that are distinct from the
data warehouse.
There's also a transition from quarterly or monthly reports to real-
time updates and statistics, with real-time business monitoring.
There is also a shift from monolithic applications that are compiled
together, to more loosely coupled services invoked by business process
engines.
Finally, there has been a great deal more focus on actual
productivity, maintenance, and support impacts of various tools. With
SOA and business rules in frequent flux, there is less tolerance for 1
staff/year change requests.
Oracle has some great products, and some great people, but the market
has gotten very competitive.
> http://www.pcworld.com/article/157035/oracle_layofff.html?tk=rss_news
>
> Apple's CEO steps down... for now... or for good.
> Big blow to another Linux rival.
In many ways, OS/X was not a Linux rival, but a "Fellow *nix system".
It completely killed all attempts by Microsoft to claim that Unix and
Linux were far too complex and difficult for the typical user to
handle. OS/X and the Linux versions of the ASUS EEE and the Acer
Aspire have shown that almost anyone can use *nix, and many will pay a
premium to have a machine with *nix pre-installed on their machines.
The bigger question is whether the new CEO will have Steve Jobs'
passion for software as ART. He transformed the industry by bringing
that concept to reality with the Apple Mac, then the Mac SE, and
finally OS/X. Microsoft, Unix, and Linux were all influenced by Jobs'
concepts of artistic software if not as effective in implementation.
> Microsoft might announce its layoffs tomorrow. Adios, Munchkins.
> Recent:
> Microsoft getting ready to lay off 17% of staff
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | The rumor that Microsoft was set to lay off people on
> | January 15th, 2009 is no longer a rumor but a fact. Staff
> | at Microsoft have been informed that the company is
> | readying major layoffs to its worldwide operations and it's
> | not a small cut, either.
> |
> | Currently Microsoft employs about 90,000 people across the
> | world and from what we're hearing, some 15,000 of those are
> | expected to be giving marching orders come January 15th.
> | That's almost 17 percent of Microsoft's total work force,
> | not exactly a small number.
How many of these will be include the people brought over on H1B visas
and jobs sent off-shore. I suspect that Microsoft may be concerned
about a Democratic backlash on these issues, along with some new taxes
and restrictions.
Microsoft seems to have other, even bigger problems - Corporations are
still rejecting Vista, Windows 7 is realistically at LEAST 18 months
away, corporations are not renewing service contracts, and many have
opted to just convert the service contract to static licenses - for
Windows XP, Office XP (2003) and existing licenses for Visio and
Project.
Windows 2008 server isn't displacing Windows 2003 servers - no rush to
upgrade. And with virtualization, there has been less push to replace
existing servers.
Fundamentally, the CIOs are under extreme pressure by the CEO and CFO
to NOT spend lots of money on Microsoft workstation upgrades - since
there is no significant increase in productivity. At the same time,
the CIOs are being asked to focus budgets on projects that will have
high ROI in terms of productivity increases - helping people work more
effectively.
Traditional MS-Office documents are also under scrutiny. There is
more pressure to transition to Open Document Format - or even switch
to content management systems that can store documents in databases
instead of file-systems, and couple them with work-flow systems that
are browser based. Such documents, many of which have long retention
periods need to be stored in a format that is not subject to the whims
of a single CEO of a single sole-source vendor. One of the issues
with the mortgage crisis is that many of the MS-Office documents used
to create the mortgage can't easily be read using newer versions of MS-
Office. In addition, information which could have been parsed into
Metafiles from ODF formats, were not parsable from Windows.
> http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=111...
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