Colin Steele’s story this week on IBM taking on Microsoft’s SharePoint dominance with Quickr depicts just the latest skirmish in the continual war between two companies going way back to Microsoft Excel vs. Lotus 1-2-3.

It started when Microsoft challenged Lotus’ 1-2-3 spreadsheet dominance with the aforementioned Excel. Then it went after Lotus’ Notes email-and-collaboration success.

Since then much has changed: IBM bought Lotus for big money, for example, but the rivalry continued.

Microsoft took on Lotus Notes in mail-and-collaboration with Exchange Server. Then it switched strategy, deciding to enlist SharePoint its proxy warrior in collaboration, irritating partners that had been encouraged to write tools for Exchange. Anyone remember XSOs?Or Office Designer? Didn’t think so.

A common parlor game each January before Lotusphere was anticipating what Notes-to-Exchange migration tool would be announce that week.

Now IBM says that Quickr can uproot SharePoint in portals/collab. That’s a big statement given how SharePoint has spread like kudzu — largely because Sharepoint licenses are included in volume license agreements.

Anyway, with this Sharepoint-to-Quickr push, what’s old is new again. But somehow it seems desultory. The big question is whether, in this economy and with stressed IT budgets, anyone outside the vendors and their partner partisans care any more about these melees.

Barbara Darrow can be reached at bdarrow@techtarget.com.

On Tuesday, Microsoft is opening up beta test its small business and mid-sized business server bundles.

Early test versions of Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (previously known by the code name Centro) will be online Tuesday with a preview of Small Business Server 2008 to surface soon thereafter, said Joel Sider, senior product manger for the Windows Server Solutions Group.

Both products are due by year’s end.

The company also unveiled pricing for the mid-market bundle. Windows Essential Business Server Premium Edition (with Windows Server, Exchange Server, Forefront Security for Exchange, System Center Essentials management, Forefront Threat Management Gateway aka the new ISA Server) will list for $7,163 per server. All prices include five CALs. Additional CALs will list for $195 each.

The standard edition, which includes one less Windows Server license, will list for $5,472. ($81 per extra CAL.)

Microsoft has raised prices for Small Business Server.

The current SBS 2003 R2 Standard Edition lists for $599 and the premium edition was $1,299.  The new standard SKU will list for $1,089 with additional CALs $77 each. Premium is now $1,899 with each new CAL $189.

Sider said the price change reflects “additional value going into the server” and that per-CAL pricing has fallen. Before users had to buy a five-pack CAL license minimum for $489  but can now add CALs incrementally. “You can also buy a mix of premium and standard CALs –only buying CALs for the users needing to touch the premium servers. And, the CALs now extend to other servers on the network,” he noted.

As before SBS is for up to 75 users with a “sweet spot” of 10 to 50 users; EBS ranges up to 300 users.

As for another burning question surrounding the product family — that of naming conventions — Sider said there is no plan to change what some partners say is confusing branding.  Let it be noted here that “confusing” is a cleaned-up version of what some partners are calling the branding.

Barbara Darrow can be reached at bdarrow@techtarget.com.

This is a very interesting take on Dell’s buyout of MessageOne, the e-mail-as-a-service (phew!) company.

Too much information!

Warning customers against posting personal data to the Web is one of the most important services VARs can provide.

Many in the business community are enamored of social networking sites and appear to feel that more is more when it comes to “sharing” their lives on LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, insert-your-favorite-social-site here.

The problem with that is  cyber miscreants lurk just waiting to pounce on these nuggets. Something as innocuous-seeming as college affiliation, job history, names of family and friends can be used by social engineers to craft e-mail messages that will suck you in. That simple click will then unleash threats on your very own hard drive. Executables embedded in Word or Excel or PDF attachments will search your data to harvest -and secretly send out– passwords, account numbers, and other riches.

This online information trove is like a “playground for hackers,” says Yacov Wrocherinsky, CEO of Infinity Info Systems, a New York Sage Software and Microsoft partner specializing in business applications.

And for high-net-worth (ie. rich) executives who are  likely targets, it’s important that their wives, kids, friends also be careful about what personal details they divulge.

The beauty of LinkedIn is members can see who their associates know. “It’s great for making connections or for finding people if you’ve lost their business cards,” Wrocherinsky says. But that doesn’t mean you should bare any more than is absolutely necessary.

And on the less-business oriented of the social networking sites, say Facebook, people tend to put in way too much information-birthdays, anniversaries, travel plans, kids names, etc. All of that is gold for social engineers with evil intent.

George Brown, CEO of  Database Solutions, a Cherry Hill, N.J. solution provider tells his customers to keep their data zipped and not to post anything they are not required to do by law . As it is now with SEC filings for public companies, a lot of information about execs is already out there. No need to supplement that for the bad guys, Brown says.

Barbara Darrow can be reached at bdarrow@techhtarget.com.  

The Associated Press is reporting this morning that Robert Alan Soloway, infamous spammer, was arrested yesterday by authorities in Seattle. Soloway is accused of hijacking unwitting victims’ computers, turning them into “zombies” and then using those computers to send out millions of spam emails.

Last week, the AP says, a federal grand jury returned a 35-count indictment, charging Soloway with mail fraud, wire fraud, email fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering.

This is not the first time that Soloway has found himself in court over his spamming practices. In 2005, Microsoft won a $7 million judgment against him and Robert Braver, owner of an Oklahoma-based ISP, won a $10 million civil judgment.

According to the SearchSecurity.com, authorities believe that Internet users could see a noticeable decrease in the amount of junk email they find in their inboxes and spam folders as a result of this arrest.

Though this is all good news for value-added resellers and security consultants who defend their customers’ networks from spammers like Soloway, that last bit seems a tad overly optimistic. There are many many people out there who will eagerly fill Soloway’s shoes in his absence (maximum sentence, if convicted, being 65 years in a federal prison).

Security consultants aren’t expected to loosen their email security strategies. Antispam standards and email security products have not been made obsolete by this one arrest. Unfortunately, Soloway is just one in an entire culture of spammers who exploit the networks of small and midsized businesses to earn an easy buck. VARs still need to keep their strategies fresh and up-to-date.

That said, it’s nice to know that Soloway won’t be enjoying the nice cars he likes to brag about for a long time.

~Eric Pierce

You know those days when everything just seems too serious? You’re consulting or meeting a customer to pitch the latest addition to your UTM line card, and your stockings or tie just start to suffocate you?

I have the solution. Let your hair down. Breathe a little. Sport a snarky t-shirt underneath that pinstripe suit, and even if no one ever sees it, you’ll know you’ve got it on. It will make you laugh, and help you approach that new security awareness training project with a smile on your face. Wear your gear in just enough to make it look like your standard attire when you don it for show at Black Hat or Burning Man. It might even help you stay cool.

In your busy life as a VAR, you might not have time to seek these garments out, so I’ve done some of the legwork for you. Here are a few of my favorites:

• It’s OK
• Understanding computer technology
• I read your e-mail
• No I will not fix your computer
• There’s no place like 127.0.0.1
• Old School Computer (Represent)
• E-volution
• Picked last in gym class
• I heart spyware
• Packet storm four continents
• Technosexual

The moral of the story, of course, is to keep your humor about you. Your customers will appreciate you for it (even if they only see it in your attitude), and your day will be better. I promise.

- Julia Henderson

Dell computers get Linux pre-installed After all the speculation, Dell has announced it will start selling computers with pre-installed Linux distributions instead of Microsoft Windows. [TechTree]

Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 gets a due date Microsoft’s Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack (SP) 1 now has an official due date: Same time as Longhorn Server in the latter half of 2007.
[All About Microsoft]

Intel pushes denser data centres Intel has kicked off a campaign to make data centres more efficient and less environmentally damaging. Paradoxically, one of its key messages seems to be that companies need to refresh their servers - ie. buy new ones - more often. [TheReg]

IBM not ready to say Oracle’s Linux compatible IBM is not ready to guarantee that its computer programs are compatible with Oracle Corp.’s recently launched version of the Linux operating system, an IBM spokesman said on Friday. [Reuters]

Read more »

One of the less-appreciated features of Office 2007 — whose arrival was overshadowed by the hype over Windows Vista — is its XML-based file format. XML has a lot going for it, but Microsoft’s implementation isn’t compatible with file-formats in earlier versions of Word.

So even if you don’t switch to Office 2007 you’ll have to deal with the file-format problems eventually, as other people switch. SearchITChannel.com’s first “unrecognized file format” Word doc came in today — from Microsoft.

To read it we had to download the Office Compatibility Pack from Microsoft.com. It wasn’t difficult, but it did delay things a bit as we figured out why our versio of Word 2003 wouldn’t open a Word document from Microsoft.

Just a reminder to download it yourself, and to remind your customers. You might mention to them that the download is 27.1MB, just so they don’t have all their employees download it themselves, all at once.

Oh, but don’t launch it before you install whatever critical Windows updates you have not yet loaded. The site doesn’t say, but presumably Bad Things Could Happen.

Steve Ballmer, in an interview with the India Economic Times, said that while he still sees a place for traditional software distribution, “I would say we are moving to a world where there is a lot more electronic distribution. It is a new style of software, not the old-style distributed electronically.”

No surprise there–Microsoft is facing increasing competition (especially for its Office suite) from downloadable software, most of it free. Google is moving into the space with web-based services. Salesforce.com and other software-as-a-service players have proven the model works for pay as well, and service provider USinternetworking has done well enough at delivering others’ software (including PeopleSoft, Oracle, and other packaged applications) as services that AT&T acquired them.

But Microsoft’s play is something entirely different. Right now, Microsoft depends on its partners for more than 90% of its revenue–and its Live efforts could dramatically change that. Windows Live (and more specifically, Office Live) could put Microsoft into direct competition with many of its current channel partners for business from small and medium companies — especially those partners who have already started to provide hosted services for customers.

Forget the scandals, the trash-talking, and the rhetoric of this electoral campaign season. The big issue for the coming year is going to be economic uncertainty–and that uncertainty is distinctly non-partisan. Regardless of who wins, 2007 promises to be dicey for small and medium-sized businesses, and for the channel as a result.

It’s not all bad news. Concerns about energy costs and inflation will continue to drive projects that squeeze more efficiency out of customers’ computing investments (like server consolidation and virtualization, business process re-eengineering, etc.). And the available pool of IT talent is again starting to shrink, boding well for an increase in managed services, hosting and support deals. But those same forces are going to affect how quickly service providers, systems integrators and VARs will be able to respond to those increasing demands, and put pressures on how those services are priced.

Over the next few months, we’ll be looking on SearchITChannel.com and the other channel sites at the market and technology forces that will drive channel business in 2007. But as far as the underlying economic conditions go, the only sure thing for 2007 is that nothing is for sure, regardless of who wins how many seats in Congress in November. Now’s the time to take a hard look at what you’re planning for your business, and to make sure you’ve got your financial bases all covered for a bumpy ride.