January 27th, 2009

Microsoft's data privacy balancing act

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 2:24 pm

Categories: Microsoft, Privacy

Tags: Consumer, Privacy, Microsoft Corp., Internet, Identity Theft, Security, Tom Foremski

How much personal data should consumers share? It depends on where you stand and Microsoft stands in several places at once.

Wednesday is national Data Privacy Day and Microsoft will be releasing the results of a survey and also educational materials with tips to help consumers keep personal data personal.

Much of its advice is designed to help consumers avoid being victims of criminal acts such as identity theft, which means advising consumers to be wary about how much personal data they share online. In this regard, it seems that Microsoft has to tread a fine line: it wants to protect users of its OS and web browser, but it also has an interest in finding out as much as it legally can about Internet users because:

- It has a large online business and large online advertising network and it wants to target advertising and other promotional messages at individuals.

- It has a large business providing server-side technologies to web sites that want to track and target consumers with products and services.

Microsoft says it is very careful with data collected about Internet users and it has a strict privacy policy. But it says that data privacy has to be a shared responsibility between educated consumers, government laws, and ethical online businesses.

It seems that Microsoft has to walk a fine line on this issue. Microsoft advises consumers to be very careful about revealing too much personal information online, but yet on the other hand it provides technologies to third parties that help them use consumer information for commercial advantage.

It will be interesting to see where the line is drawn. The same personal information collected for commercial purposes could also be used for criminal purposes. How much should consumers share to get the benefits of targeted online services yet avoid becoming victims of criminal enterprises?
- - -
Please see:
Microsoft Data Privacy Day event in San Francisco

Microsoft Blog: The Data Privacy Imperative.

November 17th, 2008

Microsoft's cloud is more about Notes migration and less about a new IT architecture

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 6:02 pm

Categories: Microsoft

Tags: Information Technology, IBM Lotus Notes, Migration, Microsoft Corp., E-mail Servers, Groupware, Enterprise Software, Software, Tom Foremski

Monday morning I went to Microsoft’s launch of new online services. Previously they were only available for large companies now they are available to any size business in the US with a rest of world roll out in March 2009.

I listened to customer case studies, about security, etc. I heard about the $2bn MSFT has spent in its recent fiscal year on building data centers around the world. I was told that there are now half-a-million enterprise users of Microsoft Online Services.

However, of those half-a-million users, only a third are there because of the great benefits of using Microsoft’s cloud, they are there because they want to migrate away from IBM’s Lotus Notes system. That means that there is a massive amount of education needed in the market and that few customers see the benefit of moving to Microsoft’s cloud.

Ron Markezich, corporate VP of Microsoft Onlne said, “Two-thirds of our users are using our Online Services because they want to move away from Notes.”

It can cost corporations as much as $1,000 per user to move away from Notes. By signing up for Microsoft Online Services it is aquicker and cheaper way to move to a different solution.

Microsoft’s Online Services Group might be better renamed the Lotus Notes Migration Solution Group!

- - -
Please see:

What does ‘SharePoint in the cloud’ really mean?

September 26th, 2008

Worth Watching: Steve Ballmer in the heart of Silicon Valley . . .

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 4:39 pm

Categories: Microsoft

Tags: Silicon Valley, Steve Ballmer, Ann Winblad, Virtualization, Corporate Communications, Cloud Computing, Performance Management, Storage Management, Utility Computing, Hardware

There was quite a bit of excitement Thursday evening prior to Steve Ballmer’s appearance at the Churchill Club Annual Dinner in the heart of Silicon Valley and just a stone’s throw from Yahoo! There was who’s who crowd gathered at the event.

There was no dancing on stage but Mr Ballmer delivered an energetic performance with lots of interesting tidbits abut enterprise virtualization, Facebook, search ambitions, and much, much more.

I grabbed a spot on the floor right in front to video this talk, which has only been lightly edited, cutting down some of the long questions. Ann Winblad is the moderator.

http://www.blip.tv/file/1298220

June 27th, 2008

Bill Gates: Saving the world is easier than saving Microsoft?

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 2:58 pm

Categories: Microsoft

Tags: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp., Tom Foremski

I was shocked when I first heard that Bill Gates was going to move much of his time away from Microsoft and devote it to giving away money.

MSFT is doing well financially but its short to long term prospects are challenging to say the least. The company needs a serious makeover and the best person to do that is a company’s founder.

Take a look at Apple Computer and the makeover that Steve Jobs engineered. It was stunning. Steve Jobs has done it time and time again. I call him the Babe Ruth of Silicon Valley because he has hit more out of the ball park than anyone else. Sure, you can get lucky once, but twice and thrice–that’s something else.

Bill Gates could do the same for Microsoft, I’m sure he could.

However, Bill Gates is no Steve Jobs, or is he?

May 9th, 2008

Why MSFT must make an acquisition in online media

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 1:30 pm

Categories: Business strategy, Microsoft

Tags: Acquisition, Advertisement, Online Media, Microsoft Corp., Online Advertising, MSFT, Tom Foremski

Businessweek’s cover story is: “Inside Microsoft’s War Against Google - With Yahoo off the table, Microsoft plans to challenge Google’s online-ad juggernaut alone. A behind-the-scenes look at its provocative strategy.”

This behind the scenes look isn’t very deep. It mostly centers on MSFT’s “top U.S. salesman for online advertising, Keith Lorizio.” He is trying to convince large online ad buyers such as E*Trade to put more money into display ads and other online ads rather than search ads.

Fair enough. But how is that going to help Microsoft?

What is missing from this wafer-thin analysis of Microsoft’s battle with Google is a look at the business of online ads.

It’s wonderfully ironic that BusinessWeek misses the key issue that frames Microsoft’s strategic problem: it can’t grow its advertising business organically to match the deluge of ad money pouring into online advertising.

Microsoft spelled this out when it launched its acquisition bid:

The online advertising market is growing at a very fast pace, from over $40 billion in 2007 to nearly $80 billion by 2010. The resulting benefits of scale along with the associated capital costs for advertising platform providers make this a time of industry consolidation and convergence.

“The resulting benefits” are for Microsoft because there is no way it can organically grow its online ad business at a rate that can soak up $40 billion flooding into online markets in the next three years. No way.

It has to acquire online media properties otherwise it will miss out on an incredible bonanza–the richest gold rush in advertising since the radio was invented, imho.

February 17th, 2008

Yahoo! heroes instead of zeroes in stand against MSFT but not against Chinese repression

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 6:18 pm

Categories: Microsoft, Yahoo

Tags: Yahoo! Inc., MSFT, Shi, Government, Recruitment & Selection, Corporate Governance, Financial Accounting, Human Resources, Workforce Management, Business Operations

Yahoo’s rejection of Microsoft’s offer smacks of a face saving attempt by its management and board to look heroic following its despicable behaviour in China.

MSFT is very likely going to prevail with its acquisition since it seems to have the support of Yahoo’s largest shareholders. Yahoo’s management and board will be able to show it stood up to the Redmond giant, and look like local heroes. And people might forget Yahoo’s horrible actions in China that led to ten-year prison sentences.

All that police informing was done to enhance shareholder value. Take a look at at this excerpt from Jerry Yang’s letter to shareholders explaining why MSFT’s offer undervalues YHOO:

We have the added value of our substantial, unconsolidated investments in Japan and China. We have substantial positions in Yahoo! Japan, the leader in its market, and Alibaba, which is strongly positioned in China, a market with enormous growth potential.

From: Uh oh. Yahoo’s Alibaba is antsy about Microsoft; Good luck getting to $40 a share

Yahoo lost one of its fiercest critics with the recent death of Tom Lantos, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman.

Here is a reminder from: Yahoo! and its looming hiring crisis following despicable acts in China -November 10 2007

Can moral “pigmies” and “police informants” attract the best and brightest talent?

. . . Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang and its chief lawyer Michael Callahan were called to Washington DC to explain to lawmakers why Yahoo! helped the Chinese government arrest and then sentence for ten years two political dissidents.

Extracts from Zachary Coile’s excellent news story for the San Francisco Chronicle:

“While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, said at the end of the three-hour hearing.

. . .

The hearing began with Yang, who immigrated from Taiwan at age 10, entering the hearing room and bowing and apologizing to the mother of journalist Shi Tao and the wife of Internet writer Wang Xiaoning. They received 10-year sentences after being identified with the help of information from Yahoo.

The act wasn’t enough for Lantos. He called on Yang and Yahoo chief counsel Michael Callahan to turn and face the dissidents’ families, seated in the front row, and plead for forgiveness.

“I would urge you to beg the forgiveness of the mother whose son is languishing behind bars thanks to Yahoo’s actions,” Lantos said. Shi’s mother, Gao Qin Shen, had tears in her eyes as the two executives complied.

That would have made for a great clip on YouTube.

Shi’s crime was to forward a directive from the Chinese censor that journalists must not write about the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests.

In addition to moral pygmies, Yahoo! has been called a police informant by Reporters Without Borders.

Yahoo!’s hiring crisis

Competition in Silicon Valley for top talent has become intense. How is Yahoo! going to stay competitive? Especially since there is close attention paid to a company’s ethics and social responsibility among all hires.

Yahoo!’s single engineers already find it difficult to continue their genetic line. Turn up at a party and what do you say? I work for a police informant for the Chinese government?

[Googlers should be careful too, the do no evil giant has been doing its share of informing on its users.]

Chinese laundry

And as for Yahoo!’s defense that it was just complying with local laws? I’ve pointed out an easy solution several times before: launder the data. Send it to an offshore banking center such as the Caymans Islands, which has strong privacy laws, use a third party service to strip out all identifiable data and then return it in the form of high quality behavioral data. It is the aggregate behavioral data that Yahoo! wants, at least, that’s what it says it is interested in. Then when the policeman comes a-knocking the data isn’t going to finger anyone.

February 1st, 2008

MSFT+YHOO=15% of all time spent on Internet

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 12:27 pm

Categories: Microsoft

Tags: Google Inc., Advertisement, Internet, Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft Corp., Tom Foremski

Nielsen Online released some new metrics in the wake of the MSFT/YHOO news:

Global Web Traffic

+————————————+————————+
| Parent | Unique Audience (000) |
+————————————+————————+
| Google | 273,896
| Microsoft | 262,085
| Yahoo! | 190,687
| Time Warner | 155,643
| eBay | 145,129
| Yahoo! + Microsoft | 289,029
+————————————+———————–+

US Search Share

| Yahoo! Search + MSN/Windows Live Search 31.5%
| Google Search 56.3%
| Yahoo! Search 17.7%
| MSN/Windows Live Search 13.8%
| AOL Search 4.7%
| Ask.com Search 2.2%

Ken Cassar, VP Industry Solutions Analytics, Nielsen Online, said, “The combined entity would be visited
by 86 percent of U.S. Internet users, account for 15 percent of all time spent online, and represent 59 percent of online display ad impressions sold, really the most significant revenue generator today for most online publishers.”

“Even though they have significant audience overlap and a combined search share that would not catch Google’s, they could be positioned to create the next generation of ad networks - one that rivals Google/Doubleclick - a diverse environment, made of up e-mail, search, original content and consumer generated media, where advertisers could maximize their buys over two of the most trusted online brands.”

Microsoft would get social media too…

Peter Blackshaw, exec VP, Nielsen Online, said, “The proposed transaction itself would give Microsoft one of the industry’s strongest portfolio’s in the growing social-media space that would include FlickR,
Delicious and Yahoo Answers, alongside its investment in Facebook.”