Stuart J. Johnston

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is giving customers and the market an updated roadmap for Visual Studio’s Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) features. Microsoft also is sharing a preview of a connector to link Visual Studio with the company’s System Center management tools. Additionally, Microsoft showed off new client-side, cloud-computing capabilities coming later this year in the “Mango” […]

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Dynamics CRM, has not been the most dynamic application, at least in terms of update frequency. That’s about to change. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is set to switch from major releases every three years to twice yearly updates — one in the spring and one in the fall — beginning this fall. As […]

Big data is a term for immense amounts of data that are so large as to be difficult to nearly impossible to store, analyze and manage using current technologies — ranging from millions of real-time data feeds to streaming video to medical imaging. “The sheer volume of data is a global phenomenon — but what […]

Microsoft is acquiring Skype for $8.5 billion in cash from an investment group headed by Silver Lake, which purchased the company from eBay in 2009. Skype was founded in 2003 and acquired by eBay in 2005. “The acquisition will increase the accessibility of real-time video and voice communications, bringing benefits to both consumers and enterprise […]

NetApp’s purchase of Engenio gives it an OEM that generated some $705 million in revenue in 2010, and will enable the company to diversify its market reach and enter emerging markets, according to a NetApp statement. “[Engenio’s] portfolio will provide a new platform for us to use for ‘big bandwidth’ [applications],” Chris Cummings, NetApp vice […]

Beleaguered Nokia held onto its top spot with shipments of 24.2 million smartphones and a nearly identical 24.3 percent market share for the quarter. However, that reflects a share decline from the 38.8 percent share it held for the same quarter last year. Meanwhile, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) had shipments of 18.7 million smartphones globally. Apple’s […]

Sometimes, it’s just better to wait. Windows Phone 7 users that used a hack to update their phone may have ended up locking themselves out of all future update. Microsoft said that many, if not all, of those phones can no longer be used to get future updates — which may result in the devices […]

2010 was turnaround year for the enterprise software market. According to research firm Gartner, total revenue for enterprise software hit $245 billion last year for an 8.5 percent year-over-year growth rate. The 8.5 percent growth rate is in sharp contrast with the market in 2009, when the industry overall shrank 2.5 percent to only $226 […]

Iomega this week is rolling out a new line of network storage devices designed specifically designed for small and medium size businesses (SMB), as well as distributed enterprises. Iomega’s new StorCenter PX series of storage products is coming out of the gate with three units — two desktop enclosures and one rackmount — all configurable […]

Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) needs more apps for its Windows Phone 7 (WP7) platform. Microsoft sees one way to increase the number of apps available for its platform is to aid iOS developers in porting or at least rewriting their apps to work on WP7. That’s where the new iPhone/iOS to Windows Phone 7 API mapping […]

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is gaining market share for its’ new Internet Explorer 9 web browser. Whether or not IE9 adoption is enough to stem the tide of IE’s overall declining share in the face of competition from Mozilla and Google remains to be seen. “Just six weeks after the launch of Internet Explorer 9 we are […]

Nokia continues to be the top shipping vendor of mobile phones in the first quarter of 2011, according to IDC. Nokia shipped some 108.5 million mobile devices in the first calendar quarter, up from 107.8 million in the comparable quarter of last year. However, the phone giant’s market share overall fell to 29.2 percent from […]