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Showing posts with label IT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IT. Show all posts

December 11, 2011

October 24, 2011

Microsoft Empire Bouncing Back

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Finally there seems to be  some Good news for Microsoft! Online operations only lost $494 million this quarter.




Microsoft reported another strong if unspectacular quarter, with revenue of $17.37 billion (ahead of expectations of $17.26 billion) and EPS exactly in line with targets at $0.68.

On the earnings call, the company said that Office is pulling through other products,particularly Lync (the company’s corporate IM and messaging product), which was up 25% from last year. 

Microsoft also said that business PC sales were pretty good, with revenue up 5%. Consumer sales were flat, but that’s mostly due to netbooks disappearing (or being eaten by the iPad). If you ignore netbooks, sales of “traditional” PCs were up about 14%.
Also, Microsoft has decided that Skype will be counted in the Entertainment & Devices segment, alongside Xbox and Windows Phone, suggesting that it’s going to be integrated into those products first.
And in a welcome reversal from recent quarters, the Online division (Bing and MSN) actually CUT its losses from last year, to only $494 million during the quarter (down from $558 million last year). At least it’s moving in the right direction now.



Here’s how the business did against expectations:

·         Revenue: $17.37B vs. $17.26B expected

·         EPS: $0.68 vs. $0.68

·         Windows: $4.87B revenue (+2% from last year) vs. $5.0B

·         Business Division (mostly Office): $5.62B (+8% organic*) vs. $5.4B

·         Server & Tools: $4.25B (+10%) vs $4.3B

·         Entertainment & Devices (Xbox): $1.96B (+9%) vs. $1.9B

·         Online (Bing & MSN): $625m (+19%) vs. $610m

Unearned revenue: $15.67B vs. $15.7B. This is an important metric because it shows how well Microsoft is doing selling long-term contracts to big businesses.

*Microsoft moved the Forefront security products from Server & Tools to the Business Division, adding about $100 million in revenue. The 8% growth doesn’t count that revenue
 

March 21, 2011

Big Corporations Will Lead Tablet Growth

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Enterprises will buy 50 times as many tablets in 2011 as they did in 2010, making them almost as common as netbooks.

 
That’s great news for Apple — and perhaps some of its tablet competitors like Research In Motion, which is targeting IT departments with features like security.  But it’s not great for Microsoft, which won’t have a tablet competitor out until Windows 8 in late 2012.

The prediction comes from U.K. market researcher Canalys, which says that enterprises bought about 20,000 tablets (or “pads”) in 2010, but will buy more than 1.1 million this year — a growth rate of more than 5,000%. Canalys also says that netbook sales will increase slightly, from 1.5 million to 1.8 million.

Both numbers pale against sales of traditional notebooks to enterprises, which will increase 11% to 96 million this year, Canalys predicts. Most of those notebooks will run Windows, so Microsoft’s hold on the enterprise will remain relatively safe for now.

Canalys expects the notebook PC category to grow nearly 8% in 2011, despite the impact of pads, thanks to the ongoing Windows 7 refresh and improving business confidence in the commercial sector. Netbooks, however, will decline by about 13% to 34 million units. 

 
Overstocked retail channels in many countries, including the United States, much of Western Europe, China and Indonesia, will further hinder notebook growth in the first part of the year. Even Russia, where high oil prices have led to a PC boom, has become oversupplied.
 
Political revolutions and protests in the Middle East and North Africa have brought the markets there to a virtual stop, and it is difficult to predict how long this disruption will last. There is a risk that political turbulence will spread even further afield. In addition, the recent events in Japan will mean some short-term disruptions to the supply chain, but it will take weeks to fully assess the damage and consequences. Canalys expects that there will likely be a small noticeable impact to global PC shipments.

But consumerization is a big trend in IT. That means where consumers go, enterprises eventually follow.

And the consumer market contains much worse news for Microsoft. Canalys predicts that Apple and its competitors will sell 50 million tablets (up 200%) to consumers this year, versus 32 million netbooks (down 14%) and 113 million notebooks (up only 5%). 
Overall, Canalys says that every two tablets purchased will replace the sale of one netbook or laptop.

March 2, 2011

The Evolution of Radio Waves

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In this engaging two-minute animation, JESS3 walks the viewer from the very first audio oscillator, HP’s 200a, to present time technology with Agilent’s newest and most popular function generator, the 33550 series.
Even if you’ve never heard of a function generator, you probably own a device that has used one for testing, and with this easy-to-follow video, you can now understand how they work, and how passionate the Agilent team is about their product.
This video is the fifth installment in “State of” series, and it highlights the importance and prevalence of radio wave technology in everyday life through a visually aesthetic presentation.