Windows 7 > Windows 7 Advertisements

Microsoft has taken a different approach to its advertising strategy on its new product, Windows 7.. While their advertisements for the new operating system have been entertaining, most industry-watchers have been confused as to the goals behind the program, questioning the target audience not just for the videos, but for the launch parties as well according to Dave Rosenberg at CNET.com

After thinking through things a bit I think this is a case of a good idea hampered by poor execution. (Watch the video here). The videos are well-done and professional and try to connect with consumers in a humanistic tone. The fact that it feels like you stumbled into a shiny-happy Windows world filled with sit-com throwaways is the problem. Even if this is a training video to show others how to throw a launch party, it's hard to connect with the vapid characterizations of party guests. This is the crux of Microsoft's marketing problems. It's not that they aren't good at technical marketing issues, it's that the brand itself is so voluminous, it's very hard for people to connect to specific products like Windows. And the efforts to persuade consumers isolate the tech media and confuse IT shops.

One of the biggest issues Windows Vista faced was consumer confusion as to why they should buy an upgrade at all. Microsoft did a very poor job of communicating why anyone should care and added such a complicated set of offerings that people simply couldn't figure out what to buy. Pair this with a very complicated pricing scheme and it all makes for one very big mess of a situation.

Microsoft and marketing just have not been mixing in the past few years. One reason could be that their ads just flat out aren’t that good. After Mac launched the Mac vs. PC campaign (Click here for some of that campaign) Microsoft tried to fire back with The “I’m a PC Campaign”, The Seinfeld and Bill Gates Campaign, and then finally the bargain hunters campaign. Unfortunately for Microsoft, none of these could rival Mac’s campaign and jus tended up making them look more stupid every time.

However, in defense of the computer Giant, Microsoft’s Windows 7 features stand in stark contrast to those of its precursor, Windows Vista. By carefully managing changes, ensuring application and driver compatibility with Vista and working to improve the resource utilization and performance of the OS, Microsoft has a version of Windows that many businesses will be willing to deploy -- particularly now that Windows XP is in extended support. In this podcast, Michael Cherry, research vice president at Directions on Microsoft, offers a Windows 7 review and outlines the features and benefits of the operating system most likely to interest the business.

Hopefully for its own sake, Microsoft can figure out a way to match its marketing campaigns to the quality of its newest product.

joe Carretta

Google Slides into Silver

An article on ITnews.com this morning reported that search engine giant Google is losing its grip on the online search market in China to a company called Baidu, which is quickly gaining popularity amongst Chinese users according to the Chinese government.

Google, which has struggled to steal market share in China from dominant local rival Baidu, was the first-choice search engine for just 12.7 percent of search users at the end of last month, a fall of 3.9 percentage points from last year, according to a report by the China Internet Network Information Center, China's domain registration agency. The same figure for Baidu was 77.2 percent, up 0.3 percentage points, it said.

"Google has subpar usage and first-choice rates among new Internet users," the report said, predicting a further rise in Baidu's dominance next year. "As the number of Internet users quickly grows, Baidu's first-choice users will continue rising."

Just 6 percent of Chinese search users have tried Bing, the report said. But Microsoft's large user bases in Internet Explorer and Windows Live Messenger could eventually boost that number, it said. Internet Explorer is by far the most commonly used browser in China, and Windows Live Messenger is an extremely popular chat client in Chinese offices and Internet cafes.

China's fast-rising number of Internet users surpassed the size of the U.S. population to reach 338 million earlier this year. But much of China's population of over 1.3 billion remains offline, and new Web users increasingly come from less developed areas away from the country's prosperous coast. Google, which Chinese users often use to find English-language or work-related materials, is less popular among those users, said the report.

Google was more popular among high-end users than among the general population, while Baidu attracted users seeking entertainment features such as music downloads and video search services, the report said.

The downward trend of Google is an interesting one to observe. While the company still controls over seventy five percent of the American online search market, slipping in China should not be overlooked. China is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and houses more humans that any other stand alone country. Because the Chinese demographic is exploding not only in their home country, but also overseas, this decline should alarm Google. On the other hand, Google loses over $1.5 million per day on YouTube, so I doubt anything would “alarm” them. However, the slip in China appears to be the first chink in Google’s armor that we have seen so far. It will be interesting to watch if the slide precipitates itself into other countries or remains isolated in China.

Either way, you know the gears of knowledge are grinding at Google as we speak. They aren’t very used to second place.

Joe Carretta

GreenBank Turns to ExaGrid

ExaGrid, a newly developed de-duplication software mentioned earlier on this very blog, has begun to make its mark on the small to mid size demographic of financial services.

According to an article on zycko.com, Tennessee based commercial bank Greenbank, recently deployed the ExaGrid system to sure up its disaster recovery and data backup demands as its business continues to rapidly grow, with more than 60 branch locations.

GreenBank's IT operations increased after the organization acquired several other banks and in order to solve the problem of slow and unreliable tape-based backups, the group deployed ExaGrid disk-based backup system.

As well as being able to handle increased data, the system delivers cost-effective scalability and the ability for GreenBank to enjoy reduced data and backup windows. The backup compression and data Deduplication technology of the ExaGrid system reduces disk space by a range of 10:1 to 50:1 or more.

In the article, Bill Andrews, president and chief executive officer of ExaGrid Systems, states: "Our product's ability to cost-effectively scale to meet the needs of expanding data and backup requirements means that as GreenBank continues to grow, the ExaGrid system will keep providing short backup windows and superior data retention."

ExaGrid recently announced that is has more than 1,500 systems installed by 400 customers, making it the industry's second-largest disk-based backup appliances with data Deduplication installed base in the mid-market/small enterprise.

ExaGrid is growing in popularity. In a nutshell, the software sits behind existing backup plans and instead of backing up every piece of information every day, ExaGrid only stores unique data, making small footprints on the disk, and effectively reducing prices. Deduplication is a commodity that enables you to use disk instead of tape, and makes data back-up more efficient. In addition to providing this service, ExaGrid provides back-up on disks at the cost of a back-up on tape that is easy to manage, install, and support.

The revolutionary technology is slowly taking the IT world by storm, and is setting a new standard for highly sensitive information back-up and recovery.

Joe Carretta

EMC Heads East

EMC plans to invest US$1.5 billion in India over the next five years, to expand its research and development and services delivery from the country, a company executive said on Wednesday an article on ITnews.com said this week.

EMC owns VMware, and puts out an array of SAN devices, routers, and various other corporate software applications.

The investment is the largest committed by the company outside the U.S., and is in addition to $500 million that the company has already invested in India so far, David Goulden, EMC's executive vice president and chief financial officer, told reporters in Bangalore.

The company announced in January that it was cutting 2,400 jobs, a move that would reduce annual spending by about $350 million during this year, with savings increasing to about $500 million in 2010. EMC will continue to control costs in the current difficult economic situation, but will also invest in new opportunities, Goulden said.

The R&D facility is three times larger than the previous one, and can house up to 3,500 employees, Goulden said. It will provide an opportunity for EMC's sales staff in India to work more closely with product development teams in the country, to develop products for India and related markets, he said.

Services are an important part of EMC's revenue but the company's focus in the area of services is on helping customers get more value from EMC's products, Goulden said. The company will not get into general systems integration and services as a business like IBM and Hewlett-Packard, he added.

EMC currently employs about 2,000 staff in India. It has another 2,000 staff with outsourced laborers providing services to the company on a variety of projects, Goulden said. The company did not disclose how many more staff it is adding in the country as a result of the new investment.

While the move seems to make sense in terms of dollar signs, it is disappointing to watch all of our tech support flutter over the Indian ocean.

Let’s say you have a Dell personal computer. If there is something wrong with your computer, there is no chance the person who you get on the phone is going to be stationed on the same country as you. The practice of shipping IT help overseas not only drives down American employment, but encourages other companies to do the same in order to keep up with the market trend. This creates a vicious cycle with no clear end in sight, and will only perpetuate the off shore outsourcing of a flourishing industry.

Joe Carretta