Posted 07/08/09 at 03:34:31 PM by Pulkit Chandna

A lot of you must have given up all hope of seeing Gmail leave beta. But Google has finally abandoned its original plan of eternally keeping Gmail in beta and finally stripped Gmail of its beta tag. Google Apps has also left beta. Google has realized that large enterprises are not too keen to “run their business on software that sounds like it's still in the trial phase.”

“We've come to appreciate that the beta tag just doesn't fit for large enterprises that aren't keen to run their business on software that sounds like it's still in the trial phase. So we've focused our efforts on reaching our high bar for taking products out of beta, and all the applications in the Apps suite have now met that mark,” Google said on its official blog.

Read More

Posted 04/14/09 at 08:02:01 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Most enterprises have resolved to skip Windows Vista altogether. With Vista on its way out, Microsoft would be hoping for enterprises to upgrade to Windows 7 at the first given opportunity. However, Microsoft will have to wait as that is exactly what most enterprises plan on doing. A large majority of enterprises have decided against upgrading next year, according to a survey conducted by market research firm Dimensional Research.

Dimensional Research took the opinion of 1,100 IT professionals. More than 83 percent of those surveyed have no plans of upgrading next year. The ongoing recession and doubts over software compatibility are the main reasons why most businesses want to play the wait-and-watch game.

Read More

Posted 10/17/08 at 04:09:32 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Intel has begun shipping the X25E Extreme SATA SSD, which the company has proclaimed as its “highest performing SSD”. The 32GB SSD is based on Intel’s 50nm single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory technology.

Intel claims that the X25E can increase the performance of servers, workstations, and storage systems by 100 times over hard drives, if measured in terms of Input/Output per Second (IOPS).

The 32GB SSD, which Intel claims can reduce energy costs by five times, boasts of 35,000 read IOPS and 3,300 write IOPS. The official press release pegged the maximum read speed at 250 MB/s and maximum write speeds at 170 MB/s respectively.

The 32GB version is out now and carries a price tag of $695. The production of the 64GB version will begin in first quarter of 2009.

Read More

Posted 10/16/08 at 06:24:30 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer touched upon virtually all the major issues concerning MS – from Windows 7 to Yahoo - at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo in Orlando. Unsurprisingly, he was confronted by many questions regarding Vista and Windows 7.He ardently defended Windows Vista. “The adoption rate of Vista is two times faster than XP at two years in,” Ballmer said in Vista’s defense.

However, he tacitly gave the thumbs up to enterprises that have abandoned all plans of upgrading to Vista and are already waiting for Windows 7.  Regarding the possibility of a deal with Yahoo, he said that a deal would make sense for the shareholders of both the companies. The price of Yahoo’s shares shot up by 17% after Ballmer’s comment.

Ballmer believes that Google Apps has “very primitive” capabilities. He further derided Google Apps by not even acknowledging it as serious competition.

Read More

Posted 09/04/08 at 09:34:22 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Google Apps might be a dwarf compared to its rival Microsoft Office but it is making steady progress. It has finally made a stride of some significance by making it to 1 million enterprise users. The company claims to be successfully wooing 3,000 businesses to Google Apps everyday. However, it is certain that a significant chunk of its users are using the free version; the Premium version carries an annual subscription fee of $50.

Google Apps’ contribution to Google’s annual income was a paltry $4 million in 2007, and not a whole lot should change in the foreseeable future. Not that Google would be banking on a miraculous turnaround, as its product currently doesn’t even deserve to feature in the same sentence as Microsoft Office – at least going by the economics of magnitude. Google seems to be aiming for a ponderous victory over Microsoft.

Read More

Posted 08/17/08 at 05:52:07 PM by Pulkit Chandna

A survey conducted by Ziff Davis Enterprise Research has revealed that 72% of the enterprises plan to abstain from Windows Vista despite the release of Service Pack 1. This comes at a time when most analysts expect enterprises to adopt Vista en masse.

Vista almost seems to be an anathema, for about 3/4th of the enterprises are so unequivocal in their dislike for Vista that they don’t even intend to adopt the OS three years down the line. Around 28% envisage a move to the OS anywhere between late 2008 and 2010. Half of those surveyed are not fazed by the end of XP’s retail sales and OEM distribution.

Lesson for Microsoft: The Mojave Experiment hasn’t been able to fool incredulous enterprises and it's time that MS devoted more time to addressing Vista’s glaring performance issues. Address their grievances, the tide will surely turn.

Read More