So far, new Microsoft boss Satya Nadella has tried to have it both ways, with a strategy described as “cloud first, mobile first.” That’s a nice way to say cloud and mobile are equally (and hugely) important to Redmond. But sometimes it’s just not possible to have something both ways at the same time. Then what ...

If the first half of the first decade of the 21st Century has been about virtualization, the next half-decade may be dominated by a new approach, the anti-virtualization tool called Docker. Docker, to paraphrase the old Suave shampoo commercial, “does what theirs does for a lot less.” In this case, “theirs” is the hypervisor-based virtual ...

Google last week made a number of interesting announcements, many related to Android and its Google Drive and applications products. How many of these will actually become real and then live on is anyone’s guess. If it’s not the search engine, self-driving automobiles or creepy glasses, Google’s attention span can be very limited. Things that once ...

Google has announced big changes to its Drive cloud storage and Apps suite, all intended to compete more effectively with the Microsoft Office 365 juggernaut. I have to wonder how much it really matters. To understand the creation of the new Google Drive for Work, I take you to a secret meeting held deep inside Google’s headquarters. “Microsoft ...

Several years ago, I wrote a piece entitled “How Dropbox Will Die” that turned out to be quite popular at Forbes.com. My pitch was that Microsoft, Google and Apple would eventually make so much storage available so cheaply that whatever need I had for Dropbox would disappear, along with any incentive to pay anyone else ...

According to Google, the Internet-of-Things (IoT) will often require slow-but-cheap connectivity, pretty much the opposite of what wireless carriers offer today. The company has challenged carriers to make this IoT plan known so developers and customers can begin to plan their futures. Google’s Don Dodge says current mobile plans are poorly suited for a world ...

Microsoft’s new Services Agreement says something hugely important we can safely bet Google will never say. “We won’t use the content in your emails to target you with ads,” says Microsoft’s updated agreement, effective July 31. The Microsoft Services Agreement also promises “we do not use what you say in email, chat, video calls, or voice ...

Today let’s look at the battle between wearable tech that is designed for a specific set of tasks/applications and more general purpose devices. Health and fitness will be key market makers for these devices. If you think of a fitness wrist band as the first category and a smart watch as the second, you’ve got ...

It has come to my attention that Leon Trotsky, the Russian communist theorist, would be very much at home in a different global plan to replace the status quo with radical change. I know this because it is easy to imagine a Big Data/cloud proponent saying to traditional data warehouse users what Leon said to ...

After years of being only a minor cloud player, Apple is increasing its investment, at least in personal storage and entertainment. Attendees of this week’s Apple developer conference left San Francisco feeling that the cloud has become something of a big deal in Cupertino. Microsoft is likewise cloud-focused, but in business markets. Some have suggested ...