Is Office for iPad a fair fit for you? We go hands-on and answer seven key inquiries to enable you to decide. Microsoft Office for iPad arrived this week, two years overdue, and with millions of tablet users already entrenched in Google Docs, iWork, and other alternatives. But now that the desktop era’s top productivity software has finally landed at the world’s preferable mobile device, here’s the worst thing i’m able to say: Office for iPad is the most convenient tablet work software to this point.   No, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for iPad aren’t perfect. Wish to use the hot apps to print a document? Too bad. You want to edit documents without signing up for Office 365? Sorry, you will have to use Office Online, the browser-based version. Office for iPad won’t change the market. The apps might set the quality of their category, but it is not clear what number of people care about that category firstly. For millions of pro users,... Read More »

Interop 2014 kicks off Monday in Las Vegas. Here is a sneak peek of technologies to monitor. Interop Las Vegas opens Monday on the Mandalay Bay Convention Center amid a time of increasing change. Change was a continuing inside the technology industry, however the pace of change seems to maintain getting faster, as futurist Ray Kurzweil argued in 2001. Much of the hot change have been driven by IT trends just like the shift toward mobile devices, cloud computing, and the networking of everything. That and the necessity to store petabytes of cat videos, if you’ll pardon the pun. Then there’s the truth that software, as Marc Andreessen once put it, is eating the arena. In his keynote presentation on the conference, Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, plans to spotlight how virtualization and cloud computing have led software-defined datacenters to overshadow hardware-defined facilities, a shift he characterizes as “tectonic.” Alan Hase, Avaya’s VP of networking, points to software-defined networking (SDN) as a neighborhood of vibrant... Read More »

After years of anticipation, Microsoft Office for iPad arrives — and it’s only the start of a brand new push toward apps across all mobile devices, says new CEO Satya Nadella. 7 Mistakes Microsoft Made In 2013 (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Thursday announced Microsoft Office for iPad. However the product, which some argue is 2 years overdue, was only portion of Nadella’s appearance, his first since succeeding Steve Ballmer last month. Microsoft also debuted a brand new Enterprise Mobility Suite to assist IT professionals manage the barrage of devices and services employees now use for work. Nadella also promised that Microsoft would embrace cross-platform opportunities while continuing to sell its own devices. Microsoft Office for iPad includes native versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. They’re available at no cost immediately through Apple’s app store, though to do greater than review documents, users will need an Office 365 subscription. The recently-announced Office 365 Personal, a low-cost option that... Read More »

For IT, public cloud providers pose stiff competition. You would like to compete on quality. Everyone knows IT must evolve from sole supplier to service strategist. Get the combination right to deliver a few of what the business needs internally, some using external cloud and non-cloud providers. It is a no-brainer, right? Well, no. The newest InformationWeek Services-Oriented IT Survey of greater than 400 business technology professionals found an opening between those that embrace the theory and people still dragging their feet. Maybe that’s because efforts are out of balance. In my opinion, to do IT-as-a-service well, CIOs must keep process, technology, and cultural aspects in equilibrium. In my work I see ITaaS having positive long-term effects on IT governance, cost transparency, and alignment with corporate strategy. Leaders have the visibility to make smart investments, as I’ll discuss next week at Interop in a session on managing applications in a hybrid environment. ITaaS will not be plug-and-play, and also you can’t buy it from a... Read More »

Let’s put this week’s cloud price cuts in context. Cash-rich Google has made it harder for Amazon to benefit on AWS. Even if Google steals a ton of AWS customers, Google wins. 8 Data Centers For Cloud’s Toughest Jobs (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) In a remarkable display of the cloud’s pricing dynamics, first Google, then Amazon Web Services announced severe price cuts to basic services this week. Prices of popular virtual servers plummeted 30%, and a brand new round of competition was initiated in cloud storage, with prices cut in half. Amazon didn’t quite match the fee cuts that Google made in entry-level storage, so it’s lost the associated fee leader’s mantle there. But it’s maintaining a brave front. Without mentioning Google’s name, AWS said Wednesday it was cutting prices for the 42nd time and it’s in its retailer’s blood to continue to discount prices. “As more companies are available, we’ll take note of what other companies are doing,” said Adam Selipsky,... Read More »