Hey, did the PC just die this week and we missed the announcement?
That's the theme of this VAR Guy article from Dave Courbanou, who sees the lack of any news about the Mac or OS X from Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) coupled with the current flood of virtualization and cloud computing news as a potential indicator that the PC has indeed kicked the bucket--or is at the very least on life support.
We're obviously big on the cloud here at Zenoss, but we don't see it as the killer of the PC platform. There will be a reduction in the platform's numbers, to be sure, and Apple seems to be stupidly rolling over and letting themselves lose here, because they're willing to bet their future on the consumer userbase of the smartphones and tablets rather than the creator userbase of PCs, be it Mac or Linux. (I'd toss Windows users as creators of content in there, but they're too busy getting pwn3d.)
Macs, love them or hate them, are arguably one of the most prevalent creation platforms in IT today. Their whole brand is centered around the artistic creation of content. If Apple is planning on ditching that in favor of the quick bucks from consumers, it seems very short sighted. If anything, they should capitalize on the inherent relationship between OS X and iPhoneOS--er, iOS--and get some cross-platform synergy going.
In the meantime, the cloud will grow as more consumers arrive. But don't count the PC platforms out yet: the demand for content creation has never been higher.
Speaking of iOS, it's very important that in light of recent news from WWDC, we eliminate some confusion. While Zenoss offers monitoring capabilities for Cisco devices running iOS, it does not support Apple's iOS, the newly named iPhone OS.
Just thought that needed to be said.
It wasn't all WWDC news this week: Novell and VMware had a significant announcement, too: vSphere customers will have the option to receive a fully supported SUSE Enterprise Linux Server (SLES) copy from VMware.
That's a big deal, in that it adds to SLES' already high presence within the virtualization space. According to the VAR Guy, Novell already has "an ongoing virtualization relationship with Microsoft, and a separate relationship with Citrix Systems."
This comes, notably, right before Red Hat Summit, where Red Hat is likely to tout the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization offering they announce in last year's Chicago summit. By locking this VMware deal, Novell puts themselves in a great position to preemptively cut off Red Hat before it assimilates the cloud.
Of course, not everyone was thrilled with the news. Microsoft's Patrick O'Rourke popped off a snarky blog entry challenging their partner Novell's notion that this new VMware partnership was such a good idea.
In a tone that reminded me a lot of the middle-school politics my kids have dealt with, O'Rourke praised Microsoft's successful partnership with Novell on the one hand and accused VMware of perpetuating vendor lock-in. Seriously, Microsoft? You want to play that card? Don't be surprised to hear the peals of laughter.
Redmond appears concerned that Novell, which is not too far from the end of it's 5-year deal with Microsoft, may have actually found another partner that can deliver some value to Novell, in the form of strong license distribution. Plus, as Mary Jo Foley astutely points out, Microsoft might lose their interoperatibilty poster child.
In lighter news, Xen.org recently came up with a panda as their new project mascot, named... named... well, apparently, there isn't a name for this cute and cuddly mascot.
So, the Xen folks are asking for help in coming up with a suitable moniker for the panda. I'll toss one out: Xazen, a play on the term zazen, the meditation practice of Zen Buddhists. If I win, send my fabulous prize to the charity of your choice, Xen folk!