More Churn Than Usual

It’s certainly spring in the technology biz, as new or renewed life blooms all over. You can look just to the right for our brand new SMB Global Search test project for our first example. Powered by Eurekster’s “swiki” or Search WIKI, our new search tool allows readers (that’s you) to influence future results. Did your favorite story on a topic show up fifth instead of first? Rank it higher. We (I say we, but Adam Gaffin did all the work) pre-loaded stories from Network World to help seed the search results, so our content usually comes before material from outside Network World. But not always, and if you disagree you can help change it.

Like it or not, Microsoft drives many of the changes in this business. By priming the Vista delivery pump starting about 18 months before product delivery, Microsoft churns many other vendor’s product plans.

Corporate churn certainly made news as Scott McNealy grabbed headlines for “leaving” Sun. Actually, he’s just moving down Executive Row to the Chairman’s office. Losing a couple hundred million dollars in a quarter doesn’t get you promoted in many businesses, but this is Sillycon Valley. Guess Scott forgot his advice that chafed so many Sun resellers back when the dot bombs fell and he chastised them for not saving enough money during the boom times to hold them through the bust times. Don’t you love it when smug advice bites a suddenly less-smug advice giver?

While Sun’s travails won’t impact too many small businesses, the continuing fight between Intel and AMD helps us all. Intel, invincible no more, will cut a billion dollars in expenses trying to get leaner for their continuing fight against ever-growing AMD. New and possibly more innovative chips will soon come our way, just in time to be overwhelmed by Microsoft Vista.

Computer hardware manufacturers will be popping out new models by the dozen in preparation for Vista. This is good news because current models will be discounted to clear inventory. Grab them quickly and save some money, because by the end of this year most models will be the newer, more “feature rich” (expensive) models needed to support the Vista operating blob, er, system.

Go ahead and “swiki” a time or two. It’s spring.