Microsoft Strikes Back at Apple: Opens Second Retail Store

Last Friday, Microsoft opened its second retail store in Mission Viejo, California (first one in Scottsdale, Ariz). Nearly a thousand people showed up at the grand opening making it official to Apple that the war is on. There is no doubt that Microsoft is looking to built a stronger relationship with its retail customers from the success of Apple's retail strategy. Now Microsoft can showcase all of its relatively unknown products while looking to build buzz around Windows 7 PCs. Will the younger, mall-roaming audiences take interest in Microsoft? We'll have to wait and see.

Parallels Summit 2009 - A Big Success!

Parallels Summit 2009 was a big success this year and thanks to the Parallels team for putting on a great show! Attendees could clearly see why Parallels is becoming the industry leader in this space.

Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels, provided the key note speech to about 1,000 attendees.

Serguei's presentation focused on the latest industry trends and he identified the channel falling into 5 different computing or cloud models.
1) Google Cloud, 2) Microsoft Cloud, 3) Other Platform Clouds (HP, IBM, Apple, EMC, Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook, Adobe and more), 4) Channel Clouds like Pointivity (mass market hosting, Telco, SaaS VARs, MSPs) and 5) In house clouds (large companies).

Serguei noted the keys to partner success are to become a one stop shop, differentiate your product offering and focus on customer and partner retention. Many VARs will not have the resources to support large product lines and it will be important for VARs without hosting expertise to partner with hosting providers who can support and train their staff both on the technology and on how to sell and position these products in the marketplace. Serguei noted there's a huge demand both from customers and within the IT industry for cloud and SaaS computing solutions.

The show included a great set of speakers most notably Morris Miller (founder of Rackspace) and Bill McNee (Saugatuck Technology). Morris focused on the importance of POSITIONING and provided a month by month/year by year historical overview of Rackspace's go-to-market strategies and product positioning strategies. Bill McNee provided in-depth research on the current SaaS industry and provided an end-user / CEO perspective of the hosting industry.

Over 160 companies utilize Parallels Automation and thanks to Parallels team for promoting Pointivity in your presentations!

Another big announcement was the release of Parallels SaaS module which now includes over 200 products that can be delivered through one interface. If you are a ISV or have a hosting solution product, please check out www.APSStandard.org. APS Standard has an open API directly to Parallels Automation engine, allowing any ISV product to be integrated with the Parallels engine. By leveraging this API you can get access to hundreds of master distributors and master resellers worldwide. If you need any help on getting your product integrated with Parallels, please feel free to contact partners@pointivity.com.

The two best additions to APS Standard and Parallels Automation at the show were Global Relay's message archiving and Open Exchange email replacement for Exchange Server. Both products are much needed in the SaaS and hosting industry and offer tremendous value to end-users and companies looking to outsource complex email services on a low cost, month to month, pay as you go option.

Brand Power: Apple Blowout Quarter Microsoft Earning Plunges

Following yesterday's blowout quarter by Apple, Microsoft announced 5,000 job cuts and decreased earnings today (by 11%). It came in no surprise that EVERYONE should be doing bad; as a matter of fact, high-end brands were expected to be obliterated in this recession but Apple was able to beat expectations delivering blowout numbers.

Last year analysts were skeptical about Apple not having a low-end notebook or even a reduced MacBook while competitors were rushing out with netbooks to target the low end of the market.

Building a brand like Apple is not about volume but intimacy with the customers, a highly targeted relationship with the customer to create brand appeal. Knowing your market and meeting customer demand is where it all starts, the same solution can be sold very differently if you position it properly. Much like how automobile industry positions their brand: Toyota can sell the same Camry for 40-50% more with Lexus badges on it simply because they knew and targeted two different types of buyers.

Microsoft on the other spectrum went for volume (surprise?) and low intimacy thus its revenue and profit rely on mass market adoption. In this model profit margins erode rapidly over time thus new/updated product must be introduced. This is where Microsoft is having issues with their low margin Windows XP being the ideal OS on all the little netbooks (accounted for a majority of the increase in overall mobile PC shipments to U.S. retailers in December, according to the NPD Group. The number of laptops shipped rose 23% to 1.9 million units, with 14% of that growth attributable to mini-notebooks ). Windows Vista is not suitable for netbooks since it needs much more powerful hardware to support it.


The take away? Become the premium brand to your customer regardless of where your market focus is and build strong relationships that create stickiness with your offerings. At the end of the day you're not the only solution provider in town, be creative and maximize the tools and resources (private label) around you.