GigaOM

Updated: The San Francisco Bay Area is living, it seems, in a protective cocoon of its own, oblivious to the current credit crunch and fiscal crisis that has been roiling the rest of America. This morning, while there is talk of a bailout plan being finalized, it hasn’t stopped almost everyone from cab drivers to doctors from worrying about the jaw-dropping sequence of events that has unfolded over the past few weeks.

I’ve been thinking about the impact of tightening money supply on larger technology companies. There are big players, like IBM and the telecom operators, who tap the commercial paper market to raise money pretty frequently. It seems logical that their ability to raise more money could be hampered. Curious, I got in touch with about a dozen or so big tech companies to take the pulse of their sentiment. So far, not many of them seem worried.

Continue »

How do cell phone users want to get their mobile applications, how do mobile developers want to deliver them, and what’s the future? Web or native, preloaded or installed, at a centralized app store or a distributed model, bundled or installed, offered by a company or a consortium, and open or closed?

OK, so the non-controversial answer is a combo of all these things, but the conclusion of the debates, including audience input, was that we want: web apps, centralized, installed, offered by a company, and open. Here are some interesting tidbits from the discussion: Continue »

With VMware and Citrix both pushing into the data center with their virtualization products, I had the chance to chat with Simon Crosby briefly about Citrix’s new portfolio of cloud products. I walked away impressed with Citrix’s plan of attack when it comes to helping providers make cloud computing compelling for enterprise customers. Citrix’s approach won’t solve issues related to the physical location of data or problems with varied platforms, but does address compliance, security and latency issues. Continue »

As the VMworld conference kicks off in Las Vegas, expect to see virtualization try to hook its star to cloud computing much like a tired stripper might lure a lucky gambler into marriage. Since virtualized servers act as the basic building blocks of cloud computing — and hypervisors are moving towards free — the move on the part of virtualization vendors to push beyond the marketing message of server consolidation into providing services to enable the cloud is both a logical and necessary one. Continue »

The past has a certain way of knocking on the present’s door. This week has been proof of that. First, Google turned 10 (or 13), sending me down memory lane back to when “Silicon Alley Insider” meant Fred Wilson and Scott Kurnit, not the blog by that name.

And now here comes news that Microsoft is shuttering Ensemble Studios. This is the same studio that created the only game franchise I have truly loved: The Age Of Empires. It is the only Microsoft product I honestly can say I truly enjoyed. Maybe that is why the Ensemble shutdown news caught my eye.

It wasn’t clear from today’s news what was going to happen to The Age of Empires and its sequels including the Age of Mythology. So I emailed Microsoft to get some clarification. “Microsoft will continue to sell the Ensemble games, including ‘Halo Wars,’ but is not commenting on future plans for the Age franchise,” Microsoft spokesperson emailed back. (Read the full statement at the end of the post.) That left me where I started -– confused, like many Age of Empires fans.

Continue »

Forrester Research recently sent us a copy of “It’s Time To Take Games Seriously,” an overview of the burgeoning “serious games” industry. As the term suggests, these are video and computer games created to achieve practical, real-world outcomes, such as education or job training; consequently, it’s a space with an eclectic spectrum of players, from universities and NGOs to the military and for-profit corporations. (Recent examples in the latter category: Ultimate Team Play for training Hilton staff workers and The Philips Simplicity Showdown, aimed at improving communication among Philips Electronics employees and management.)

The Forrester report argues that serious games are “poised to take off” in the next seven years. Why?
Continue »