{"id":6391,"date":"2008-12-22T15:39:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-22T13:39:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-12-22T15:39:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-22T13:39:00","slug":"consolidating-and-cost-cutting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/6391-consolidating-and-cost-cutting.html","title":{"rendered":"Consolidating and cost-cutting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Duncan McLeod talks to Microsoft International president Jean-Philippe Courtois about how the economic rout is affecting spending on IT <\/em><br \/>&nbsp;<br \/><strong>How is the economic downturn affecting Microsoft?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>At the end of Q1 in September we were in line with the guidance we provided. But we have shaved US$500m off our operating expenses.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How is this downturn different from that of 2000 and 2001?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The bubble burst then because there was too much hype and an oversupply of technologies. The IT industry didn&#8217;t do a good job of explaining what could be done with that technology. This time it&#8217;s linked to financial services. The smallest companies now don&#8217;t have access to cash. It&#8217;s hard for them.<br \/><strong><br \/>Many of Microsoft&#8217;s partners are small companies like this. How is the company supporting its sales channel?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We have announced specific measures for distributors in which we offer extended payment terms. In SA, payment terms have been extended from 30 days to 60 days until June next year.<br \/><strong><br \/>How can companies save money on their IT systems?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Do more with less with your servers. This is the promise of virtualisation technology. [Editor&#8217;s note: virtualisation allows companies to make more efficient use of their hardware resources and to consolidate the number of servers and other systems they run, thereby saving them money.] Many companies use 10% of their server capacity. They can consolidate those servers at a ratio of eight to one. Companies are also using technology to save energy. You can set a time when you want to automatically shut down all of the PCs in your company.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Surely server consolidation is bad for Microsoft because the company will sell fewer server software licences?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It allows us to enter discussions about managing customers&#8217; whole systems [and sell them additional software, such as system management tools].<\/p>\n<p><strong>Should companies running Windows XP wait for Windows 7, due out next year, or should they install Vista now?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For many years to come, Vista will be the best Windows operating system that companies can deploy. So customers should deploy Vista.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php?t=151258\">Microsoft discussion <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How is the economic downturn affecting Microsoft? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6391"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}