Channel Insider Staff

Microsoft executives used the second day of the company s Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles to offer a few glimpses of upcoming Windows Phones. Acer, Fujitsu, ZTE, and Samsung had manufactured the devices on display for part of the July 12 keynote speeches, all of them embracing a thin-and-light design style that will apparently […]

Cisco Systems may cut as many as 5,000 jobs in August, the latest significant move as the networking giant looks to reorganize its business and improve its bottom line, according to market research firm Gleacher & Co. In a research note July 11, Gleacher analyst Brian Marshall said the job cuts could rival the 8,000 […]

Citrix has finished its acquisition of Cloud.com, a provider of software-infrastructure platforms for cloud providers. Cloud.com’s products include the CloudStack product line, designed for the deployment and management of cloud services. In theory, these assets will give Citrix a boost in its cloud-deployment aims. More than 30 percent of enterprises are deploying at least one […]

Polycom is bringing Microsoft s Lync unified-communications platform from the desktop to a full conference room telepresence system. Polycom officials at Microsoft s Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles July 11 introduced the CX7000 Unified Collaboration System, a telepresence solution that offers Microsoft Lync built in. With the tight integration, Lync users will get the […]

Microsoft is putting a brave face on the marketplace prospects of Windows Phone. During a July 11 keynote speech at the company s Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles, CEO Steve Ballmer described Windows Phone s market presence as very small. Nonetheless, he went on to insist that other metrics boded well for the smartphone […]

Google may have found a way to challenge not only Facebook, but also LinkedIn: Its new Google+ social network will apparently evolve in a way that allows businesses to build profiles and interact with the public.  We have a great team of engineers actively building an amazing Google+ experience for businesses, and we will have […]

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg launched video chat powered by Skype July 6, pundits immediately took to shaming and flaming the company for launching the service one week after Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) launched its own social network to beta with its own video application. Facebook, the world’s leading social network with 750 million users, took more […]

Computer makers MSI and Gateway are rolling out laptops sporting new chip technologies from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. MSI on July 8 unveiled the latest additions to its X-Slim Series of notebooks, including one the X460 that company officials are calling the lightest to offer Intel’s high-end quad-core Core i7 chip. The 14-inch ultraportable […]

Starting with its June 28th release, Microsoft s hosted productivity and collaboration suite, Office 365, is poised to make a big splash with U.S. small to medium-size businesses, which IT analytics firm AMI-Partners considers businesses with under 1,000 employees. Priced at only $6 per user per month, SMBs get all of the Office Suite applications […]

Revenue for U.S. consumer and small and midsize business technology-support services will jump by nearly a factor of three in the next five years, and U.S. households will account for more than 40 percent of the $30 billion market, according to new data from Parks Associates. Broadband service providers, in particular, are driving this growth, […]

While network operator Verizon Wireless is causing a stir this week by announcing the end of unlimited data plans, to be replaced with a three-tiered pricing structure, the company also unveiled a slew of applications, tools and online tutorials aimed at educating its customers and giving them the ability to check their data consumption habits. […]

Small business jobs rose slightly in June as employers added 45,000 positions to their payrolls. Hours worked and compensation also both increased by 0.2 percent. These were among the results of this month’s update of the Intuit Inc. Small Business Employment Index, covering the period between May 24 and June 23. The monthly report found […]