Microsoft updates display 'worrisome' decline in quality

September 15, 2013 03:27 PM ETComputerworld - Microsoft on Friday acknowledged it had rewritten four of its security updates issued just three days earlier after customers reported never-ending demands that they be installed, even though they had been.

The flawed updates were just the latest in a disturbing trend of quality problems in Microsoft's security and stability updates. The repeated installation requests followed Microsoft's yanking of a non-security update last week, as well as buggy fixes shipped in August and April that blocked access to server-based email mailboxes and crippled Windows 7 PCs.

"Worrisome," is how Andrew Storms, director of DevOps at San Francisco-based cloud-oriented security vendor CloudPassage, put it when asked about the trend in an interview conducted via instant messaging Friday. "Are we starting to see a shift back to when people called Microsoft the necessary PITA [pain in the ass]?"

According to Microsoft, it's already fixed the four updates that were dunning customers with installment demands. "We have received reports of updates being offered for installation multiple times, or certain cases where updates were not offered via Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) or System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)," the company said on an Office engineering blog. "We have investigated the issue, established the cause, and we have released new updates that will cease the unnecessary re-targeting of the updates or the correct offering of these updates."

Microsoft identified four of last Tuesday's 13 security updates as flawed, including one for SharePoint Server, one that affected Office 2007 and Office 2010, another that impacted Office 2013, and a fourth that patched Excel 2003 and Excel 2007.

A non-security update for PowerPoint 2010 also exhibited the same behavior.

Almost immediately after Microsoft issued September's slate of security updates, customers reported the recurring install snafu on the company's support forums.

Some were caustic about their experiences dealing with the endless loop, and their time on the telephone with Microsoft support representatives. "I've spent more than 3 hours chatting with MS Answer desk with people who were unable to comprehend this simple issue," wrote "choisington" on Sept. 10, the day Microsoft delivered the updates.

"I am so fed up with Microsoft, their ability to totally take over a machine's ability to function," ranted "Ffaith" on Thursday.

The frustration was understandable: Also last week, an Office 2013 stability and performance update blanked the folder pane in Outlook 2013, the suite's email client. After fielding scores of complaints from customers, Microsoft acknowledged the update was flawed, yanked the original, began working on a corrected re-release, and urged users to uninstall the update.

September's update blunders were the latest in a series of embarrassments for Microsoft. In August, the Redmond, Wash. company yanked an Exchange security update, admitting it had not properly tested the patches. In April, Microsoft urged Windows 7 users to uninstall an update that crippled PCs with the infamous "Blue Screen of Death"; it re-released the update two weeks later.

Other security professionals weighed in on Microsoft's inability to produce top-quality updates. Paul Ducklin, the head of technology for Sophos' Asia-Pacific region, dubbed Sept. 13 "Patch Horror Day" in a post to his company's blog.

"Microsoft is killing their record," said CloudPassage's Storms, referring to the company's hard-won reputation for issuing flawless updates. "Their record had been so good that people were starting to relax on their own internal testing."

Storms, joined by some of those who reported the over-and-over installation demands by the four Office updates, wondered whether Microsoft's focus on the cloud, and the subscription model for Office 365, was to blame for the lack of attention to detail on the traditional "perpetual" license versions of the suite.

"I think they recognize that's where the market demand is moving," said Storms of Office 365 and its continuous, behind-the-scenes updating. "But at what cost?"

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at  @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

Read more about Malware and Vulnerabilities in Computerworld's Malware and Vulnerabilities Topic Center.

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

View the original article here

Microsoft updates display 'worrisome' decline in quality

September 15, 2013 03:27 PM ETComputerworld - Microsoft on Friday acknowledged it had rewritten four of its security updates issued just three days earlier after customers reported never-ending demands that they be installed, even though they had been.

The flawed updates were just the latest in a disturbing trend of quality problems in Microsoft's security and stability updates. The repeated installation requests followed Microsoft's yanking of a non-security update last week, as well as buggy fixes shipped in August and April that blocked access to server-based email mailboxes and crippled Windows 7 PCs.

"Worrisome," is how Andrew Storms, director of DevOps at San Francisco-based cloud-oriented security vendor CloudPassage, put it when asked about the trend in an interview conducted via instant messaging Friday. "Are we starting to see a shift back to when people called Microsoft the necessary PITA [pain in the ass]?"

According to Microsoft, it's already fixed the four updates that were dunning customers with installment demands. "We have received reports of updates being offered for installation multiple times, or certain cases where updates were not offered via Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) or System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)," the company said on an Office engineering blog. "We have investigated the issue, established the cause, and we have released new updates that will cease the unnecessary re-targeting of the updates or the correct offering of these updates."

Microsoft identified four of last Tuesday's 13 security updates as flawed, including one for SharePoint Server, one that affected Office 2007 and Office 2010, another that impacted Office 2013, and a fourth that patched Excel 2003 and Excel 2007.

A non-security update for PowerPoint 2010 also exhibited the same behavior.

Almost immediately after Microsoft issued September's slate of security updates, customers reported the recurring install snafu on the company's support forums.

Some were caustic about their experiences dealing with the endless loop, and their time on the telephone with Microsoft support representatives. "I've spent more than 3 hours chatting with MS Answer desk with people who were unable to comprehend this simple issue," wrote "choisington" on Sept. 10, the day Microsoft delivered the updates.

"I am so fed up with Microsoft, their ability to totally take over a machine's ability to function," ranted "Ffaith" on Thursday.

The frustration was understandable: Also last week, an Office 2013 stability and performance update blanked the folder pane in Outlook 2013, the suite's email client. After fielding scores of complaints from customers, Microsoft acknowledged the update was flawed, yanked the original, began working on a corrected re-release, and urged users to uninstall the update.

September's update blunders were the latest in a series of embarrassments for Microsoft. In August, the Redmond, Wash. company yanked an Exchange security update, admitting it had not properly tested the patches. In April, Microsoft urged Windows 7 users to uninstall an update that crippled PCs with the infamous "Blue Screen of Death"; it re-released the update two weeks later.

Other security professionals weighed in on Microsoft's inability to produce top-quality updates. Paul Ducklin, the head of technology for Sophos' Asia-Pacific region, dubbed Sept. 13 "Patch Horror Day" in a post to his company's blog.

"Microsoft is killing their record," said CloudPassage's Storms, referring to the company's hard-won reputation for issuing flawless updates. "Their record had been so good that people were starting to relax on their own internal testing."

Storms, joined by some of those who reported the over-and-over installation demands by the four Office updates, wondered whether Microsoft's focus on the cloud, and the subscription model for Office 365, was to blame for the lack of attention to detail on the traditional "perpetual" license versions of the suite.

"I think they recognize that's where the market demand is moving," said Storms of Office 365 and its continuous, behind-the-scenes updating. "But at what cost?"

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at  @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

Read more about Malware and Vulnerabilities in Computerworld's Malware and Vulnerabilities Topic Center.

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

View the original article here

Decline of Digital Equipment offers lessons for Microsoft

Computerworld - Microsoft has piled up so many stresses on its corporate body in the last 10 months that it must beat almost insurmountable odds to remain healthy and viable, a business strategist said today.

"There's something endemic in technology companies that they are not built to last," said Peter DeLisi, founder and president of Organizational Synergies, a Fremont, Calif. strategy consulting firm. "The larger and larger they become, the more they spin out of control. In a highly empowered culture like Microsoft or DEC, the pieces are loosely held together. And in a crisis, down they go."

DeLisi was not predicting the collapse of Microsoft -- the Redmond, Wash. firm is a member of the Fortune 50, with revenues in its latest fiscal year of $78 billion -- but current and former Microsoft employees have been struck by the parallels between the company's current situation and that of DEC, or Digital Equipment Corporation, which in the late 1980s was the world's second largest computer company. By 1996, DEC had disappeared, sold at a fire sale price of $9.6 billion to Compaq.

And DeLisi knows DEC -- specifically its downfall. A 16-year-veteran of the Maynard, Mass. company, half of those as a strategy, IT and organizational culture consultant to DEC's largest enterprise customers, DeLisi wrote a seminal paper on the company's decline, "A Modern-Day Tragedy: The Digital Equipment Story," in 1998. Five year later he co-authored the book, "DEC is Dead, Long Live DEC" with Ed Schein, a former professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and one of the world's foremost authorities in organizational behavior.

Computerworld spoke with DeLisi after seeing his paper mentioned numerous times in a semi-underground blog, "Mini-Microsoft," purportedly written by a current Microsoft employee, when the blog's author posted his or her take on Ballmer's retirement. Among the several hundred comments left by others -- most anonymously -- were dozens referencing DeLisi's description of DEC's downfall.

Those with time at Redmond saw similarities between the tale of DEC and today's Microsoft:

"I spent 12 years at Microsoft after leaving DEC in 1994," stated one anonymous commenter. "The time between DEC's first [layoffs] and its closing shop was brief. DEC in its heyday had 140K employees, large cash reserves (no debt) and was the 2nd largest computer company in the world (behind IBM).

"DEC missed early entry into the PC market and was not able to catch up; similar to Microsoft missing on mobile. Missing the market, sound familiar? [emphasis in original].

"DEC's beloved CEO and visionary, Ken Olsen, left in 1992 and was replaced by Bob Palmer who had been internally lobbying for the job for years ("managing up"). Palmer I believe is still on the board at debt-laden AMD. [Editor's note: Palmer left AMD's board this year.] CEO change, sound familiar?

"If employees think it cannot happen at Microsoft because of its large cash reserves, they are wrong."

While DeLisi was hesitant to cast Microsoft as a DEC doppelganger because he was not inside Microsoft -- as he had been at DEC two decades before -- he was confident that Microsoft had, purposefully or not, stacked the deck against itself.

Microsoft's strategy turn-about and the resulting July top-to-bottom reorganization, then the announcement six weeks later that Ballmer would depart and a new CEO found, and then 10 days after that, the acquisition of Nokia -- a move that will boost the company's head count by a third -- are an incredible number of corporate strains in quick succession. "Any one of those are by themselves major efforts to assimilate," DeLisi said. "Sometimes companies can weather some of those changes, but when they must deal with more than one major change, most cannot."

Just absorbing Nokia and its estimated 32,000 employees will be a chore that could disrupt Microsoft or otherwise end badly, said DeLisi. "The integration of Nokia is not a slam dunk," he said. "Half of all mergers and acquisitions fail outright, and in two-thirds of the cases, the companies would have been better off investing in Treasury notes. That by itself is going to be difficult to pull off."

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

View the original article here

Disk storage revenues decline in Q2

Computerworld - The disk storage systems market generated $7.7 billion in revenue in the second quarter of this year, representing a 5% year-over-year decline as well as a slight sequential drop compared to the first quarter of 2013.

According to IDC' s Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker, the total amount of disk storage shipped in the second quarter reached 8.2 exabytes -- that's 8.2 million terabytes -- representing an increase of 21.5% year over year.

Separate from server, desktop and laptop disk storage, factory revenues for external drive systems (such as RAIDed storage arrays) also saw a year-over-year decline of 0.8%, totaling just over $5.9 billion, in the second quarter of this year.

"Emerging markets experienced increases in demand while spending within mature markets, including the United States, Western Europe, Canada, and Japan, fell when compared to the same quarter a year ago," Eric Sheppard, IDC's research director for storage, said in a statement.

The reduced demand in mature markets is creating a competitive environment and a deterioration in disk drive pricing, "which seems to worsen market conditions," IDC said.

As is typical, EMC led the market in external disk storage sales. The company increased its lead and had a 31.3% revenue share for the quarter, followed by NetApp and IBM with 13.3% and 12.6% market share, respectively. HP was next with 10.0% market share, while Dell and Hitachi finished with 7.6%, and 7.1% market share, respectively.

EMC also maintained its leadership in open networked disk storage systems, which includes NAS and non-mainframe SAN. EMC took 34.1% of revenue share out of a total of $5.2 billion in networked storage revenues. EMC was followed by NetApp with 15.2% revenue share.

In the Open SAN market, which declined 0.6% year over year, EMC was again the leading vendor with 29.7% revenue share, followed by IBM in second with 15%. HP and NetApp accounted for 13% and 9.5% of sales, respectively.

The NAS market increased 2.5% year over year, led by EMC with a 46.3% revenue share and followed by NetApp with a 30.8% share.

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at  @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed . His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.

See more by Lucas Mearian on Computerworld.com.

Read more about Data Storage in Computerworld's Data Storage Topic Center.

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

View the original article here