Microsoft scraps 'Windows-first' practice, puts Office on iPad before Surface

As expected, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella today hosted a press conference where the company unveiled Office for iPad, breaking with its past practice of protecting Windows by first launching software on its own operating system.

Three all-touch core apps -- Word, Excel and PowerPoint -- have been seeded to Apple's App Store and are available now.

The sales model for the new apps is different than past Microsoft efforts. The Office apps can be used by anyone free of charge to view documents and present slideshows. But to create new content or documents, or edit existing ones, customers must have an active subscription to Office 365.

CEO Satya Nadella expounded on Microsoft's 'cloud first, mobile first' strategy today as his company unveiled Office for iPad as proof of its new platform-agnosticism.

Microsoft labeled it a "freemium" business model, the term used for free apps that generate revenue by in-app purchases.

Today's announcement put an end to years of speculation about whether, and if so when, the company would trash its strategy of linking the suite with Windows in an effort to bolster the latter's chances on tablets. It also reversed the path that ex-CEO Steve Ballmer laid out last October, when for the first time he acknowledged an edition for the iPad but said it would appear only after a true touch-enabled version had launched for Windows tablets.

It also marked the first time in memory that Microsoft dealt a major product to an OS rival before it launched it on Windows.

"Microsoft is giving users what they want," Carolina Milanesi, strategic insight director of Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, said in an interview, referring to long-made customer demands that they be able to run Office on any of the devices they owned, even those running a Windows rival OS. "The connection to Office 365 was also interesting in that this puts users within Microsoft's ecosystem at some point."

Prior to today, Microsoft had released minimalist editions of Office, dubbed "Office Mobile," for the iPhone and Android smartphones in June and July 2013, respectively. Originally, the iPhone and Android Office Mobile apps required an Office 365 subscription; as of today, they were turned into free apps for home use, although an Office 365 plan is still needed for commercial use.

Talk of Office on the iPad first heated up in December 2011, when the now-defunct The Daily reported Microsoft was working on the suite, and added that the software would be priced at $10 per app. Two months later, the same publication claimed it had seen a prototype and that Office was only weeks from release.

That talk continued, on and off, for more than two years, but Microsoft stuck to its Windows-first strategy. Analysts who dissected Microsoft's moves believed that the company refused to support the iPad in the hope that Office would jumpstart sales of Windows-powered tablets.

Office's tie with Windows had been fiercely debated inside Microsoft, but until today, operating system-first advocates had won out. But slowing sales of Windows PCs -- last year, the personal computer industry contracted by about 10% -- and the continued struggles gaining meaningful ground in tablets pointed out the folly of that strategy, outsiders argued.

Some went so far as to call Windows-first a flop.

Microsoft has long hewed to that strategy: The desktop version of Office has always debuted on Windows, for example, with a refresh for Apple's OS X arriving months or even more than a year later.

Posted on 9:47:00 PM / 0 komentar / Read More

Where's the touch-first Office for Windows?

When Microsoft unveiled Office for iPad last week, neither CEO Satya Nadella nor the company said much of anything about a similar touch version for Windows 8.1.

But analysts expect that to change this week at Microsoft's Build conference.

"Today was a day for heterogeneity, Microsoft in a non-Microsoft world," said Wes Miller of Directions on Microsoft in an interview on Thursday, the day Microsoft launched Office for iPad. "How do I manage that? How will I deal with a BYOD world? But I think next week is more about Windows. I'm fully expecting Windows news [about Office] not too far in the future."

That near-future will be as soon as this week, when Microsoft hosts the Build developers conference in San Francisco April 2-4, said Ross Rubin, an independent analyst at Reticle Research.

"Clearly, Nadella gave just a piece of the overall strategy today," Rubin said on Thursday. "The balance is between supporting customers not on Microsoft's platforms, supporting customers on Windows on other OEMs' devices, and supporting customers on Microsoft's own devices. Today we got a taste of how Microsoft is embracing the first. We'll get how they address the latter groups at Build."

After last week's news conference, which was webcast -- both Miller and Rubin watched that webcast -- and off-camera, Nadella confirmed that Microsoft would expand on Office on Windows at the developers conference, according to Geekwire.

Not surprisingly, Nadella did not promise that Microsoft would launch a Windows 8.1-specific version of Office then, one that would also be a touch-first suite and run on that operating system's "Modern," née "Metro" user interface (UI). "You'll see us talk even more about it next week, in terms of what innovation we are doing on that platform," Nadella told Geekwire.

Nadella hinted at the same in a blog he authored last week. "We're a few days away from Build, our developer conference, where next week we'll share where we're going with key platforms like Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox and Azure," he wrote.

The unveiling order of a touch-enabled Office -- first for iPad, Microsoft's tablet rival -- was a departure from previous company statements. Last October, then-CEO Steve Ballmer told an audience at a Gartner-hosted symposium that Office for iPad would ship, but only after something similar had launched for Windows 8.1.

As recently as a week before Microsoft trotted out Office for iPad, some experts were skeptical, rumors notwithstanding, that the company would launch on a competitor's platform before it did on its own. And for good reason.

"You'd better bet that if they [do unveil] Office for the iPad, they give a lot of details on Office for Metro," said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, in a March 19 interview. "It would be absolutely horrible if they didn't. Microsoft has drilled in developers' heads that anything other than Windows is bad."

To Moorhead and others, Microsoft risked fracturing already-strained relationships with developers by promoting apps on a non-Windows OS.

But by Thursday, Moorhead and other analysts were singing a different tune, applauding Microsoft for demonstrating that it was serious about its devices and services strategy, or as Nadella has put it, a "mobile-first, cloud-first" strategy -- even if that meant discarding the "Windows-first" philosophy it's adhered to for decades.

"This was the proof point of delivering on the devices and services strategy," Moorhead said last week.

Microsoft will kick off Build April 2 with a keynote address scheduled to run from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. PT (11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET). As at past Build conferences, Microsoft will live stream the keynote from its Channel 9 websiteand the conference's own page. Nadella is expected to participate in the keynote, just as Ballmer did in the years prior.

Posted on 9:43:00 PM / 0 komentar / Read More

Patch management missteps facilitate cybercrime

Failures in patch management of vulnerable systems have been a key enabler of cybercrime, according to the conclusions reached in Solutionary's annual Global Threat Intelligence Report out today, saying it sees botnet attacks as the biggest single threat.

The managed security services provider, now part of NTT, compiled a year's worth of scans of customers' networks gathered through 139,000 network devices, such as intrusion-detections systems, firewall and routers, and analyzed about 300 million events, along with 3 trillion collected logs associated with attacks. Solutionary says it relies on several types of vendor products for these scans, including Qualys, Nessus, Saint, Rapid7, nCircle and Retina.

Solutionary also looked at the latest exploit kits used by hackers, which include exploits from as far back as 2006. Solutionary found that half of the vulnerability scans it did on NTT customers last year were first identified and assigned CVE numbers between 2004 and 2011.

"That is, half of the exploitable vulnerabilities we identified have been publicly known for at least two years, yet they remain open for an attacker to find and exploit," Solutionary said in its Global Threat Intelligence Report. "The data indicates many organizations today are unaware, lack the capability, or don't perceive the importance of addressing these vulnerabilities in a timely manner."

It wasn't uncommon to find it took an organization up to 200 days to bring things up to snuff in terms of remediation and patch management. "There's kind of a throw it over the wall' mentality," says Don Gray, chief security strategist at Solutionary, noting vulnerability-assessment information wasn't being acted upon effectively in organizations, although networks segmented according to the Payment Card Industry (PCI) regulations were somewhat better maintained.

The Solutionary report also notes that effective log monitoring remains a challenge for several reasons. Customers are required to provide details about the devices, platforms, applications and databases they have when asking for log monitoring, Solutionary points out. But during and after this "discovery process," about half of organizations realize there are IT assets they didn't even know about. In addition, one third of the organizations have some of this IT infrastructure configured "in a manner that does not provide the security information required to meet their needs."

That's important not just because it's related to compliance, such as PCI rules, but because system and application logs are valuable and "underutilized" security resources for detecting an attacker has gotten inside the network.

However, incident response is also a weak spot, according to the report. In responding to client incidents last year, Solutionary found that 77% of the organizations involved had no incident response teams or procedures in place to respond effectively to a significant cyber incident, the report says. The remaining 23% has some incident response planning available, but "very few were mature or well-managed."

Posted on 9:34:00 PM / 0 komentar / Read More

Comments Samad Problem with Prabowo Banner: Banner Support KPK Only!

KPK chairman Abraham Samad as signals about his future in politics. Samad response when asked about the banners of support mate Prabowo-Abraham Samad installed in Menteng, Jakarta, pitched lamented. 

"You should not need to contain the banner bearing supports vice presidential candidates," said Samad as confirmed by AFP on Saturday (29/03/2014). 

According to Samad, banners should be mounted about the support it provides to the Commission in the fight against corruption. The banner was a more important 

"But it is better replaced with a banner that contains the support of the effort to weaken the KPK," he explained. 

Duet-Samad Prabowo it had heated up after Waketum Gerindra Fadli Zon discourse throw it.Politics is getting rowdy because the winged answer Samad want istikharah while awaiting his fate. 

But later Abraham began to turn. From the welcoming glance seem quite so Gerindra it became Chairman of RT alone. 

Will duet Prabowo-Samad drove to the 2014 presidential election? 

Posted on 6:39:00 PM / 0 komentar / Read More

Sutiyoso: In 2005, I was invited to SBY's been in Democratic

Presidential Candidate of the Indonesian Justice and Unity Party (PKPI) Sutiyoso revealed Yudhoyono been invited to join the Democratic Party. He declined the offer because he wanted to neutral when SBY served as Governor of Jakarta. 

"I started in 2005 has been invited to enter the Democratic SBY, but because I wanted a neutral course until I finished governor in 2007, then I promise 'later Sir, our recommendation again when I'm retired,'" said Sutiyoso. 

It was announced Sutiyoso when giving political speeches in front of hundreds of retired and retired military widows - Police when signing politics, in the media center PKPI, Menteng, Central Jakarta, Friday (29/3). 

Sutiyoso commonly called Bang Yos tells the story he eventually led PKPI. Before I could say yes solicitation SBY, Sutiyoso trigger got an offer from another party. 

"By retiring, I even got a call at the General Edi Sudrajat (Retired Gen.)," he said. Sutiyoso. 

Told him, Edi Sudrajat, the retired who was already ill give 'testament'. 

"When there is nothing related to me this, please lead the party formed by senior-seniors, this PKPI. You continue, I do not see another figure," he said quoting a message Edi. 

Sutiyoso was admitted was troubled choose between accepting the offer or Edi SBY. But the two bids, which are both of his colleagues in the army environment, makes convincing themselves into politicians. 

"I so want to answer how. Junior 2005 If I were to be president it asked me to enter the party.'s Now my most senior mine asked me to lead his party will respect him. Yeah I replied, God willing, sir baseball later when I've become governor," he said finally chose PKPI than Democrats. 

Posted on 6:24:00 PM / 0 komentar / Read More

Survey Charta Politika: electability Jokowi 37.4%, 14.5% Prabowo

Indonesia Pollsters Charta Politika pass related surveys the current candidate's electability. As a result, PDIP candidate Joko Widodo (Jokowi) still leads with 37.4% of the vote. 

"We conducted a simulation open-ended questions, 32% of respondents chose Joko Widodo. While the simulation closed question, 37.4% of respondents chose Joko Widodo, followed by Prabowo (14.5%), Bakrie (9.9%), Wiranto ( 7.2%), and Jusuf Kalla (5.5%), "said Executive Director Charta Politika Yunarto Wijaya in hasi exposure survey at Spices Restaurant, Jl Raya no.60 Senopati Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta, Wednesday (26 / 3/2014). 

Jokowi also excels in all simulations survey conducted Charta Politika."Name Jokowi always excelled in several simulation models ranging from simulations conducted with 10 names, 6 names, 4 names, up to 2 name a candidate," he said. 

The survey was conducted on December 1 to 8 March 2014 by face to face interviews to 1,200 people who are registered as voters. The sample was selected using stratified random sampling method. The margin of error of + - 2.83% at 95% confidence level. 

Below the level of electability candidate with an open question: 

1. Joko Widodo: 32.6% 
2. Prabowo: 13.8% 
3. Bakrie: 8.5% 
4. Wiranto: 6.4% 
5. Jusuf Kalla: 4.1% 
6. Dahlan Iskan: 2.5% 
7. Hatta Rajasa: 1.8% 
8. Mahfud MD: 1.6% 
9. Rhoma Irama: 1% 
10. Megawati Sukarnoputri: 0.7% 

Below 0.7%: Anies Baswedan (0.3%), Anis Matta (0.3%), Gita Wirjawan (0.3%), Hary Tanoesoedibjo (0.3%), Surya Paloh (0.3% ), Tri Rismaharini (0.2%), Yusril Ihza Mahendra (0.2%), Ali Musa Masykur (0.1%), Akbar (0.1%), Hidayat Nurwahid (0.1%), Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (0.1%), Irma Gusman (0.1%).





Other: 0.2%
No answer: 9.9%

Below the level of electability candidate with closed questions (proffered the names):

1. Joko Widodo: 37.4%
2. Prabowo: 14.5%
3. Bakrie: 9.9%
4. Wiranto: 7.2%
5. Jusuf Kalla: 5.5%
6. Dahlan Iskan: 2.8%
7. Mahfud MD: 2.6%
8. Megawati Sukarnoputri: 2.5%
9. Hatta Rajasa: 2.0%
10. Rhoma Irama: 1.5%

Below 1%: anies Baswedan (0.8%), Anis Matta: (0.5%), Gita Wirjawan: 0.5%, Surya Paloh: 0.5%, Yusril Ihza Mahendra: 0.4%, Hary Tanoesoedibjo (0.3%), Ali Musa Masykur: (0.2%), Isran Noor (0.2%), Pramod Edhie Wibowo (0.2%), Tri Risamaharini (0.2%), Basuki Purnama Tjahaja (0.1%), Irma Gusman: 0.1%
Marzuki Alie (0.1%)

Posted on 6:21:00 PM / 0 komentar / Read More

Proving Survey, Money Not Affect The People's Choice

The phenomenon of money politics increasingly prevalent approach the 2014 election. Do people still lulled by the sweet promises and offers of money from candidates or political parties? 

Survey results published by Charta Politika Indonesia on Wednesday (26/3) shows that the public is increasingly 'intelligent'. Or for-money politics ahead of the election for saweran not affect the people's choice. 

"Respondents answered 69.2% of money politics not influence their choice," said Executive Director Charta Politika, Yunarto Wijaya, told AFP on Thursday (03/27/2014). 

The survey was conducted on December 1 to 8 March 2014 by face to face interviews to 1,200 people who are registered as voters. The sample was selected using stratified random sampling method. The margin of error of + - 2.83% at 95% confidence level. 

So unique, the majority of people are still willing to accept money politics. However, no guarantees or political parties choose candidates who give money saweran. 

Here are the complete results of the survey Charta Politica about money politics: 

Is money politics can influence the choice? 

69.2% of respondents answered no 
26.8% of respondents answered yes 
4.0% of respondents answered do not know 

Is receiving money politics? 

Receive, but not necessarily choose the candidates (52.3%) 
Receive and select the candidates (7.9%) 
Refused (32.8%) 
Do not know / no answer (6.9%) 

Posted on 6:18:00 PM / 0 komentar / Read More