Opportunities beckon for MS partners

Cloud computing and Windows 7 upgrades are business opportunities Microsoft channel partners should be aggressively pursuing, Microsoft chief operating officer Kevin Turner says, reports Channel Web.

Turner, known for his 'take-no-prisoners' pep talks at the annual Worldwide Partner Conference, didn't disappoint this year, using his speech as an opportunity to take shots at Microsoft's biggest competitors, including Apple, Oracle and Google.

He says Microsoft tracks its competitive position in 15 key technologies and the company leads in all but two of them: mobile computing and browsers.

A report recently released by Parks Associates found the network-attached storage market is likely to bring in $4.4 billion in revenue by 2014 as consumers and companies look to backup their growing amount of digital content, writes EDL Consulting.

Experts predict global digital data will continue to grow exponentially, and issues of compliance and risk management will result in more business-critical data outsourced to the cloud.

The study also noted that consumer use of online backup will likely increase in the next four years.

Fujitsu is looking for acquisitions abroad, targeting firms that develop software or build systems, President Masami Yamamoto says, according to Trading Markets.

With its finances improving dramatically thanks to restructuring efforts over the past several years, Fujitsu could cut a major deal amounting to 100 billion yen.

The company will place emphasis on cloud computing, seeking to boost the segment's sales 10-fold to between 1.3 trillion yen and 1.5 trillion yen in fiscal 2015. The figure would represent about 30% of its total sales.