Steven Sinofsky, a Microsoft long timer known for driving efficient–and secretive–Office 2007 and now Windows 7 development efforts, got promoted. Yesterday, he was named president of the Windows division. Tami Reller, CFO of that group, now picks up marketing as well. Bill Veghte, the senior VP who lead the marketing, sales and strategic planning charge will assume another–as yet unnamed–role.

More info here from Murray Goldman’s blog.

As far as I know, and God knows it’s near impossible follow all these release dates, .Net 4.0 has been out in beta form since this spring and is due in the Visual Studio 2010 timeframe. But here’s the deal. If a developer is playing with early versions of services in hopes of rolling out some real deliverables, this kind of stuff doesn’t fly.

This guy–a Microsoft Gold partner by the way–is doing most of his e-commerce work with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Still,  he likes to keep up with what Microsoft is doing. So far, he’s not impressed. Microsoft does not “get” that putting stuff out there and then pulling it back is a non-starter. Or that all of its myriad technology interdependencies are huge pain in the butt.

Asked what Microsoft can do in terms of pricing and sales model to get him into Azure, he said: “Learn how the new world works. You can’t be locked into this old view of months and years between updates. And you can’t pull back stuff and expect people to work on it.”

Next week, Microsoft will have to face an army of VARs and other channel players at its Worldwide Partner Conference and convince them to cast their lot with Microsoft’s still-new, and sometimes disappearing services, vs. going with Amazon or perhaps even Google infrastructure. And it has to show them a way to make money doing so. That is a very tall order.

A full 83 percent of the midsize companies responding to the CDW online poll reported that they planned to buy new software, as an example, during the second half of 2009. That was up 5 percentage points from April. However just 21 percent of small business IT decision makers believe their budgets will improve during the same time frame. This was down 8 percentage points from April.

One thing we can say for certain: Businesses are still quite uncertain about how to read the economy, which accounts for all the bounces in these numbers over the first half.

One last takeaway, with a more positive twist: Companies of all sizes expect better results in the second half. While small businesses recorded only a modest 4 percentage-point improvement in terms of expectations; 52 percent expect better company performance in the next size months. Medium-sized businesses improved 7 percentage points to 60 percent,  while enterprise businesses improved 9 points to 61 percent.

Here’s CDW’s analysis of the June data. The survey covered 1,042 IT decision makers from two national research samples.

Microsoft did a good thing when it amended its planned Windows 7 downgrade rights to give PC buyers 18 months (instead of the original 6) from the October 22 ship date to downgrade to Windows XP or Vista or stick with Win 7.  So that gives you 18 months from Oct 22, or until Service Pack 1  (SP1) debuts, to decide.

But still, given that many shops wait till SP 1 to evaluate any Microsoft OS, there is still an issue.

For large shops which buy PCs by the boatload to have in stock–there could still be a big headache. Until they can check out SP 1 thoroughly, they will allocate XP or Vista machines to people who need PCs. Then the question is how does their IT staff–or the channel proxy–track which PCs can be downgraded or not. Sounds like a fulfilling job that will have those same staffs reaching for the Extra Strength Excedrin.

And what about OEMs with tons of PCs in the pipeline that have no idea how many will be sold by the magic date–whatever that turns out to be? If Microsoft wants to push the point, it can demand that users show that  they bought machine X before thus-and-so date. This will not be very easy to do.

This is all part of a much larger, and hairier question: Why is software licensing so complicated? Microsoft (and Oracle and whomever) all talk about how they’ve simplified licensing–but the sad fact remains that it’s harder to decipher than the Dead Sea Scrolls. A cynic might think this is because complexity breeds profit to the software vendor. For the user, it simply feeds frustration and angst.

What do you think about Microsoft’s Windows 7 downgrade policy — or Microsoft licensing in general? Send mail to: Barbara Darrow.

That could mean good or bad things for current Cisco partners, many of whom remain angst-ridden over the vendor’s past tendency to favor a few, very large partners over smaller but perhaps more value-oriented VARs. Cisco lost a well publicized court battle over this issue last year.

To be fair, Cisco is hardly a trailblazer when it offers special perks to its big, special friends. Microsoft, IBM, insert-huge-tech-vendor-name-here are all guilty of this at times.

The plans are part of Cisco’s marching orders for its new fiscal year, starting in August.

Check out Rivka Little’s blog for more on the reorg.

Fernando Quintero, who joined the company in 2002, was recently promoted to VP of channel operations for the Americas and has been on something of a publicity  blitz of late.

But, as for the worldwide channel chief, McAfee (in spoke-speak) said that it has:

“initiated an aggressive global search for a new leader of global channels. With an experienced team of regional channel leads, we are confident in our ability to make this a smooth transition and ultimately launch our channel program to even bigger and better levels.”

The vendor is no stranger to channel management turmoil.  Last year it brought in Lisa Loe from Symantec over long-timer channel vice president David Dickinson. She lasted three months. 

Stepping on stage at the Washington D.C. event, Phillips who is tall and lanky, said: “I know what you’re thinking….and I’m not him.”

Oracle schlepped its president and various other luminaries (excluding, apparently, CEO Larry Ellison) to Washington D.C. for the big debut.

Oracle’s had a very busy start of its fiscal year. Two weeks ago, it hosted its virtual sales kickoff for internal staff. Next week, it’ll re-do it for the Oracle Partner Community. And today, it’s doing its biggest middleware launch ever–including all the goodies it got from BEA Systems.\

And it’s gearing up a big VAR specialization push now that will continue through the year at Oracle OpenWorld in October and beyond. The goal is to push more of its nichey products like product lifecycle management, identity management, high-end middleware.

Thanks to SearchOracle.com’s Ed Scannell for his updates on today’s event.

The Smart Cubes bundle IBM hardware, OS and management software along with applications for specific customer types. IBM Business partners can furthter customize the appliance for their clients. Last month, IBM and Intuit unveiled a new Smart Cube that runs Linux or the IBM I (OS/400) operating system, appropriate middleware and Intuit’s popular QuickBooks Enterprise accounting software.

With this deal Ingram Micro, IBM’s largest distribution partner, is the first to offer Smart Cubes in the U.S. In many cases with such deals, Tech Data or other distributors soon follow suit.

Smart Cubes come  out of IBM’s new Smart Business group. Smart Cubes are only available to authorized IBM channel partners.

Certainly, you can’t attribute that entire amount to replacement batteries for computers, but businesses all over the world and of every size are rethinking the life expectancies for existing corporate hardware. That means they may be more willing to spring for a new notebook battery than in the past, as the efficiency of older ones takes a nosedive.

That thinking is reflected in Tech Data’s recent decision to sign up Oncore Power Systems, which makes products for leading brands including Apple, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, HP-Compaq, IBM-Lenovo, Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba.

I’m sure the margin isn’t mind-boggling or anything, but this could be one more relationship in your arsenal of technologies that underscore your ability to recommend hardware strategies that are more energy efficient and environmentally sound. To get things started, Oncore is offering commercial resellers an instant rebate of 45 on all replacment batteries and power adapters that they buy through July 31; government and education resellers can snag an instant rebate of $10 on these items.

Estimated retail price (ERP) on upgrades is $119.99 for Win 7 Home Premium; $199.99 for Professional; $219.99 for Ultimate. These (U.S.) prices are presumably for users moving from either Windows XP or Vista.

ERP for full packaged retail product  is$199.99.99 for Home Premium; $299.99 for Professional; and $319 for Ultimate.

The blog characterized some of this as an outright price cut:

“For Windows 7, we are reducing the price on our most popular retail product for customers, the Home Premium Upgrade, by approximately 10% (depending on the market). In the U.S., this means a customer buying Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade will pay only $119.99 instead of the $129.99 being charged today for its predecessor.”

Some VARs don’t agree that Win 7 is a bargain  There has been a lot of grumbling about how hardware prices have fallen while the percentage of the PC cost attributable to WIndows is disproportionately high. That’s one reason some hardware OEMs are seriously looking at Android or Linux for new netbooks, and many VARs are lauding that move.

Given the rocky reception Windows Vista got, WIn 7 is seen as  a very important product for Microsoft.