Times like this can make a man nervous.

So, the seemingly impregnable Google's laying off workers. The guys and girls for the axe are 100 recruitment workers, so don't be hankering for that job at Mountain View any time soon. And the old company of new Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz (already labelled in some areas of the press as "foul mouthed", although personally, "friggin'" doesn't register on my radar unless it's uttered by a cheeky matelot with a glint in his eye), Autodesk, has also put the knife in today.

And now Microsoft's wielding the axe, according to some sources. Or not. Either way, it's a fair bet there'll be few requests for a pay rise at the software giant anytime soon.

Sign of the times? I did some crystal ball gazing for work this afternoon, trying to come up with a three-year plan. Practically an impossible task, given the pace in change of the world around us right now.

What did I come up with? Well, if we're going to upgrade from Server 2003 we'll be facing some pretty substantial hardware costs as 2008 R2 is 64 bit only. I'm sure there''ll be a few issues on the back of that one, given the number of legacy apps we're running. Virtualization will be something we'll make more of, although I suspect we'll be looking closely at other offerings beside VMWare.

The other thing that I feel I have a duty to look at is exactly what parts of our server estate could be candidates for moving into the Cloud. Now, my knowledge of the possibilites that Azure, Google and whatever it is that Amazon eventually comes up with is tiny. Nothing at all, in fact, beyond knowing that they're going to be there. But it seems a funny time, to be sure, to be leading the charge in a direction which could very well put me out of a job.

Where next for Apple?

Steve Jobs is taking time out, as you probably know. I wonder where that leaves Apple? Even more so than Microsoft when Bill Gates was in charge, Apple is Steve Jobs. Apple's shortcomings and strengths are also, therefore, tied up in him. So what might be on the cards for Apple if the new hand on the tiller keeps their own lookout and doesn't simply use Steve's binoculars?

I said yesterday that Apple's server offerings are awful, and I meant it. Microsoft's building all sorts of fun stuff into the Windows Server family these days - virtualization, remote application delivery with Terminal Server 2008, CRM; loads of good stuff. Plus of course, all the tried and tested backoffice stuff that we've been using for years.

Someone else is getting into virtualization now - Citrix are finally looking serious about gettnig into the game, and about time too, given that Terminal Server 2008 does everything that the Presentation Server releases of only a couple of years ago did. Whether it does enough to distinguish itslef from either the ubiquitous VMWare or Microsoft's own offerings is another matter. Citrix is looking like a company in need of a space.

Have Apple got that? They've got the iPhone, and the iPod, and the Mac, and Citrix is all about accessing the same applications across different platforms. If the downturn goes on and domestic customers find themselves unable to justify that new Mac, Apple's going to need business customers. For that, it needs something to put on its servers...