Microsoft continues its shopping spree to bolster its SQL Server database platform to make it more suitable for large-scale enterprise deployments. On Thursday the company said it plans to buy DATAllegro, a privately held maker of data-warehouse appliances.
The terms of the deal, which comes on the heels of one announced last week to purchase data-quality technology vendor Zoomix, were not disclosed. Microsoft will retain most of the 93 DATAllegro employees, who will continue to work out of their existing office in Aliso Viejo, California. DATAllegro provides data-warehouse appliances, which combine data-storage functions with business-analytics software.
At Microsoft's Financial Analyst Meeting Thursday, Bill Veghte, who heads up the company's Windows and online services division, said that Windows 7 is progressing well and confirmed that Internet Explorer 8 will ship before the end of the year. Beta 2 of IE8 is slated for release next month, with a focus on new features for consumers and IT professionals. The first beta -- released in March -- was focused largely on developers, and Microsoft said the long delay between betas was due to the heavy feedback it received.
Microsoft has built its massive software business by watching other companies take the lead in emerging technology markets
and then following fast with competitive products that eventually become dominant once those markets begin to pay out.
The company did it against IBM during the birth of the PC, Netscape during the browser wars, and is currently making a strong
showing against Sony and Nintendo in the game-console market.
However, Microsoft's inability so far to capitalize on online advertising and services and its inability to make any headway
against Google shows that, despite its huge cash reserves, this strategy may no longer be effective.
The man behind Microsoft's troubled bid to acquire Yahoo is leaving to run Juniper Networks, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.Kevin Johnson, head of Microsoft's struggling online business, will step down as president of Microsoft's Platforms and Services Division. Johnson is also responsible for the development and marketing of Windows and oversees 14,000 Microsoft employees.This business unit will now be reorganized, the newspaper reports.
A year and a half after it first started selling Windows Vista, Microsoft is prepping a multi-million dollar ad campaign aimed at dispensing lingering doubts about the operating system. The campaign will tackle inaccuracies flaunted by Apple's infamous "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ad campaign as well as the widely publicized if under-educated opinions of online tech pundits.
The theme of the campaign is simple enough: Everything you've heard about Vista is wrong. And Microsoft has evidence to back up that claim, not the least of which is over 180 million licenses sold, a blockbuster number that, combined with recent PC sales figures, suggests new Vista users are coming onboard this year at a rate over 12 times faster than, say, are users of Apple's Mac OS X.
Microsoft announced today that user-created games will be sold on Xbox Live through a new Community Games section starting this fall, with developers taking 70 percent of the revenue. Almost two years ago, Microsoft first announced its plans to open Xbox 360 development to the public with the unveiling of its XP-compatible XNA Game Studio Express, and fully-featured XNA Game Studio.
During a showing of the product at Tech-Ed last year, Microsoft's David Weller mentioned that the company was exploring the possibility of creating an online community of XNA game developers that would be more than just a place to share ideas, but to also market and their products.
Microsoft will announce on Monday the immediate availability of Windows Home Server Power Pack 1, a major functional update to the company's home server product. PP1 adds new functionality and fixes a long-time data corruption bug that briefly tarnished the product's reputation.
"This is great news for customers," Joel Sider, a senior product manager from the Windows Home Server team told me in a recent briefing. "Not only are we resolving the data corruption issue, we're also add some useful new features, such as 64-bit client support, shared folder backup on the server, and several remote access improvements.
The woman formerly responsible for managing Microsoft's Internet domain names has been sentenced to nearly two years in prison for bilking her employer out of US$1 million in fake registration fees.Carolyn Gudmundson, 46, formerly a program manager at Microsoft's MSN division, pleaded guilty in January to charges that she used her position within the company to run a number of scams between 2000 and 2004. On Friday, she was sentenced to 22 months in prison, followed by three months of supervised release, and ordered to pay $923,641 in restitution.
According to court filings, Gudmundson used her corporate American Express card for domain-name registration fees, but would then submit copies of invoices that carried inflated charges.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is getting a shot in the arm with an upgrade that will see it gain new enterprise search features, as well as better performance.
The update to MOSS 2007 comes as part of a wider rollout of usability and performance improvements to a number of Office products. Along with MOSS 2007, Project Server 2007, Project Professional 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express each received free updates.
Take that, iCabal: Microsoft is now selling Vista at a rate of 20 million units a month, a figure that is approximately equal to the total actual number of Mac OS X users worldwide. And they do it. Every. Single. Month. So I assume this will end all of the babbling about Vista being a failure: This thing is a mass market success of epic proportions. And it's just getting bigger.