Microsoft Operations Manager, or MOM, has gotten a major face-lift along with a new nameSystem Center Operations Manager 2007.
Now in beta and expected to ship by January 2007, SCOM 2007 has a new user interface and expanded management pack support. (Final licensing costs have not yet been determined.)
IT administrators at Windows-heavy shops should definitely put SCOM 2007 on their "should evaluate" list, but they should also be aware that there is no upgrade path for MOM 2005 users.
In fact, IT managers running MOM 2005 will have to set up a parallel path for SCOM 2007, running both systems until satisfied that SCOM 2007 is capturing all events. At that time, say Microsoft officials, MOM 2005 system can be decommissioned.
Microsoft announced executive changes within its Platform and Services Division on Tuesday, with longtime top Windows engineer and executive Brian Valentine set to take on a new role once Vista is commercially available.
The software giant said it is restructuring the group to sharpen its technology vision and bolster its response to customers. The changes come amid worries about delays in getting Vista out the door. The next version of Windows is now slated for release in early 2007.
As part of the executive changes, Valentine, senior vice president of the Windows Core Operating System Division, will transition to a new role in another area of the company. He has worked in Windows for the past seven years.
Beta 2 Technical Refresh is taking shape. Expect the updated Office 2007 client and SharePoint Server 2007 code in the 'not too distant future,' according to the Redmond software maker.
Microsoft is readying the next -- and seemingly final public -- beta builds of its Office 2007 client and SharePoint Server 2007 server products, according to bloggers inside and outside the company.
Last week, Microsoft notified Office testers officially of its plans for the next build, known as Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh. According to a note posted to the Office 2007 beta site:
"The B2TR (Beta 2 Technical Refresh) build will be releasing in the not too distant future and we're starting to outline plans for that release. Over the next weeks we'll be providing more information about what TAP (Technology Adoption Program) members can expect in the way of deployment planning, Vista interoperability and support from our product development teams for B2TR deployments."
Microsoft is showing off a prototype of a cell-phone operating system that it might end up fielding as a low-cost computing platform for the developing world.
Add to Microsoft's lower -cost computing alternatives designed for the developing world a new cell phone operating system, known as FonePlus.
Microsoft officials showed a prototype of the platform at the company's day-long Financial Analyst Meeting here on July 27.
Microsoft has been dabbling with a number of different platforms with which it is hoping to attract potential first-time and/or less affluent users. Among these initiatives, some of which are commercially available and others are in test and/or research-prototype phase ? are Windows XP Starter Edition, FlexGo and Internet kiosks.
Microsoft has filed another batch of technical information with the European Commission, in an effort to avoid an increase
in fines resulting from a 2004 antitrust ruling against the company, a Commission spokeswoman said Monday.
On July 12, the Commission fined Microsoft 280.5 million ($358 million) for not supplying the technical information about the communications protocols used by its
workgroup server software requested in the antitrust ruling. The Commission calculated the fine at 1.5 million per day for
the period from Dec. 16, 2005, to June 20, and warned the company that the daily fine could increase if it did not supply
all the requested documentation by July 31.
Special-edition cans of Talking Rain sparkling water, sporting the logo for the upcoming operating system, have been stocked among the other free sodas available to the company's employees. It's a promotion for the preliminary version of the program, pointing employees to an internal Windows Vista site.
Presumably, the actual operating system won't be available in lemon-lime.
THIS PROBLEM IS LICKED: Contrary to what Microsoft's competitors might say, innovative thinking is alive and well inside the company.
If its performance during a demonstration last week at Microsoft's annual Financial Analyst Meeting is any indication,
a voice-recognition feature in Windows Vista is not quite ready for prime time.
An interactive voice response system in Vista that is supposed to allow a user to dictate text into a Microsoft Word
document did not work as expected at the event last Thursday. It failed to correctly recognize what the Microsoft team member
was saying on several occasions, the results inspiring laughter from the crowd of analysts and journalists attending the day-long
meeting.
Ten major IT vendors including Microsoft and IBM on Monday released a draft of a new specification, the service
modeling language, which they claim will make it easier for customers to manage their heterogenous systems.
SML provides a consistent way to describe system information about computer networks, applications, servers and other IT resources
including services in extensible markup language, according to Kirill Tatarinov, corporate vice president of Microsoft's
Windows enterprise management division.
The company will present at the Black Hat Briefings -- an annual gathering in Las Vegas where hackers, researchers, government officials and corporate technology specialists unveil and analyze emerging computer security threats.
Microsoft's full day of sessions on Windows Vista reflects its effort to improve security in the upcoming operating system and cut down on the bugs that have made previous versions of its flagship program notoriously vulnerable to online attacks.
The company will be showing the audience some of the key changes it has made in Windows Vista security, and seeking feedback from researchers on where it could still improve, said Stephen Toulouse, security program manager with Microsoft's Security Response Center.
First Microsoft turned its back on its digital media partners because they were unable to come up with designs cool enough to thwart Apple's iPod. Now, it might be doing something similar in the PC space. After years of trying to convince PC makers that they need to ship better looking PCs, Microsoft has given up and is now designing its own PCs in-house. These PCs won't be sold directly to the public, however. Instead, Microsoft will offer these designs to PC makers, along with instructions on making them integrate better with Windows Vista. The hope is that PC makers will see the light and start being more bold and innovative. But since that will never happen, perhaps it's only a matter of time before Microsoft gets in the PC business. I don't see why not.