Microsoft will use its annual Tech Ed conference to be held in Boston the week of June 12 to publish the new Windows Server System Common Engineering Criteria for infrastructure software produced in 2007.
Among the new criteria are improved feedback platform for users; IPv6 support; Web services adoption; improved diagnostics; identity and access management; support for the security configuration wizard; native x64-bit support; and a standardized content model for printed documentation as well as online information.
The European Commission may take until the middle of July to decide whether to impose on Microsoft a daily fine of 2 million euros, about $2.6 million.
Europe's commissioners will meet for the last time sometime before the summer break on July 19. A commission representative told journalists Tuesday that this was the latest date on which a decision could be taken on the fine, which follows a landmark 2004 antitrust ruling.
Commission sources later confirmed that a decision could be taken earlier and denied that July 19 was inked in as D-Day for the Commission's ongoing battle with the software giant. "We've always been saying that we'll make a decision before the summer," one insider said.
Microsoft will ship the first branded versions of its Antigen products beginning July 1, the company announced on Tuesday.
The newly Microsoft-branded products are Antigen for Exchange, Antigen for SMTP Gateways, Antigen Spam Manager and Antigen Enterprise Manager. Microsoft acquired the products last July when it bought out Sybari Software, which was best known for its multiple scanning engine
approach to malware, spam and virus control.
Beyond rebranding, the products also feature significant upgrades.
Microsoft plans to give its MSN Spaces blog publishing and hosting service new social networking features, as well as support
for the company's lightweight applications called Gadgets..
The new social networking features are being tested by MSN Spaces users in Australia and the Netherlands, and are designed
to foster user interaction, said Karin Muskopf, MSN product manager.
"We've heard from our customers they want to be able to see who their friends are talking to, because they feel those people
would have similar interests to theirs. They want to be connected to people who are like-minded," she said.
Microsoft offered technologies that it developed to two more European companies, as part of its push to help accelerate
innovation among startup companies, the software giant said on Monday.
The agreements are part ofMicrosoft's IP Ventures program, an initiative started last year to transfer technologies developed in Microsoft research labs to startup companies.
Microsoft gave U.K. company Skinkers Ltd. the IP rights to P-to-P (peer-to-peer) technology that it has developed in exchange
for a 10 percent equity stake in the company, said Rob Noble, Skinkers' chief operating officer.
Will the usual cast of Windows software vendors be leading the next-gen Windows client parade? It's more likely that a new crop of developers, including Mercedes-AMG and Allscripts Healthcare, instead, will be at the front of the Vista app pack.
Users don't buy operating systems for operating systems' sake; they buy them for the applications that run on them.
Given that truism, it's not too early to wonder about the whereabouts of Windows-Vista-optimized apps.
Microsoft will offer analysis and planning applications as an add-on to its Office suite, a move meant to steer corporate customers away from specialized business-intelligence providers.
The Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, due mid-2007, will provide a set of programs geared at helping knowledge workers to make more informed decisions.
The package, formerly code-named "Biz Sharp," will include a server and tools for analyzing data, creating "scorecards" for measuring corporate health, and planning applications.
Windows 2003 Server is a more reliable server operating system than Linux, a research firm said Monday.
According to the Yankee Group's annual server reliability survey, only Unix-based operating systems such as HP-UX and Sun Solaris 10 beat Windows on uptime. Windows 2003 Server, in fact, led the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux with nearly 20 percent more annual uptime.
On a broader note, said Yankee analyst Laura DiDio, the major server operating systems all have a "high degree of reliability," and have showed marked improvement in the last 3 to 5 years.
Users who installed Windows Vista Beta 2 got a mild surprise when they checked out the "About" box for the Vista version of Internet Explorer (IE) 7: The browser has been rebranded IE 7+. It turns out Microsoft wanted a way to differentiate the version of IE 7 in Vista from the XP/2003 version, because the Vista version includes a couple of key unique features, such as Protected Mode and parental controls. You may recall that Microsoft significantly updated IE 6 for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) but then didn't uniquely identify it, so everyone was forced to refer to it as "the version of IE 6 that's included with XP SP2." Now, we have a simpler and more obvious way to talk about the version of IE 7 that's included with Vista. Nice.
Microsoft's Live Labs has launched two security-related Web-based services, one for providing authentication and another for
connecting P-to-P (peer-to-peer) applications through network firewalls.
The services are part of Microsoft's plan to quickly deliver Web-based services to compete with rivals Google and Yahoo. Microsoft
formed Live Labs, its research arm for creating these Internet technologies, in January. Microsoft has said many of its Live
services will be connected to Windows Vista, the next version of its client OS, but has not clearly articulated a plan for
how that makes the OS more valuable to users.