Microsoft took the unusual step Thursday of making public its formal response to European Union charges
that it was failing to comply with a 2004 antitrust ruling.
The response, which companies usually keep confidential, was filed on Feb.
15 as the EU threatened the Redmond, Wash., software company with daily fines of $2.38 million.
Microsoft said it believed it was in full compliance with the technical documentation EU regulators had demanded in 2004 to help rival software firms develop products that worked with Windows servers.
Microsoft has spent billions of dollars in recent years to secure its software. Now it's payback time.
Until recently, security was just something that the software company got hammered on--a perennial headache, with no upside. But now, four years after Chairman Bill Gates launched his Trustworthy Computing push, Microsoft is starting to see security as a potential selling point.
Last month, Windows chief Jim Allchin pointed to enhanced security as the top reason customers should move to Vista, the update to the operating system due this year. The software maker estimates that a third of its engineering time for the new Windows was spent on protective measures.
Before the end of the year, Microsoft plans to roll out 34 suites, programs, servers, services and tools that will form its new 2007 Microsoft Office system family of products, previously known as Office 12.
Retail pricing for the product remains unchanged from Office 2003, John Cairns, senior director of licensing and pricing in Microsoft's Information Worker division, told eWEEK.
Asked about the large number of offerings, Cairns said customers had been telling Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., about the changing nature of their work and their new and diverse needs. "We believe these offerings will provide the flexibility customers need," he said.
As expected, Microsoft announced Wednesday that it is shipping the first feature-complete test release of Windows Vista -- this one aimed at giving enterprise customers a chance to run it through rigorous testing, especially for compatibility with existing corporate applications.
The latest community technology preview, referred to as the "enterprise CTP," will be followed by one more next quarter, which will take the product all the way up through the end of what Microsoft has referred to as the Beta 2 phase, company officials said in a briefing call with members of the press.
Some of Microsoft's biggest rivals lodged a new complaint with the European Commission Wednesday over its Office applications suite and other, upcoming products, arguing that the company's business practices are shutting out competitors.
A coalition called the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, which includes vendors such as IBM, Nokia, Oracle, RealNetworks, and Red Hat, announced that it had made a formal complaint to the Commission over a "range of products present and future." The reference to future products is understood to be Microsoft's Vista desktop operating system, due for release later this year.
Microsoft's Windows edged out Unix in 2005 as the best-selling server operating system, research firm IDC said Wednesday, marking the first time Unix hasn't held the top spot in more than a decade.
Windows servers accounted for $17.7 billion in revenues last year, the Framingham, Mass.-based research company said, while Unix-powered servers took in $17.5 billion.
The trend of Microsoft besting Unix appears to be accelerating, noted IDC. Windows server sales climbed 4.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2005, year-over-year, while Unix server revenues dropped 5 percent. Linux, meanwhile, posted double-digit year-over-year growth: fourth quarter 2005's numbers were 20.8 percent higher than 2004's.
Confirming rumors that have been making the rounds for the past several weeks, Sony this week admitted that it might have to delay its next-generation PlayStation 3 video game console from the second quarter of 2006 to the end of the year. According to the company, the final specifications and availability of leading edge PS3 components, such as its Blu-Ray optical drive and graphics circuitry, could force the delay.
"We're aiming for spring, but we haven't announced specific regions," a Sony spokesperson said Tuesday, referring to the fact that the company will likely roll out the PS3 in Japan first, followed by North America three to six months later. "We're waiting for [component specifications to be ratified] until the last possible minute, but the launch could be pushed back if they're not decided soon."
Microsoft this week is expected to release another build of its Windows Vista OS, one that should be feature-complete according to a plan laid out by Jim Allchin, co-president of the Platforms, Products & Services Division, in January.
The Windows Vista team has scheduled a conference call Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. Pacific Standard Time to discuss Windows Vista development. Microsoft began updating the press about the progress of the OS in late November, updates that coincide with Microsoft's release of a Windows Vista Community Test Preview, or interim build.
Microsoft on Tuesday released the first beta of System Management Server R2 and said the software would be generally available in May.
The release comes a few weeks after Microsoft released Service Pack 2 for SMS 2003, which is required to run the new SMS R2 software.
SMS R2 includes two prominent features, a new catalog service that will let users download third-party patches directly into SMS and a new vulnerability-scanning engine to discover misconfigured software.
SMS is one of two cornerstone tools Microsoft is developing under the System Center brand name. The other is Microsoft Operations Manager, which will get an R2 update later this year. Microsoft also plans to flesh out its System Center product family and revamp the System Center roadmap at its annual Management Summit in April.
Taking the lessons learned from its joint Mendocino development project with SAP in-house, Microsoft announced on Feb. 20 its namesake Dynamics Snap initiative.
The initiative consists of mini-functionality components culled from Microsoft's Dynamics ERP software that can be snapped into Office and utilized from that environment.
Mendocino, due this year, looks to tie SAP's ERP process into Microsoft's Office and Outlook. Similarly, Dynamics Snap brings in functionality from Microsoft's own Dynamics (CRM 3.0 and Ax 3.0, in this case) into Office.