As a response to partners seeking help from Microsoft in its never-ending battle to keep customers secure, Microsoft says it has restructured the Security Solutions competency into two specializations with revised requirements.
In the process, Microsoft also sought an assist from outside its walls, partnering with two key security groups, the Information Systems Audit and Control Association and the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium ((ISC)2).
Microsoft says it has taken a "technology agnostic" approach within its Security Solutions competency, splitting it into two specializations that address technical issues and the other that looks at security policy and risk management, governance, and auditing.
Microsoft is shipping a free software add-in designed to enable retailers to transfer point-of-sale data, such as transactions and purchase orders, directly into their financial management software.
The add-in works with Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006 and either Microsoft Point of Sale or Microsoft Retail Management System to let small-business retailers integrate point-of-sale information from retail systems into Microsoft?s financial management software in order to more easily run financial reports, according to a company statement released Thursday.
Microsoft will share a part of its advertising revenues from its search engine with users, the company's chairman Bill Gates said in a panel discussion on an Indian television channel.
Gates said that search engines like Google Inc. get their revenues from advertising because people use these search engines. "Google's business model is not based on free software," Gates said. "Their business model is based on s from which they make a lot of money." But they don't share these advertising revenues with the end users who help them get the revenue, Gates said. "Google keeps all of the money with itself," he added.
Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said Wednesday that he is focused on making advertising one of the fastest-growing businesses at the software maker.
Microsoft, in talks to join with America Online to expand the reach of its MSN unit, is "closing in on" $2 billion in advertising revenue, Ballmer said, making the company third behind Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. He declined to comment on discussions with AOL parent Time Warner Inc.
"Online advertising is of keen interest to us," Ballmer said at an event for Washington, D.C.-area business leaders.
Happy New Year, Microsoft. Now, get to work! That's the holiday message from research firm Directions on Microsoft to the world's largest software vendor.
The research firm, many of whose analysts are former Microsoft product managers, took the software vendor to task with a list of the top ten challenges the company needs to meet in 2006.
Job No. 1: Get Vista into the boardroom. Directions on Microsoft said that while Vista's cool graphical effects might impress consumers, they could turn off more IT admins than they attract. Meanwhile, sales of software assurance licenses, which are prepaid upgrade agreements, were disappointing.
The Bush administration on Wednesday protested South Korea's decision to fine Microsoft roughly $32 million and order the software company to redesign portions of its Windows operating system.
"Korea's remedy goes beyond what is necessary or appropriate to protect consumers, as it requires the removal of products that consumers may prefer," J. Bruce McDonald, deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department's antitrust division, said in a statement.
Perhaps fearing that governments may line up by the dozens to take a chunk out of Microsoft's hide by wielding antitrust charges as a secondary form of taxation, the Bush administration is echoing that line. The administration argues that Microsoft is already regulated by U.S. law and has been under court scrutiny because of a 2002 settlement.
Microsoft was ordered to separate its instant messaging service from its Windows software and allow rival products on its system in South Korea after losing an antitrust case on Wednesday.
The U.S. software firm, which was also fined about $32 million, said it would appeal the decision by South Korea's Fair Trade Commission but did not plan to make good on a threat to withdraw its Windows operating system from the country.
The ruling, which resembles a 2004 European Commission decision, held Microsoft breached antitrust laws by selling a Windows version that incorporated its instant messaging software.
The next pre-release of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) 7 for Windows XP browser has been pushed into early next year, the company's IE team said in a blog posting.
According to a posting on IEBlog, the Microsoft blog for its IE team, the company will post "an updated pre-release build of IE 7 for Windows XP publicly -- no MSDN membership required -- during the first calendar quarter of 2006." The posting was written by Dean Hachamovitch, product line manager for IE at Microsoft.
In the posting, Hachamovitch said that the IE team has had numerous requests for another build of IE 7 for Windows XP, and has a new build available now for users of the internal Microsoft corporate network.
More and more software will be developed in Asia in the coming years, with China and India far outpacing the number of computer science graduates the U.S. produces each year, Microsoft's chief executive officer said Wednesday.
The U.S. is a "distant third" to China and India in annual computer science graduates, said Steve Ballmer, repeating concerns he and other Microsoft executives have made in recent years. Ballmer didn't give specific numbers while speaking to a group of about 500 technology company executives in Washington, D.C., but varying estimates have China and India producing tens of thousands more computer science graduates each year than about 25,000 annually in the U.S.
Over the coming year Microsoft will release more innovations into the marketplace than it ever has before, CEO Steve Ballmer said Wednesday.
Addressing a gathering of government contractors in Washington, D.C., Ballmer said that the Redmond, Wash., company will release a host of new offerings over the next 12 months, including an accounting product for very small businesses.
Microsoft's three largest customers are the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force, and the company has 500 employees in the capital. It partners with six other software vendors to provide products to defense contractors.