WinInsider

At IT Forum in Barcelona on Tuesday, Microsoft announced the results of a study it commissioned which concludes that a foundational design problem in Linux prevents that system from being as reliable as Windows in real-world scenarios. Stung by criticisms of past studies, Microsoft commissioned the highly regarded Security Innovations (SI) for this particular study, which focused on e-commerce Web applications. However, Microsoft and SI maintain that the problems with Linux would no doubt manifest themselves in virtually any scenario. And now, Microsoft is reaching out to Linux makers such as Novell and Red Hat in order to commission future studies comparing Windows and Linux.

Microsoft Thursday expanded the scope of its anti-phishing Internet software by announcing agreements with independent data providers Cyota Inc., Internet Identity, and MarkMonitor Inc., to supply round-the-clock information about confirmed and suspected phishing Web sites.

Real-time information about illicit Web sites collected by these three companieswho all developed their software on Microsoft .Net platformswill be added into the overall data bank started earlier this year by Microsoft and its first anti-phishing partner, WholeSecurity Inc.

Microsoft is in search of a new leader for its Microsoft Business Solutions group as Doug Burgum, senior vice president of the group, is assuming a new evangelism role in the company, Microsoft said Thursday.

Burgum is now chairman of Microsoft Business Solutions, a newly created position. Burgum will continue to report to Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division.

Microsoft is formally seeking an executive to take Burgum's former position, a role that also will report to Raikes. Burgum will continue to lead the MBS business through the transition and Orlando Ayala will remain chief operating officer of MBS and senior vice president of the Worldwide Small and Midmarket Solutions and Partners group.

Wednesday night, Microsoft announced that it had shipped the Beta 1 version of its next office productivity suite, currently called Office 12, to beta testers. Office 12 Beta 1 is a closed beta, open only to technical beta testers and partners, according to the company. At the Professional Developers Conference 2005 in September, however, Microsoft had promised to open up the Office 12 beta to the public. That public release will now occur in early 2006 with the release of Beta 2, Microsoft says.

Microsoft's CEO predicts the company will wipe out its enterprise tools competition without breaking a sweat. And watch for more from Microsoft on the software-as-a-service and Web tools fronts, too.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke with eWEEK senior editor Darryl K. Taft last week after his keynote speech during which Microsoft officially launched Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk 2006. The interview was two days before Microsoft released internal memos about the sea change the company was going through in its effort to attack the world of services. Ballmer, however, discussed that issue and a lot more.

Microsoft has seen the future and it is 64-bits. That's the message coming out of the company's European IT Forum 2005 this week in Barcelona, Spain.

Company executives revealed that the next major release of several key server products will only run on 64-bit processors from Intel and AMD. High on the list, the next release of Exchange Server -- currently codenamed Exchange 12 -- which is due out in 2006, according to Samm DiStasio, a director in the Windows server group.

"A lot of what we do in the server business [centers] around reducing complexity," says DiStasio. "[64-bits] does affect scalability in terms of memory addressing but there?s also a security component of that."

A new Microsoft Web site, The Working Network, seeks to become a one-stop shop for encouraging users to experiment with tagging, social bookmarking and RSS feeds.

At this week's IT Forum in Barcelona, Microsoft is expected to take the wraps off a new Web site aimed at making social-networking technologies more useful to IT professionals.

The objective of the new Microsoft site, known as "The Working Network," is to encourage Microsoft IT pros to "review the site (some of our tools, third-party services, our content) and use what works for you to become better informed, better connected, and have more free timeno kidding."

Microsoft Wednesday edged one step closer to its vision of offering a complete home digital entertainment system through PCs running Windows XP Media Center Edition OS. The company revealed a deal with a cable television consortium that will allow PC vendors to offer digital-cable-ready Windows Media Center PCs by next December.

Microsoft has been working with Cable Television Laboratories Inc., a nonprofit cable-research consortium, for two years and now the technology partners have developed technology specifications for adding support for a CableCARD module on Windows Media Center PCs, said Justin Hutchinson, group product manager, Windows Client Division at Microsoft.

Microsoft said in a regulatory filing Monday that it had moved its chief accountant, J. Scott Di Valerio, to a sales and marketing job.

Di Valerio will keep his accounting duties while taking on the job of vice president for original-equipment manufacturer sales and marketing, the company said. It said Di Valerio took on the new role Nov. 7.

Microsoft said it is "actively pursuing a replacement" for Di Valerio as the company's principal accounting officer. Di Valerio began at Microsoft as vice president and controller in April 2003. Before joining the company, he was an executive in the controller's office at Walt Disney Co. for two years and chief financial officer at Mindwave Software Inc. for five months. He also worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

Microsoft announced Tuesday the first iteration of its next-generation ERP suite, Dynamics GP 9.0, that brings roles-based user interfacesand a growing integration across Microsoft's infrastructureto Windows, SharePoint Services portal and Visual Studio.

In addition to roles-based user interfaces, the GP 9.0 applications take on an Office look and feel, capitalizing on the familiarityand ubiquityof Microsoft's Outlook e-mail software.

The GP 9.0 release is the first product installment in the company's Dynamics road map, which looks to bring all four of Microsoft's ERP suites into a single code base that sits on top of Microsoft's .Net platform. Each of the suites, Great Plainsnow GPAxapta, Solomon and Navision, has been renamed under the Dynamics umbrella.