Microsoft has scheduled four Webcasts starting at midnight on Sept. 15 to unveil the "Next Generation of Software Assurance."
Since then the benefits have been adjusted further. As of now, Software Assurance brings 14 benefits. They are new version rights, spread payment options for the underlying software, home-use rights for Office System products, employee discounts on Microsoft's productivity and consumer products, TechNet Plus subscriptions for server software, Problem Resolution Support for servers, Extended Lifecycle Hotfix Support for servers, complimentary cold backup server licenses, Corporate Error Reporting, Windows source code access for internal development and support (only for customers licensing 1,500 or more desktops), TechNet Online Concierge Chat, eLearning and training vouchers for desktop software.
The Beta 1 version of BizTalk Server 2006 is now available from Microsoft Beta Place, the company said this week.
Because of its tight integration with SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005, BizTalk Server 2006 will launch at the same Nov. 7 event as those products. However, Microsoft said on Tuesday that the release to manufacturing of BizTalk Server 2006 won't occur until the first quarter of 2006.
Microsoft defines BizTalk Server as software for automating and managing complex business processes that span applications, trading partners, employees and legacy systems within and across organizational boundaries.
Microsoft helped sustain Washington's software sector during the dark days of the technology bust, continuing to add employees every year, albeit at a slower pace than before.
But now, the rest of the state's software industry is returning to growth mode, as well.
"I though it was actually fairly easy," Burkhart said of the job search. He got the job with Google even before graduating.
The trend isn't isolated to Washington state. Data from the U.S. Department of Commerce show a similar rebound in information technology jobs nationally, starting in 2002.
Microsoft documents concerning a former executive who went to rival Google can't be sealed but deserve protection because they contain trade secrets, a judge ruled yesterday.
King County Superior Court Judge Steven Gonzalez edited two documents that Microsoft regards as confidential, then released them in a much-abbreviated form.
"The court has determined, after weighing the public's right to access against Microsoft's right to protect trade secrets, that sealing in their entirety is not the least restrictive alternative," Gonzalez wrote.
Microsoft quietly has formed a new Server and Tools sub-unit, known as the Connected Systems Division (CSD), designed to bring together a variety of Microsoft Web services, identity-management and other middleware products under common management. Microsoft officials briefed industry analysts on the creation of CSD late last week.
CSD will unify Microsoft's Distributed Systems Group (DSG) and the Business Process/Integration Division (BPID). The DSG oversees the Windows Communication Foundation (code-named "Indigo"), Web Services Enhancements (WSE), InfoCard, MSMQ, Active Directory and Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS). BPID includes BizTalk Server, Host Integration Server, Commerce Server, RFID, Industry Standard Accelerators and Windows Workflow Services (code-named "Windows OE").
iWay Software is helping Microsoft users better interoperate with third-party applications. The New York-based company, which has a stable of about 280 prebuilt adapters to back-end systems, announced Tuesday it's selling the source code and intellectual property from eight of its adapters to Microsoft.
The handful of .NET-based adapters Microsoft is acquiring essentially enable the company's BizTalk Server to communicate with applications from a variety of ERP (enterprise resource planning) and integration vendors, including PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards ERP applications (both companies are now owned by Oracle); Oracle applications and databases; Siebel Systems's applications; and Tibco Software's EMS, Rendezvous and Clarify integration applications.
As I first reported in "The Road to Windows Longhorn 2005" showcase on the SuperSite for Windows a few months ago, Microsoft plans to ship one or more premium editions of Windows Vista--one for home users (think Media Center) and one for businesses (think Tablet PC). These editions would be in addition to those that replace Windows XP Home Edition and XP Professional Edition. This week, Microsoft confirmed that it's working on premium Vista editions and revealed that it will likely ship an Office 12 Premium Edition product as well. The goal, apparently, is to cash in on those people who are willing to pay more to get more, a slight detour from the company's stated policy of providing more value for less.
Bill Gates will kick off the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2005 with a keynote on Sept. 13, Microsoft announced over the weekend. The presence of Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, lends weight to this version of the show, which is Microsoft's key event for developers. The show will be held in Los Angeles, the site of the previous PDC in 2003. Microsoft did not hold the event last year.
Jim Allchin, group vice president for platforms, will follow Gates with a keynote on the opening day of the conference. The PDC05 speaker lineup for Wednesday, Sept. 14, includes Eric Rudder, senior vice president for servers and tools, and Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president for Office.
The speech recognition technologies Microsoft is developing around Microsoft Speech Server will be integrated into a future version of Microsoft Exchange Server, the company announced Tuesday at a speech technology conference in New York.
Microsoft portrays the logical move as part of a continued effort to make speech mainstream. By moving the technology into Exchange, Microsoft will shepherd speech technology into the horizontal market of unified messaging. Currently, Microsoft's speech technology efforts have been largely vertical, focusing on call centers and interactive voice response markets.
Although it won't fix most of its CSS-related bugs until Beta 2, Microsoft is going public with what it expects to deliver, standards-wise, by the time Internet Explorer 7.0 ships. Acid2 test compliance isn't on the short list.
After remaining mum for months over the extent to which it plans to support the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) standard with its forthcoming Internet Explorer (IE) 7.0 browser, Microsoft has gone public with its plans. Late last week, Internet Explorer lead program manager Chris Wilson posted to his blog a list of fixes, many of them CSS-related, that Microsoft is planning for IE 7.0.