Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer urged Asian government leaders not to take sides in the Linux versus Windows debate. Ballmer pointed out that licensing costs may be only a small percentage of the total cost of ownership of a piece of software. "You've got to install it, you've got to deploy it, you've got to develop for it, you've got to manage it, you've got to create and buy applications from it, and all of those costs are probably about 90 percent of the total cost," he said.
Ballmer said governments should remain neutral and evaluate software on its own merits. "Taking a position [on] open source versus commercial software is almost like taking a position on which economic model for society is better," he said.
The U.S. Air Force is drafting Microsoft to help simplify its networks and software contracts, which could improve its computer security and deliver savings of $100 million.
The military agency is consolidating its 38 software contracts and nine support contracts with the company into two all-encompassing, agencywide agreements, according to a statement seen by CNET News.com. The move is part of the "One Air Force, One Network" strategy that the Air Force plans to announce Friday. An Air Force representative confirmed many details of the announcement, including that it is expected to save the agency $100 million over six years.
Microsoft will announce the release date of the next version of its Exchange Server in the first half of 2005, but until the upgrade arrives users can expect more management tools for existing versions, a company executive said this week. Due to the mission critical nature of Exchange, Microsoft will continue to make large investments in providing tools for the current and previous versions, said Exchange Server Senior Director Kim Akers, interviewed at the company's IT Forum in Copenhagen on Wednesday.
"We want to give customers the capabilities they need now instead of just saying 'it's coming in the future,'" Akers said.
Microsoft, under pressure to add new features to Internet Explorer, said it might do so by way of the browser's add-on mechanism. The company has been steadfast in its insistence that it won't issue a new standalone IE, which saw its last major upgrade in August 2001. After sustaining a series of security crises with IE, Microsoft issued a major upgrade with the Windows XP Service Pack 2. But that IE update is available only to people who use Windows XP--about half the Windows world.
Sun Microsystems and Microsoft plan to share details of their cooperation in December, Sun CEO Scott McNealy said on Monday. The rivals signed a partnership in April to share patents and collaborate on getting each other's software to work better together.
Sun's chief technology officer, Greg Papadopoulos, and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates will share collaboration plans next month. McNealy and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer might elaborate next quarter, McNealy said. Initial work involves interoperability for each company's authentication software, McNealy said. "Bringing those two together in a circle of trust, compatible, single sign-on kind of way will be a huge breakthrough," he said.
Microsoft has extended its partnership with Yahoo to deliver sponsored search results on its U.S. and international MSN sites, despite the software maker's recent declarations that it intends to be a major force in the search market. Microsoft has extended until June 2006 its agreement with Yahoo subsidiary Overture Services Inc. to deliver the pay-for-performance results, it said Thursday.
The agreement was initially undertaken in 2001 and was due to expire in June 2005, an Overture spokeswoman said. There has been no changes to the terms of the contract, the spokeswoman said. Financial details were not disclosed.
Banks are looking to bring down the number of phishing attacks by adopting two-factor authentication, which would require people to produce two forms of identification, Microsoft said on Tuesday.
The software giant's chief security strategist, Scott Charney, said that companies had failed to adopt the technology as fast as he would have liked.
"We haven't had as much adoption as you would hope for," Charney said at the Microsoft IT Forum in Copenhagen. "A lot of solutions for two-factor authentication are for enterprise spaces. If you get two-factor authentication to the consumer level, you reduce the phishing threat."
Microsoft signed an agreement Wednesday with UNESCO to promote the use of information technology in education in developing nations and boost the number of languages in which its applications are offered.
Under the agreement, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization will support the software maker's efforts to expand the number of languages featured in its Local Language Program. That initiative, launched earlier this year, is designed to provide desktop software and tools in local languages by collaborating with governments and universities.
Microsoft announced Wednesday that it plans to use text-to-speech technology from ScanSoft in its server application product lines. The expanded deal covers the full portfolio of ScanSoft products as well as its services and custom voice program, the companies said. ScanSoft's text-to-speech software will be featured in a range of Microsoft server products, beginning with Speech Server 2004. The text-to-speech software is designed to convert textual information such as account balances and billing addresses into speech.
Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, and France's Dassault Systemes have forged a global, 5-year strategic alliance to deliver Dassault's 3D software to firms using the Microsoft software platform.
Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates, in Paris to announce the deal, said on Wednesday the new alliance was Microsoft's second-biggest cooperation deal after that with German software maker SAP.
Dassault Systemes' software allows companies to simulate products in 3D, from conception to maintenance, in what is known in the industry as product lifecycle management (PLM).