Microsoft announced a major expansion of its alliance with global partner Fujitsu Limited as it tries to drive more mainstream-class Windows-based Itanium servers into the mainframe.
In a Tokyo press conference on Monday, Fujitsu Chairman Naoyuki Akikusa and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the two companies will collaborate on delivering mission critical Itanium servers as well as on platform integration services and customer support for Windows Server 2003 and next generation versions of Windows. Under the memorandum of understanding signed by the companies, Microsoft will tap Fujitsu's mainframe expertise and systems development to build advanced servers running Windows Server 2003 and future Longhorn servers.
Microsoft is returning to its policy to provide free support for service packs after leaving support for Windows XP SP1 to the PC makers, Pilla said. Nevertheless, Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc. and Gateway Inc. are also gearing up for the release of SP2 and will support their customers, spokespeople for the PC makers said.
Support directly from Microsoft is more valuable than help provided by PC vendors because it is more in-depth, said Victor Go, vice president of technology at Landmark Theatre Corp., which uses about 600 PCs running Windows.
Microsoft is expected this week to release the first beta of its Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 software development products.
The software giant also plans to announce a low-cost edition of Visual Studio to try to expand use of its flagship programming application, according to sources familiar with the company's plans. Details are expected at Microsoft's TechEd Europe conference this week in Amsterdam.
According to a Weblog from Microsoft's Visual Studio development team, the company is very close to completing the first beta for Visual Studio 2005, code-named Whidbey, and second beta of SQL Server 2005, code-named Yukon. In March, Microsoft said it needed to delay delivery of the products until next year, which had originally been expected by the end of last year. An original beta of Yukon came out late last year.
At a news conference here Monday, Microsoft's chairman said computer systems must become more secure and must be at least as reliable as essential infrastructure services like electricity and water. "That absolutely has to be done," he said.
The main solution to the problem, Gates said, is to isolate people who trying to send out malicious code.
"The Internet in a way says: Hey, these systems are connected. It's not like the mainframe, (which) was kept secure not because the code was secure but rather because only the people there in that glasshouse were actually connecting software up to it. Here, we need to build the firewalls."
In the past year, Microsoft's hefty profit included $1.1 billion in customer payments that the company won't see again. The money came with no strings attached - no commissions to be paid, no rebates to be given and no other costs necessary.
In the next year, that cash will disappear as some key contracts expire. And as much as the company expects to grow, the $1.1 billion hole is going to hurt.
That's not all Microsoft faces as it begins its new fiscal year Thursday. Executives have said the company will not increase expenses, and yearly sales are expected to grow less than 10 percent for the first time. Meanwhile, shareholders are demanding an improved bottom line, and the company's $56 billion cash hoard is coming under fire.
The meeting attended Friday afternoon by Microsoft Corp. Group Vice President Jeff Raikes was, in some ways, like many others. A group from outside the company presented Raikes and his team of executives with a series of suggestions, including one for a new product, and promised to follow up with a formal proposal outlining how they might work together in the future.
But this was no ordinary meeting.
The people making the presentation were 15 university students from around the world, brought by Microsoft to the Redmond campus for a week. Microsoft assembled the group, dubbed the Information Worker Board of the Future, to help it get a better sense for how the workplace might evolve during the next decade -- and how the company's products might need to evolve during the same time frame, as people now in their late teens and early 20s enter the professional work force.
Microsoft plans to let makers of custom devices modify the underlying code for a specialized version of the Windows operating system and distribute products running on altered versions of the program -- without sharing the results of their work with the Redmond company.
The decision, to be announced today, is highly unusual for a company that is known for carefully protecting what amount to the blueprints for some of its biggest products. Under existing programs, even the company's trusted partners are allowed only to view the Windows source code, but not to make changes for any commercial purposes.
Microsoft plans to kick off a series of improvements to its search capabilities starting in July as it looks to compete with heavyweights Google and Yahoo, Bill Gates said Monday. Microsoft's chairman told a media briefing here that the company had "several milestones with its search site" on the way.
"In July, the format of the site will change--and so will the quality of what you get--and the way it'll look is dramatically improved," Gates said. "It'll be later this year that we actually roll out what's entirely our own back-end driving the search".
The unity of the Java industry itself is being strained, according to industry observers. The past year has seen more explicit conflict among Java vendors, instead of the cohesive front needed to compete effectively against Microsoft. Also, open source and the rise of Web services have drawn developer attention away from Java.
And Sun's shaky finances and shifting product strategies are a distraction to the industry at large, which has looked to the company as the Java standard bearer.
For Sun, which is trying to revitalize its own Java business, the shifting ground in the software landscape could mean that the Java creator may ultimately have less sway in the direction of the industry.
The European Commission has temporarily suspended an order requiring Microsoft to begin to offer a version of Windows without a media player this week. Microsoft said it been notified on Sunday of the Commission's decision, which effectively gives a Luxembourg court time to sort out the case without feeling pressure to reach an immediate decision.
If the order had not been suspended, some of the European Commission's deadlines would have begun to take effect. The Commission's March 24 decision gave Microsoft 90 days to offer an operating system without the media player included and 120 days to begin sharing proprietary information with its competitors regarding its server software.