One week after Microsoft announced the Microsoft Office Integration Bridge Framework, promising better integration between Office and other applications, particularly Microsoft CRM, the company on Tuesday announced an update to MS CRM designed to take advantage of the deeper Office integration.
The feature pack announced Tuesday will be added to the 1.2 release of MS CRM and will ship in August. The prebuilt Office integration will allow users to remain in Microsoft Office 2003 applications to create and track customer communications, escalate customer-service cases and look up customer data, Microsoft Corp. officials said.
Integrated desktop and Internet search engines might be one of Longhorn's key features but Microsoft is apparently preparing a standalone search tool that will debut well before Longhorn does. The company is hatching the plans for this standalone search product, called MSN Search, through its MSN division; the product will incorporate email, database, file-system, and Internet searching. "As far as the consumer is concerned, [MSN Search will] be an end-to-end system for searching across any data type," Microsoft Corporate Vice President Yusuf Mehdi said during a speech at the Goldman Sachs Fifth Annual Internet Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, this week. "I think it's fair to say that we will tackle all of the things that you expect, including PC search, as part of the MSN effort." A beta version is expected this summer, and the final release will ship next year, Mehdi said.
Microsoft outlined the current state of its security initiatives Thursday during a presentation at the company's Silicon Valley campus, detailing the multifaceted strategy being hatched in Redmond.
n providing specifics on everything from Windows XP Service Pack 2 to remote-authentication practices, two high-ranking executives discussed how Microsoft is implementing the protections inside the company, as well as what users can expect over the next several months.
I received email from Ditto about new Beta Program for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005, here are the details.
We are happy to announce that you have been approved for the Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 Beta Program!
Live Communications Server 2005 is a next generation enterprise instant messaging and presence awareness server. Live Communications Server is a key part of the Microsoft real-time collaboration platform and supports the Microsoft vision of seamlessly connecting people, information and business processes in real-time to increase productivity and enable better decisions faster.
Live Communications Server 2005 builds on the foundation of the current version, Live Communications Server 2003, which provides a standards-based enterprise IM solution and an extensible real-time collaboration platform. Foundation elements include presence, encrypted IM, Microsoft Office System integration and standards-based architecture.
We will be providing support for this beta program through beta.microsoft.com and private internet newsgroups. Beta.microsoft.com is the Microsoft technical beta Web community where you can:
- Download the beta release
- Create your newsgroup password
- Report bugs online
- View status of your bugs
- Receive up-to-date program information and downloads
- Update your contact information
- Obtain general beta testing guidelines and information
To access beta.microsoft.com, go to http://beta.microsoft.com. Sign in using your Microsoft Passport account. Beta participation is a personal invitation for you only, so please do not share your Passport or your access to beta.microsoft.com with others.
NOTE: Please wait 24 hours from the time you receive this e-mail before trying to access beta.microsoft.com. Instructions for accessing the private newsgroups will be sent when the beta software is released.
We are very close to the beta release, and we will send you an update when the beta software is available on Beta Place. Microsoft private newsgroups will be available for technical support when the beta software is released.
Before you continue, it is important to understand the beta release of any product will not display the stability of a shipped Microsoft product. You may encounter problems with Microsoft Live Communications Server that could possibly result in a loss or destruction of data. This release is not appropriate for production use, and we suggest that you back up your existing data before you install and run this software.
If you need assistance, please send e-mail to ******@microsoft.com.
Thank you for participating in this beta program. We look forward to your valuable feedback!
The Live Communications Server Team
Having faced high-profile antitrust cases in both the U.S. and European Union (E.U.), Microsoft Corp. may not immediately spring to mind as governments' favored friend. So it is perhaps not surprising that the software giant has waged a quiet campaign in recent months to change its image from that of monopolist to "good corporate citizen."
Microsoft has been creating a new public sector organization charged with engaging and influencing governments' technology buying decisions and has begun appointing regional and national chief technology officers (CTOs) to head its efforts. It broke out the public sector as one of its key business verticals early this year, and has ramped up investment in education, training, and community projects.
Microsoft plans to spend about $300 million to support the launch of Windows XP Service Pack 2 (XP SP2), company officials said. The security-centric XP update, which enjoyed top billing at this week's TechEd conference, will be available as a "critical" download via Microsoft's Windows Update feature and will ship with all new PCs as part of an agreement with OEMs and computer retailers.
In an interview with internetnews.com, Tony Goodhew, product manager in Microsoft's Developer Group, said a chunk of the $300 million campaign will be spent working with OEMs to get the service pack installed on new PCs. "We'll be working with retailers like CompUSA and BestBuy to have SP2 installed on all new machines, even those that were shipped to the stores without the upgrade," he said.
Microsoft used its TechEd conference to lay out some of the features planned for the next version of Windows Server 2003, code-named "R2."
Scheduled for release sometime next year, R2 is a new version of the server that rolls in some of the feature packs that Microsoft released for Windows Server 2003. Microsoft has acknowledged that finding and loading feature packs, such as the heavily touted Windows SharePoint Services, has been confusing and annoying for customers. At the same time, the interim release of the server eases the pressure on Microsoft, which doesn't plan to ship its "Longhorn" generation of Windows server until 2007.
Microsoft on Wednesday released the latest in a series of studies it has commissioned that show Windows to be as cheap or cheaper than Linux as part of its "Get the Facts" campaign. The latest study, conducted by BearingPoint, found that even looking at only the "hard costs" of licensing and support, Windows Server 2003 was often cheaper than Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell/SUSE Linux.
"While the acquisition costs associated with licensing and support should be evaluated, this study has found after comparing the cumulative costs within medium and enterprise scenarios over a five year period that those costs do not significantly differentiate Windows Server 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 or Novell/SUSE Linux 8," BearingPoint said in the conclusion of its report.
The effort to get commuters out of their cars and into buses or van pools suffered a setback recently when Microsoft told its roughly 5,500 Seattle-area contract employees that it would no longer provide free FlexPasses.
Full-time regular Microsoft employees will continue to be eligible to receive for free the $72 per month FlexPasses, which are used mostly to ride the bus but also for van pools and Sounder rail service.
Microsoft will soon release technology that takes search functions far beyond the Internet, allowing users to pore through e-mail, personal computers and even big databases to find the information they want, a top executive said yesterday.
The system being developed by Microsoft's MSN online division "will, as far as the consumer is concerned, be an end-to-end system for searching across any data type," Yusuf Mehdi, head of Microsoft's MSN division, told analysts at a Goldman Sachs Internet conference in Las Vegas yesterday. The speech was broadcast over the Internet.