Several hundred million here, more than a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about a real effort by Microsoft to settle some of its toughest legal disputes.
The Redmond company yesterday agreed to pay $440 million in a licensing deal that resolves a patent dispute with InterTrust Technologies Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif. The agreement comes 10 days after Microsoft reached a $1.6 billion settlement with Sun Microsystems Inc. over antitrust and patent claims.
Microsoft has transferred two top executives to its security business unit, the latest in a series of shifts designed to put more resources into battling viruses and other threats. The company has shifted Gordon Mangione, head of Microsoft's SQL Server unit, to a new role as corporate vice president of security products. In his new position, Mangione will be responsible for the development and support of Microsoft security products, including the company's ISA Server, a product that acts as an intermediary between the Internet and a company's internal network.
A South Korean Internet portal company filed an antitrust lawsuit Monday against Microsoft, alleging the U.S. computer software giant violated trade regulations by tying instant messenger software to its Windows operating system.
Daum Communications said it was seeking 10 billion won (or $8.7 million) in damages it claimed resulted from Microsoft's Windows XP, which includes the instant messaging system MSN Messenger.
The Microsoft program known as WiX isn't a particularly large piece of software. It would probably never be the subject of a splashy advertising campaign. In fact, most computer users wouldn't even know what to do with it.
The big fuss resulted largely from Microsoft's reputation for closely guarding source code, the secret recipes behind programs that generate huge profits for the company. But more than that, Microsoft is widely viewed as the open-source community's archrival, and the company's executives are renowned for their past criticism of the open-source model.
Look at the deal in another context, Schwartz said. Consider the "competitive dynamics" of the technology industry and "who's not mentioned in the press release," he said. He didn't name names, but the obvious reference was to IBM and, to a lesser degree, Hewlett-Packard. Both are in the big-systems market, and they can't be happy about the idea of a special relationship between Microsoft and Sun going forward. IBM's position is especially interesting here. It has made the use of Linux and free software a core element of its strategy - in a real sense aiming at both Microsoft and Sun.
Microsoft is growing up. At least that's what CEO Steve Ballmer wants current and potential customers to know. After years of serving the enterprise, Microsoft is now hoping to play a new role-as a trusted and responsible partner to the IT industry.
"Somebody asked me the other day what phase of life we were now at-old and stodgy?" the 48-year-old Ballmer told eWEEK editors in an interview here last week. "And I said no. We have come out of our adolescence and are now in our adult prime. We have come out of that jerky, adolescent, awkward phase. That's kind of how I might characterize where I feel like we are trying to be now relative to our customers."
On April 2, Microsoft Corp. President and CEO Steve Ballmer and Sun Microsystems Inc. Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy announced a major settlement to end Sun's lawsuits and cross-license patented technologies. Last week, Ballmer met with eWEEK Editor in Chief Eric Lundquist, Executive Editor Stan Gibson and Senior Editor Peter Galli on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash., to explain how Microsoft's agreement with the Santa Clara, Calif., company-which cost Microsoft close to $2 billion-will enable the company to drive deeper into the enterprise.
A practical symbol of Microsoft's commitment to enterprise customers is the Enterprise Engineering Center on the Microsoft campus here. Microsoft created the EEC two years ago as a way to let large customers test products in conditions that can simulate their own corporate environments. As an added benefit, during tests, Microsoft throws up a net, as it were, that catches software bugs before they're burned into the shipping product.
Months of customer complaints have finally had an effect on Microsoft: This week, the software giant acknowledged that it will deliver its next major Windows version on a set schedule, ending years of vague delivery times and glacial, research-like development. The slow move to a concrete timetable started last month when Microsoft chairman Bill Gates--who stepped down as CEO specifically to have a more hands-on role with Longhorn--said that conjectures about a 2006 release for the product were "valid." This week, however, internal documentation from the company, corroborated by Microsoft representatives, pins the Longhorn release date more succinctly during "the first half of 2006." And the oft-delayed Beta 1 release--originally due in late summer 2005--will ship in mid-February 2005, according to documentation I've seen.
There must be something in the air.
Microsoft and InterTrust said Monday they have settled all outstanding patent litigation between the two companies. Microsoft will pay InterTrust a one-time payment of $440 million, Microsoft said early Monday. At issue in the three-year-old suit was how software manages the use and security of digital music and video.
The original complaint, filed in April 2001 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleged Microsoft products, including Windows and the Windows Media Player, violated InterTrust patents. That suit was expanded in June of that year when InterTrust was awarded a new patent.