Microsoft plans a broader distribution of the beta of its Windows XP Service Pack 2 and remains on schedule for shipping final code in the first half of this year -- but has pushed back the release of its Software Update Services 2.0 until the second half of 2004. The progress report was issued Tuesday by Mike Nash, corporate vice president of the Security Business and Technology Unit, during his monthly Webcast on security matters.
Nash said he and a select number of developers have been working since November on the new security features of Windows XP Service Pack 2. Soon a "broader" number of testers will have access to the beta. "Not everyone can get [the beta version]," said Nash, acknowledging growing customer demand to test in-house the Windows XP security update. "Over time, we're broadening the beta -- and very shortly."
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) last month issued a preliminary finding that appeared to tip the closely watched case in Microsoft's favor: A patent licensed by Eolas Technologies at the heart of a $521 million infringement verdict against the software giant may have been wrongly granted, the agency acknowledged.
Microsoft was quick to tout the findings as a victory--an outcome that would save it a considerable amount of money and allow it to avoid rewriting portions of its Internet Explorer browser. Standards body the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has joined Microsoft's side, arguing that a loss for the company would wreak havoc with millions of Web pages.
In its U.S. District Court of Northern California filings, Microsoft seeks to gain additional protection for "highly sensitive" business documents and information that it submitted to the Department of Justice and to outside attorneys for Oracle.
The company is seeking to prevent Oracle's in-house attorneys from reviewing the most highly confidential material of the information it has provided. It also wants to control access for outside experts and others to confidential material.
To do this, Microsoft has asked the court to put more restrictions on a protective order. The order as it stands allows Oracle's outside counsel and two of its in-house attorneys, and their staffs, to have access to all documents in the case.
Security concerns are slowing things down at Microsoft, but the company is still chugging along with its more ambitious projects including Windows Longhorn, a company executive said on Tuesday. The need to make its current software more resilient to attack is part of the reason that several projects have fallen behind schedule, Senior Vice President Bob Muglia said in an interview.
At the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas this week, the Redmond, Wash., software giant is expected to show off a brand-new management tool. Code-named Indy, the new management product is a capacity-planning and performance-modeling tool. Indy simulates an enterprise datacenter by modeling a customer's hardware, software and server systems.
Indy was developed by Microsoft Research and is now being commercialized by Microsoft's enterprise management division, sources close to the company said. So far, there is no public information on when Microsoft intends to deliver this technology to its customers.
Microsoft executives on Tuesday spent a lot of time talking up the Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), which is the company's vision and technology roadmap for reducing the cost of managing and securing enterprise systems.
Bob Muglia, the senior vice president of Microsoft's Windows Server Division, told the hundreds of delegates at its annual Microsoft Management Summit here on Tuesday that management was at the center of everything it did, and that the Redmond, Wash. software firm was committed to making management an intrinsic capability built in across its platform and solutions.
Microsoft's chief executive met the European Union competition czar on Tuesday in a dramatic final bid to settle a landmark antitrust case, eight days before Brussels was set to rule against the U.S. software giant.
Disclosing no details after the surprise talks between Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Chief Counsel Brad Smith and EU Competition Commissioner Mario Monti, both sides said only that the dialogue would continue.
If Ballmer and Smith can convince Monti to settle the case, there would be no legal finding against the company. Twice before, in 1994 and 1997, the Commission settled charges against Microsoft without a formal ruling. The decision may be Monti's toughest in five years as the EU's top competition regulator.
If he settles, Monti would avoid the certainty of a Microsoft challenge in European courts which have overturned several of his department's rulings in the last two years.
At VSLive next week, Microsoft will release Preview 2, or the second alpha version of the Visual Studio 2005, code-named Whidbey, CRN has learned.
While Microsoft acknowledged that the release date for the newly named Visual Studio 2005 has slipped until early next year, the software giant also is readying the first beta of Visual Studio 2005 for release at Tech Ed 2004 in May, sources close to the company said. The first alpha preview of Whidbey was handed out at the company's Professional Developer's Conference in Los Angeles last October.
A Microsoft official Monday questioned how the software industry could survive if users are getting software for free through open source. For-profit software companies will struggle for a business model against free software, said the official, Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Jim Gray. He served on a panel pertaining to software trends, XML, Web services and grids at the Software Development Conference & Expo West 2004 show here on Monday evening.
"The thing I'm puzzled by is how there will be a software industry if there's open source," Gray said, disagreeing with a fellow panelist over the impacts of open source.
Microsoft improperly overcharged for licenses for its Windows operating system and two other popular programs, a lawyer said yesterday as the first class-action, antitrust trial in a state court opened against the company.
Microsoft has reached settlements in nine states and Washington, D.C., totaling $1.5 billion, including $1.1 billion in California. Cases were dismissed in 16 states.
Aeschbacher declined to comment on whether there were any ongoing settlement talks in the Minnesota trial, which is expected to last 15 weeks.