Look who is crawling back on their knees, asking for help? Microsoft's response should be; hit the road Oracle.
Oracle on Tuesday refuted reports that it had enlisted Microsoft's help for its defense against the Department of Justice's antitrust lawsuit. The DoJ is concerned about limiting competition in the enterprise applications market if Oracle's $9.4 billion bid to buy PeopleSoft goes through.
Oracle spokeswoman Jennifer Glass said the Redwood Shores, Calif., company has considered calling on Microsoft since June, when it announced its interest in PeopleSoft, but no decision has been reached.
But Redmond has no plans to patch pre-2002 versions of its developer tools so that they will work with Windows XP SP2. Microsoft is planning to "service" its 2002 and 2003 versions of the .Net Framework and Visual Studio tool suite in order to insure they will work properly with Windows XP Service Pack (SP) 2. But versions of the .Net Framework and Visual Studio suite that predate 2002 won't be upgraded, a company spokesman said, as they lack a number of security enhancements needed by SP2.
Now known as MapPoint Location Server, Microsoft's newest server product integrates location data into business and consumer applications. Microsoft's presence server - MapPoint Location Server - is looking like it will launch finally at the DevCon show in San Francisco in March.
MapPoint Location Server has undergone at least two name changes in the past year and a half. Last summer, Microsoft rechristened the product, which originally was known as Microsoft Enterprise Location Server (MELS), as Microsoft Location Server (MLS). At that time, Microsoft expanded the beta program for the product and said it would ship by year-end 2003.
With the introduction Tuesday of BizTalk Server 2004, Microsoft is delivering a more complete package of business integration software that will allow for faster and less costly implementations, two of Microsoft's system integrator partners said.
BizTalk Server 2004, the upgrade to BizTalk Server 2002, is designed to help users integrate applications and automate business processes. It competes with products from vendors including IBM, webMethods, Tibco Software, SeeBeyond Technology, and BEA Systems.
The most important enhancements to BizTalk Server 2004 are improved scalability, the addition of a business rules engine and integration of the development environment into Visual Studio .NET, according to representatives of Sapient and Avanade, which both offer BizTalk Server implementation services.
A new version of Office could be closer than expected if Microsoft decides to release an interim version of its Windows operating system before the debut of Longhorn. Microsoft's Office team is closely following a project named "Windows XP Reloaded" on the Windows side of the company, a Microsoft official said last week. The XP Reloaded project is exploring ways to deliver further updates to Windows XP after the release of Service Pack 2 later this year and before the release of Longhorn.
"When the Windows team does innovation within their operating system, we are going to take advantage of that innovation," says Gytis Barzdukas, director of Office product management at Microsoft. "When the Windows guys rev, we're going to be interested in revving also."
After two decades of hypergrowth, the Microsoft juggernaut has slowed dramatically, so for the past few weeks the company's two most famous executives have been out stumping for a kinder, gentler software giant. In the new Microsoft they're projecting, however, growth will slow and new recruits will have to be convinced that a career in software development is exciting, not a chore. Blame the company's security problems for the most recent dip in interest in Microsoft, if you like, but these problems have been digging away at the company's core strengths for years as it struggles to duplicate its Windows and Microsoft Office duopoly's success in other markets. So Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates have turned up the volume a notch--as if to say, "Hey, we still matter."
Under the project name Windows XP Reloaded, Microsoft is considering how to add functionality to Windows. The discussions could result in an interim release of Windows before Longhorn. Greg Sullivan, lead product manager for Windows XP, recently spoke with InfoWorld Editor at Large Ed Scannell about XP Reloaded.
Q: Will XP Reloaded serve as the basis for an interim release between Service Pack 2 and Longhorn?
Sullivan: There has been a lot of speculation about new product plans for an interim release and what we are considering there. [Group Vice President, Platforms] Jim Allchin has referred to an internal project called Windows XP Reloaded, but that refers to a couple of different things, including how do we deliver the ongoing platform technology being developed [for Windows XP] and how to deliver that to users in a way that they can take advantage of easily? We have a number of different ways to deliver these technologies, including through products such as the Tablet PC, the new Media Center Edition functions, Windows Update, Service Pack 2 work, and OEM refreshes. So the Reloaded term refers to the discussions going on internally about how we continue to add value to Windows XP as a platform and help people understand what existing and new capabilities it has and will have. People are fixating on the notion of an interim release, but to call it [that] is really overstating the current plan.
Microsoft is expected to announce Monday that its Mobility Partner Advisory Council will be more tightly aligned with its Microsoft Partner Program. The move should make it easier for the pool of more than 800,000 programmers to become certified to create applications for the handheld OS.
The company also plans to mark the second anniversary of its Mobility Partner Advisory Council, which helps members team up and sell solutions to customers. One example of an MPAC collaboration was a $40 million deal announced in January, in which Microsoft and Cap Gemini Ernest & Young sold a package to health insurer WellPoint. The technologies used in the package were meant to help almost 19,000 doctors to improve patient care, reduce administrative costs and improve communications between doctors and patients.
Microsoft is preparing updates to its programming tools that will be released in tandem with Windows XP Service Pack 2, a security-oriented release due out later this year. The company is building service packs for its Visual Studio.Net 2003 development tool and the .Net Framework--the software plumbing, or "runtime," needed to run Web services applications on Windows, a Microsoft executive told CNET News.com. The changes, which are designed to guide developers on how to use the latest security features, are slated for release around the middle of the year, which is when Microsoft plans to ship Windows XP SP2.
Microsoft announced a partnership with eBay on Monday that will allow Office applications to tie in to the online auction service. The software giant plans to offer free sample code through the eBay Developers Program and later Microsoft's MSDN developer site for tying selected Office applications to the auctioneer's listing servers. The eBay Developers Program is a venue for developers to create programs that help large-scale sellers on the site manage inventory, automate listings and other tasks.