Redmond is prepping a new family of blueprints for its channel partners that it is calling 'IT Solutions.' Just as it has done with its Information Worker product family, Microsoft is building a set of blueprints and methodologies around its small/mid-size business (SMB) products.
In the Information Worker/Office world, Microsoft calls these blueprints "Solution Accelerators." These accelerators are aimed at helping channel partners and corporate customers take advantage of the Windows, Office and other Microsoft products they own already.
Looming competitive and regulatory pressures factored into Microsoft's recent decision to reveal formerly secret pieces of its latest Office software, according to analysts.
Microsoft announced that starting Dec. 5, customers and partners will be able to view the unique Extensible Markup Language (XML) dialects, or "schemas," used by three of the most common Office applications: Word, Excel and InfoPath.
Microsoft has made extensive XML support one of the key selling points for Office 2003, with the widely adopted standard promising more fluid exchange of data between Office documents and enterprise computing systems.
Microsoft's Windows Rights Management Services for Windows Server 2003 offers very capable, simple-to-use digital rights management capabilities that can help control the flow of documents inside and outside a company, making sure documents are seen only by those who should see them.
eWEEK Labs used Windows Rights Management Services, which shipped last month, to deploy solid digital rights management capabilities to content created in Microsoft Office or sent through the Outlook mail client. We could also enable users to control who could view content, and we could deploy preconfigured templates for standard content types.
Microsoft is bound to play a growing role in enterprise telephony systems over the next few years, helping them to evolve beyond the simple features such as speed dial, conference call, and voice mail most companies know today. What's less clear is what that role will be.
The Redmond, Washington, software giant is likely to muscle in on the territory of traditional vendors of private branch exchanges (PBXs) and even threaten the desktop handset, through PC-based "soft phones," according to some industry analysts. However, Microsoft and some major vendors in that market say they don't see themselves on a collision course. Microsoft may increasingly provide the platform software for telephony, but more specialized vendors will write the applications on top, they said.
What's the next killer app? What's your biggest wish? The Microsoft chairman responds to readers' letters in our online forum. Bill Gates is the richest man in the world, the planet's most significant philanthropist and the most influential software designer ever. With all those accomplishments behind him at the age of 48, what's the Microsoft chairman's wish upon a star?
No. A curious "Computerworld" report this week says that Microsoft is moving away from Microsoft .NET and Web services in the Longhorn wave, a curious misreading of the company's plans. If anything, Longhorn is the .NET release Microsoft promised us 3 years ago, with deeply embedded Web-services technologies, including a .NET-based communications and collaboration infrastructure called Indigo. Indeed, Microsoft is shifting the software-development layer away from API-based Win32 libraries to the .NET-based WinFX framework, meaning that .NET will be the core method for accessing Longhorn's programmatic features--for the first time in any Windows version. Anyway, don't believe the report: .NET is still very much at the core of everything Microsoft is doing.
Folks wanting more detail on Microsoft's portal and e-business server offerings are heading to Seattle next week for the company's Portals and Integration "Airlift." There, a few hundred partners will briefed on BizTalk Server 2004 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and how various combinations of the two can be used to build Web sites. Attendees expect to receive early access code for BizTalk 2004, beta versions of which have been available for a month or so.
After swerving off the road a few times, Microsoft is gearing up for another try at the automotive market. The software maker has persuaded a number of carmakers to use its slimmed-down Windows CE operating system to power a variety of in-car electronics, from navigation systems to music players to information devices. BMW, in particular, has gravitated to Microsoft systems, although the company has announced wins with Honda, Volvo and others as well.
A U.S. court has pushed back the jury trial in a trademark dispute between Microsoft and Linux vendor Lindows.com until March 1 next year. Microsoft sued Lindows.com in December 2001, accusing the company of infringing its "Windows" trademark and asking the court to bar Lindows.com from further using the Lindows name.
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle originally set a trial date in April, but moved that to December to give Lindows.com more time to prepare for the case. The trial has now been pushed back until March 1 because of a scheduling conflict, Lindows.com said in a statement Tuesday.
A former Microsoft employee was sentenced to 17 months in prison Tuesday after fraudulently ordering more than $6 million in software and then selling it to a third party. Kori Robin Brown, 31, was an administrative assistant in Microsoft's Xbox division when she used her work computer to order millions of dollars worth of high-end software from ClientLogic, a business providing warehouse facilities for Microsoft.
She then sold the software to a third party for between $50,000 and $100,000, according to the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, where Brown was sentenced. The crimes were committed sometime between Oct. 13, 1998 and August 4, 2000, the U.S. attorney's office said.