Microsoft is in talks with governments and companies in several countries to establish partnerships to help protect computer users against cyber attacks, it said Friday. One of those countries is Japan. Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer will visit that country next week and meet with government officials, Microsoft partners and others, but Microsoft is not ready to announce a security partnership there yet, said Microsoft spokesman Sean Sundwall.
"As we are in many countries, we are certainly engaged in discussions with companies in Japan and certain government sectors with the end goal of protecting customers against the security threats posed by hackers," Sundwall said. "There is no announcement that Steve (Ballmer) or Microsoft will be making next week on this front."
There will be no immediate results from the highly publicized but confidential hearing which followed a predictable pattern with Microsoft defending itself against competitors' complaints about its business practices.
Eventually, European Union hearing officer Karen Williams will send her evaluation to Competition Commissioner Mario Monti who will use it to help him rule after a five-year probe.
The European Union executive is expected to decide by the end of June 2004, but if Microsoft objects it could start a lengthy appeal to the EU's top court in Luxembourg.
Microsoft saw a jump in profits from its server and tools business last quarter, while its desktop Windows and Office business posted slight declines in profits from a year earlier, according to documents filed Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company released individual segment sales when it reported earnings last month but, until Thursday, had not reported how much money each of its seven business units made or lost.
In October, Microsoft reported earnings of $2.6 billion on $8.2 billion in revenue, saying an improvement in PC sales helped the company exceed its earlier forecasts. However, the company also saw a drop in so-called unearned revenue--that is, money taken in for long-term contracts, as customers expressed reticence over security issues.
It's been assumed that Microsoft's devotion to "wireless industry standards" makes its White Paper on Mobile Web Services a good thing. I'll bet the Trojans felt the same warm, comfortable glow about the Greeks and their Trojan Standard horse.
It's far, far too early to speculate on all the places where Microsoft is going with its obsession on intellectual property protection, or what it honestly expects "location based" services to comprise over the next decade - but the two subjects come together neatly in the Vodafone/Microsoft white paper - as a currency replacement idea.
Continuing its tradition of providing Windows XP users with free, fun, and ongoing digital media updates, Microsoft this morning announced the immediate availability of three new holidays-themed digital media Fun Packs. This is the third such set of Fun Packs--the first set arrived in winter 2002, and was followed by a spring-oriented set in spring 2003. The Winter 2003 Fun Packs are designed to help users of Windows XP have more fun this holiday season with their digital music, photos and home movies, Microsoft says.
Microsoft said it would be forced to offer European consumers a substandard version of Windows if the European Union makes it re-write its operating system, sources close to the case said on Thursday. Microsoft issued the warning to EU regulators, they said, during a three-day closed-door hearing to consider charges the software giant abused the power that Windows gives it over the personal computer market.
Windows servers and SQL Server 2000 now power some of the world's biggest production databases, according to an annual survey from data management analysts at Winter Corp. Waltham, Mass.-based Winter Corp. recently released results of its Winter TopTen Program, which is done annually based on customer surveys and a script run on the databases to verify the facts submitted in the survey.
Chairman Bill Gates will be walking a fine line, come Comdex 2003. Security can't play second fiddle to the latest Tablet advances this year. If it's the Sunday night before Comdex, it must be time for yet another Bill Gates keynote. And, if recent history offers any guidance, we can expect get an earful about the Tablet PC.
But if I were a betting woman heading off to Sin City this year, I'd wager that Gates won't be waxing poetic to the extent he usually does about the coolest, newest gadgets that are part of Microsoft's vision for the digital decade. Instead, I'm expecting Gates & Co. to spend a lot more time focusing on Microsoft monumental security problems and its strategy to combat its seemingly endless parade of patches.
Microsoft began wrapping up its defense on Thursday against European Union charges it abused its dominant market position, while its rivals waited in the wings for a turn to attack the software titan.
Sources familiar with the case said Microsoft used the first day of the hearing to hit back at charges it acted unfairly to increase its share of the market for software that runs simple computer networks.
Microsoft argued during the hearing that sufficient ways still exist for others to connect to its servers, but that it had pulled ahead of competitors such as Novell because its products were more versatile, the sources said.
Microsoft continued to peel away the blinds covering its pending "Yukon" SQL Server version of its database software Wednesday with the introduction of new enhancements to the company's database administration technology.
Announced at the annual 2003 Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) Community Summit in Seattle, the improved SQL Server extract, transform and load (ETL) tools are designed to cut down on the manual knob-tuning for database administrators (DBAs), which gives the software features something in common with Oracle's pending 10G database technology.