Microsoft put a stake in the ground at Momentum by restating plans to ship its next major version of the Windows client in 2005 and the next Windows server in 2006 -- but executives left plenty of room for delays.
As part of its long-term product roadmap revealed to partners at its annual channel show on Friday, Paul Flessner, senior vice president of Microsoft's Server Platform Division, recommitted to shipping the next generation Windows client, code-named Longhorn, in 2005.
The big build up to the Microsoft Office 2003 launch will continue next week with the official debut of Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System. The toolset, in beta test since last spring, will take it's official bow at the VS Connections Conference in Palm Springs next week, Microsoft sources confirmed. The goal of this software is to bridge the gap between developing desktop applications atop Office technologies and for Windows, Microsoft has said.
With this wave of products, Microsoft hopes to win over not just corporate users and consumers, but ISVs and developers who can use InfoPath technology, for example, to forge links between desktop and back-office applications. The Visual Studio For Office Tools also target this constituency.
Microsoft has sold its customer relationship management applications to 1,000 businesses, which it considers a "milestone" for the 1.0 version it introduced in January. The company discussed its progress in the customer relationship management (CRM) software market on Thursday at its global partner conference in New Orleans. The introduction of the software, a set of sales and marketing programs, was Microsoft's entry into an already crowded market featuring Best Software, Epiphany, FrontRange, Onyx Software, PeopleSoft, SAP and Siebel Systems.
Information worker productivity is at a tipping point, becoming a workspace for innovation, integration and teams, with Microsoft itself making a major transition and working with its partners to make this happen, Jeff Raikes, Microsoft's group vice president on productivity and business solutions, said Friday.
Addressing several thousand attendees at the Worldwide Partner Conference, he took a swipe at Linux, open source and StarOffice, saying, "they simply accept the view that what they have is good enough. That view does not foster innovation. Being where we were with Office 1997 is not good enough for us," he said.
Microsoft Office 2003 shows the new potential of information worker productivity, where services come together to dramatically enhance what people can do together, said Raikes.
The European Commission will conduct an oral hearing in the Microsoft antitrust case on November 12 that may last two or three days, people familiar with the situation said on Friday. The Commission alleges that Microsoft abused its dominance of personal computer operating systems. The oral hearing will give Microsoft and its critics a chance to discuss charges the Commission made in three separate statements of objection, issued in August 2000, August 2001 and August 2003.
Stung by relentless viruses and hacker attacks, and a patch cycle that is spinning completely out of control, Microsoft on Thursday unveiled a wide-ranging plan to mitigate, but unfortunately not eliminate, the crisis.
The approach includes:
Microsoft on Friday released the first public beta of a product that should allow developers to build and manage reports using its SQL Server 2000 database. It also disclosed pricing for the product and pegged it for release by the end of the year.
Called SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services, the software will be offered as an add-on for Microsoft's database and fills a hole in Microsoft's server line-up that customers have been asking it to fill, said Stan Sorensen, director of product management for SQL Server. Databases from Microsoft rivals such as IBM Corp. and Oracle Corp. have long supported reporting capabilities.
Microsoft on Monday launched its latest Office Online site, www.Office.Microsoft.com, which is a repository of free Office user resources on the Web. The site, which replaces the Tools on the Web site, paves the way for the new Office System 2003, which will be publicly available in October.
In May at the Windows Hardware Engineering conference, Microsoft officials hinted that the company was readying an online version of the "Watson" automated crash-reporting technology that debuted in Office XP.
Microsoft Watch reported at that time that Microsoft was working on a new user-assistance portal for Office that would build on its crash-reporting technology.
The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant said it is working through ECMA International, the Geneva-based standards organization, to push the development of a standard set of language extensions that will create a binding between the International Standards Organization (ISO) standard C++ programming language and Microsoft's Common Language Infrastructure (CLI).
Microsoft and ECMA officials said with a standard binding for C++ and the CLI developers will be better able to take advantage of the .Net platform and key features of the CLI. The binding will open developers up to more modern features, such as garbage collection and security.
Boosting development of Microsoft applications for mobile devices, ComponentOne this week announced availability of the Q4 2003 version of ComponentOne Studio Enterprise, which supports the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework.
ComponentOne Studio Enterprise is a subscription release featuring ComponentOne Studio for Mobile Devices, which supports the framework. It also includes ComponentOne WebSpell IDE for ASP.Net. This product provides for spell-checking WebForms, string constants, and HTML code.
ComponentOne Studio for Mobile Devices includes grid and charting products engineered to enable developers to build Microsoft .NET Compact Framework applications for mobile devices. Products in Studio include FlexGrid for Mobile Devices, Chart for Mobile Devices, and Zip for Mobile Devices.