Microsoft will leverage its integration abilities as a way to strengthen its hold on smaller accounts Oct. 9 when it formally rolls out two versions of its Windows Small Business Server 2003 at its annual partner conference in New Orleans. With the upcoming Standard and Premium Editions of the product, the company has technically stitched together a collection of its core server applications and its server operating system, Windows Server 2003, in a way that helps smaller users get core pieces of its IT infrastructure up more quickly. Company officials believe this tighter integration can serve as a foundation for smaller companies to more easily build customized solutions.
Microsoft aims to sign up 100,000 developers, or about 10 percent of the total in Asia-Pacific in a new region-wide campaign to boost membership in its .NET developer community. The U.S.-based software giant has kicked off a membership program called the MSDN (Microsoft Developers' Network) Connection, which it says is its first regionally-organized sign-up drive. Singapore this morning became the first of the 13 countries in the Asia-Pacific to launch the drive, with the other 12 countries to due launch their own campaigns over the next 12 months.
High-end computer maker Silicon Graphics Inc. is in line to become the next target of Linux opponent SCO Group, with the controversial software seller threatening to revoke SGI's Unix license.
SGI revealed the expected move in a regulatory document filed earlier this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing included a statement detailing the company's plans to revoke SGI's license to distribute products based on Unix code that SCO controls. The move would mirror similar actions that SCO took earlier this year against computing giant IBM, SCO's main opponent in its legal battle against the open-source Linux operating system.
Conceding that its strategy of patching Windows holes as they emerge has not worked, Microsoft plans next week to outline a new security effort focused on what the company calls "securing the perimeter," a company executive told CNET News.com.
Although Microsoft will continue to devise ways to improve the means by which Windows users apply upgrades, or patches, to their software, the company had realized that too many customers don't upgrade quickly enough to thwart hackers.
"From our side, (it) has been a little naive to think that all of those customers are going to do patches," said Orlando Ayala, Microsoft's former sales chief, who now heads its sales push to small and midsize businesses. "It's just hard."
Redmond software maker highlights customers, positioning at SpeechTek conference in New York. Microsoft is using this week's SpeechTEK conference here to talk about the momentum behind another pending member of its Windows System Server family: Microsoft Speech Server. Microsoft released at the show the names of five joint-development-program partners who have built prototype applications with Speech Server and Microsoft's speech software-development kit (SDK).
Microsoft on Wednesday released Windows SharePoint Services, a free add-on for the company's latest server software that allows companies to set up collaboration sites online. SharePoint Services works with Windows Server 2003 to allow workers to publish documents to a secure Web site, where they can be viewed and manipulated by authorized users. Common uses would include setting up a site where employees could access documents, to-do lists and other items related to a particular project.
Microsoft said on Tuesday it would pay $10.5 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit brought by U.S. customers who claimed the No. 1 software maker used its monopoly power to overcharge them for direct purchases of software. Under the settlement, consumers and businesses who bought Microsoft's software directly from the company's Web site or direct marketing campaigns agreed to drop their charges. Microsoft, which admitted no wrongdoing, said it will pay each purchaser a portion of the price paid for software bought up until April 30, 2003.
Microsoft will hand developers early beta code of its next-generation database and Visual Studio platform and a technical preview of its next Windows client at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) later this month.
During a meeting with CRN on Tuesday at company headquarters, Microsoft executives confirmed that the company will make available another "private beta" of Yukon, its next generation database, and early beta code of its next version of Visual Studio, code-named Whidbey, to attendees of PDC 2003 beginning Oct. 26.
Microsoft is poised to recruit storage integrators as part of an ambitious effort to dramatically expand its storage software market share. The software giant is in the midst of building a storage partner "ecosystem" including OEMs, storage integrators, and white box builders specializing in storage, said Charles Stevens, corporate vice president of sales and marketing for Microsoft's Enterprise Storage Division. Microsoft has also put together a separate technical sales team that will train and assist partners to close storage deals, said Stevens.
Ask Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer whether some hackers contribute to the IT industry, and you'll get an emphatic, 'No!'" Hackers are criminals," Ballmer says, plain and simple. And they don't innovate, either, he adds. "Hackers are people who are causing hundreds of millions and billions of dollars in damage," he says. "And they're not showing that they are not all that smart and creative and clever."
"There's no way to way to look these people as anything other than what they are: malicious people who are violating the law," Ballmer said. Their work, of course, is causing Microsoft significant grief.