In five years, Microsoft expects half of all enterprise employees with e-mail to use a combined online and premises-based system like the company's Exchange Online, an executive said Monday at a launch event for that software and the SharePoint Online hosted collaboration application. About 500,000 users have already adopted Exchange Online since a limited release for large enterprises in October 2007, said Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division, at the event in San Francisco.
That release made the two applications available, on dedicated Microsoft servers, to enterprises with 5,000 or more employees. Starting Monday, the services are available to all small, medium-sized and large organizations in the U.S., hosted on shared resources at Microsoft.
With an odd sense of nervousness tied back to its mid-1990's Pentium debacle, microprocessor giant Intel on Monday delivered its next-generation Core i7 chips to customers. The i7 represents Intel's biggest architectural change since its mobile-oriented Core chips debuted almost three years ago. This time around, the base chips feature four processor cores, each of which is capable of executing two threads simultaneously, effectively providing the performance of 8 processors in compatible applications.
The Core i7 chips--codenamed Nehalem during development--have debuted to overwhelmingly positive reviews. But so did the original Pentium, which was quickly found to have a small but crucial floating point bug that necessitated a $400 million recall in 1994.
Aiming to head off further legal action against its customers, Microsoft is asking a federal court to declare that its Visual Studio product doesn't violate patents from WebXchange.
In a suit filed last week in San Francisco, Microsoft seeks a declaration that WebXchange's patents are invalid, unenforceable, or that Microsoft does not infringe on the patents. The move comes after WebXchange sued three Microsoft customers earlier this year in Delaware.
In its suit, Microsoft said that WebXchange's lawsuit has "placed a cloud over Visual Studio software, Web services, and the SOAP protocol."
Today's announcement officially means Microsoft is the latest entry in a market of services that Microsoft actually made feasible: It can now host Exchange mailboxes for Active Directory users that do not have Exchange Server 2007.
As those who already enjoy its benefits are currently aware, an Exchange server does quite a bit more than just host e-mail. Perhaps even more importantly, it can synchronize the schedule of everyone who works together in a widely dispersed business. With Outlook 2007, that means having access to personal schedules as well as group schedules that are updated in the background.
A court filing that was unsealed this week as part of an ongoing class-action lawsuit over Microsoft's purportedly deceptive "Vista Capable" logo program suggests that Microsoft changed the program to appease Intel. Apparently, Intel CEO Paul Otellini complained to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer that Microsoft's original plans for the program would mean that millions of Intel chipsets--and thus PCs--wouldn't qualify for the sticker that compatible machines get. Microsoft changed the requirements to shut up Otellini, but angered many of its own executives as a result. "We are going to be misleading customers," then-Windows chief Jim Allchin complained at the time. "We must avoid confusion. It is wrong for customers." Well, it looks like Allchin hit the nail on the head with that one.
Margaret Johnson, the chief executive of educational game startup Sabi, acknowledges that the educational software market is already stacked with titles -- but says most of them are no fun.
With Sabi, Johnson hopes to rectify that.
"This is a fun game done by professional game developers," she said, referring to "ItzaBitza, "her company's first game. "We see this as a seed."
Among her backers: Microsoft
Kirkland-based Sabi is the sixth company to be launched through Microsoft's IP Ventures Program, which spins off technology developed in-house at Microsoft Research.
A Microsoft employee--Eric Brechner--has finally stated the obvious on patents: they're worthless in terms of providing "disclosure" for would-be infringers. It would appear that they're also worthless in terms of helping licensors:
When using existing libraries, services, tools, and methods from outside Microsoft, we must be respectful of licenses, copyrights, and patents. Generally, you want to carefully research licenses and copyrights, and never search, view, or speculate about patents. I was confused by this guidance till I wrote and reviewed one of my own patents. The legal claims section--the only section that counts--was indecipherable by anyone but a patent attorney. Ignorance is bliss and strongly recommended when it comes to patents.
Hoping to spark sales as companies put the squeeze on capital spending, Microsoft said Thursday that new customers of its
Dynamics ERP and CRM applications in some parts of the world can apply for zero-percent, 36-month financing.
Microsoft's move fits into a recent trend, reported by The Wall Street Journal, where vendors lend more money to customers.
But one industry observer questioned whether Microsoft's move will have a major impact on sales.
"I'd be stunned if that really influences anyone," AMR Research analyst Bruce Richardson. "I think it gets your attention
and maybe you take a look at [Dynamics] if you're thinking about that versus Salesforce.
Microsoft Today unveiled upgrades to its Games for Windows Live service -- the PC equivalent of Xbox Live -- that immediately updates the interface, and promises a Games for Windows Live Marketplace in early December.The re-design optimizes the Live interface for Keyboard and Mouse, John Schappert, VP of Live Software and Studios said, "This new release was designed specifically with our community of PC gamers and game developers in mind.
It's a natural next step in delivering a world-class online service for Windows gamers."
The following step will be even bigger. In December, the Games for Windows Live Marketplace will open, and Bethesda Software's wildly popular Fallout 3 will be the first title to offer premium downloadable content to PC gamers.
Microsoft has quietly launched a new online store where U.S. customers can buy its software and hardware products.There were already Microsoft Stores for people in the U.K., Germany and Korea, and the U.S. store launched on Thursday. "With this launch, our customers in the U.S. are able to buy first-party software and hardware directly from Microsoft offered in a comprehensive online catalog," said Trevin Chow, Microsoft senior program manager, in a blog post about the site launch.
Online shoppers in the U.S. have been able to buy and download some Microsoft software from the Windows Marketplace. But some Microsoft hardware, like the Xbox, has been available only from third-party retailers and is now for sale in the Microsoft Store.