Gates Brings Vista, Office 2007 to Europe
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Launch event at the British Library features rare da Vinci notebook instead of rock band.
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Microsoft MSFT.O said on Thursday it   was on track to launch its Windows Vista operating system in   Europe in January but again asked the European Commission to   detail concerns it may have with the system.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. released tools to help companies deploy Windows Vista, acknowledging that there are deployment and application-compatibility pains enterprise IT managers face when updating business desktops to the new OS. The company unveiled the new tools, Data Encryption Toolkit for Mobile PCs and Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) Test Drive, atÂ the TechEd 2007 conference in Orlando Tuesday. The first helps IT administrators set encryption policies for laptops in an enterprise using the encrypting file system and new Bitlocker features of Windows Vista, said Stella Chernyak, a Vista product manager at Microsoft. The second is a file that can be downloaded from the Internet that allows enterprises to run a virtual version of Vista on PCs for a 30-day evaluation period to see how it will interact with other applications in their systems. The VHD Test Drive is available online, and more information on the Data Encryption Toolkit can be found on Microsoft's Web site. Business adoption of Vista has been a big concern since the OS was released to business customers last November. Many companies said they would hold off on fully deploying the OS longer than they usually do mainly because of concerns about application compatibility. Indeed, Chernyak acknowledged Tuesday in an interview that lack of application compatibility is the biggest challenge enterprise customers face when they deploy Vista. She said this is why Microsoft released the Vista Application Compatibility Toolkit simultaneously with the general availability of the OS instead of some time after, which it has traditionally done. The VHD also gives enterprises a chance to see what applications will be affected by the new OS so they can make compatibility adjustments before investing in Vista. Three of Microsoft's large enterprise customers, Continental Airlines, Charter Communications and health-care company Cerna Corp. also will have major Vista deployments in their enterprise by the end of the year, Chernyak said. Microsoft claims most enterprises are on schedule to a full rollout of Vista 12 to 18 months after its release, which is about normal for a new Windows OS, she said. Still, not everyone is rushing to deploy Vista, and smaller companies in particular are wary of adopting the OS until making certain it will work with everything in their systems. TechEd attendee Ryan Engh, infrastructure manager at 130-person mutual funds company Wasatch Advisors in Salt Lake City, said his company is still about 12 months from beginning a Vista deployment, though two IT staff members are "playing with it" to see how it will interact with applications in the system. "We'd be more aggressive if it wasn't such a drastic change in the operating system," he said. Engh said he was not aware of the new deployment tools from Microsoft, but likely would not use them anyway because he is currently more concerned with application compatibility than actually deploying the OS. "I'm not so worried about the deployment, it's just if the application will actually work on the system," he said. "We're not even worried about [deploying Vista] yet." Microsoft also said at TechEd that it would make its previously announced Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) available by July for Windows Vista with a new feature for monitoring desktop errors so IT managers can identify errors and send a fix across all enterprise desktops at once. MDOP, unveiled in January, consists of software from Microsoft's purchases of Softricity, AssetMetrix, Winternals Software, and DesktopStandard. It rolls up virtualization software from Softricity, asset-management software from AssetMetrix, group policy-management software from DesktopSoftware, and diagnostic and recovery tools from Winternals into a product designed to help companies manage desktops in an enterprise. The Softricity and Winternals components of the pack are already available for Windows XP, said Winni Verhoef, a senior product manager for Microsoft. All of the components of MDOP will be available for Vista in July except the Winternals diagnostic and recovery tools, which won't be available until next year. It is taking Microsoft a bit more time to port those tools to Vista because they had to be rewritten for the new architecture of the client OS, he said. MDOP costs about US$10 per desktop and is available only to Microsoft customers who have purchased its Software Assurance service. Â
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(InfoWorld) - Hoping to accelerate the adoption of Vista for businesses, MicrosoftÂ on Tuesday unveiled toolsÂ that willÂ help companies deploy the new Windows client OS, including software that allows older versions of Windows to run virtually alongside Vista. The company released six tools designed to help business customers migrate from previous versions of Windows to Vista, which was widely released on Jan. 30. The tools are the Virtual PC 2007, Microsoft Solution Accelerator for BDD (Business Desktop Deployment) 2007, the Microsoft ACT (Application Compatibility Toolkit) 5.0, the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 1.0, and two volume activation tools -- Volume Activation Management Tool and Key Management Service for Windows Server 2003. Businesses have said they are in no rush to update to Vista, and Microsoft seems concerned about their apparent reluctance. Last Thursday during a meeting with financial analysts, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called analysts' sales estimates for Vista "overly aggressive" and tried to downplay expectations for OS sales. The company is hoping the tools will make moving to Vista less painless for business customers, particularly those who depend on older versions of Windows. Virtual PC 2007, a virtualization tool that lets businesses simultaneously run multiple OSes on a single PC, could come in handy in this scenario. The tool allows business customers to move computers to Vista while keeping previous versions of Windows available for those PCs to run legacy or custom applications in a virtual environment, Microsoft said. Virtual PC 2007 is available for free from this Web site. Solution Accelerator for BDD 2007 includes user migration tools, remote deployment tools, and integration with other Microsoft deployment products, such as System Management Server 2003. BDD also includes or can be used to integrate other tools unveiled Tuesday, including ACT 5.0, Windows Vista Hardware Assessment, and the Volume Activation 2.0, into the deployment process. A free download of BDD 2007 is available to all customers and partners here. ACT 5.0 helps businesses handle potential application compatibility issues encountered when moving to Windows Vista, Microsoft said. The tool includes a series of compatibility evaluators that lets companies assess whether applications will be compatible with Vista and, if not, how to resolve conflicts. ACT 5.0 also includes a link to an online community that provides users with updated application assessments and test results not only from Microsoft, but also its partners. It is available as a free download here. The Windows Vista Hardware Assessment tool helps businesses determine which existing PCs can upgrade to Vista and gives them the resources required to complete the process, Microsoft said. The tool assesses PCs' hardware and device compatibility with Vista,Â and itÂ provides reports with upgrade recommendations for each PC. The tool is available for download here. Microsoft Volume Activation 2.0 and KMS (Key Management Service) for Windows Server 2003 provide volume activation technologies so businesses can activate multiple Vista PCs across the company. The Windows VAMT (Volume Activation Management Tool) enables IT professionals to automate and manage the volume activation process using a Multiple Activation Key, which requires a one-time communication with Microsoft either independently by each computer or by multiple computers at once. KMS for Windows Server 2003 lets business customers host a local service within their environment that can be used to activate Windows Vista without sending information to Microsoft. VAMT and KMS for Windows Server 2003 are available on the Microsoft Download Center here and here.
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Microsoft  has launched a  pay-as-you-go computing system aimed at making its office  software more accessible for people in emerging markets, the  company said on Tuesday.
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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Wednesday launched an initiative to accelerate innovation in science and computing in Europe.
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Shouldn't be running in our classrooms Microsoftâs hopes of getting Vista into British classrooms have been held back at least another year after Becta issued a scathing report on the operating system and its equally fresh-faced twin, Office 2007.â¦
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New Windows, plus Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007, now available to corporate customers in Asia.
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Microsoft Corp rolled out Windows Vista at retailers in 70 countries yesterday, delivering a new computer operating system that aims to better manage the explosion of digital media and protect users from the dangers of the Internet.
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Microsoft wants to make it easy for users to upgrade among editions of the next Windows.
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InfoWorld - In Berlin on Tuesday, Microsoft unveiled a product package aimed at local and regional e-government initiatives, in the midst of growing government opposition in Europe to proprietary software.
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Microsoft hopes to boost the adoption of business process management apps by adding support for Business Process Execution Language in Vista.
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NEW YORK/LONDON  - Microsoft Corp. rolled out  Windows Vista in 70 countries on Tuesday, delivering a PC  operating system able to better manage the explosion of digital  media and enhance Internet security.
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Slip of the tongue - or the brain Comment The UK Developer launch of Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office System was pretty impressive, as such things usually are.â¦
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Microsoft rolled out the latest version of its all-conquering Windows operating system for business customers, hoping corporate users will blaze a trail for the new Vista platform.
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(InfoWorld) - European car manufacturing giant PSA Peugeot CitroÃ«n has agreed to one of the Continent's largest-ever deployments of open-source Linux software on desktop computers. As part of a multiyear contract with Novell, the French company will install Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop on up to 20,000 computers in addition to 2,500 servers, the U.S. software vendor said Tuesday. The announcement comes on the same day thatÂ Microsoft's new Vista operating system and Office 2007 software suite become commercially available for consumers. Charles King, principle analyst with Pund-IT, a technology research firm, referred to the size of the Novell contract with Peugeot CitroÃ«n as "significant" and the timing of the announcement as "very interesting." "The migration to Vista will require a significant hardware upgrade," King said. "The costs associated with this upgrade will open the door for companies to consider alternatives." Officials from Peugeot CitroÃ«n were unavailable for comment, but Novell said in a statement, quoting an IT representative from the French company, that support for Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop and the user-friendly design of the software were key factors in the selection process. The opportunity to lower IT costs through open-source software almost certainly had to be another factor, King said. Novell provided no financial details of the contract. With Vista and Office being powerful IT tools, King believes that many companies will start asking themselves what sort of functionality their employees need on their desktop computers and, equally important, what they are willing to pay for this functionality. With Vista and Office 2007, King warned, some companies could be purchasing way more functionality then they need. "Let me put it this way: Do you need a Ferrari to go to the neighborhood shopping store when a mini-van will do?" he said.
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Next version of Windows will create a cascade of benefits for local European economies, says Microsoft-sponsored study.