Microsoft Rolls Out NetWare Migration Package
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Microsoft is campaigning for Novell NetWare users, again. This time Microsoft is wooing Netware users with a migration package that contains several incentives ranging from tools, prescriptive
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Microsoft fully rolls out its major Service Pack 2 security update for its home and professional XP customers.
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US software maker Microsoft has announced the general availability of the Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting version 3.0.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft released its first software designed specifically to manage virtual machines on a network Thursday&#160;and tweaked licensing for its system-management products to take into account virtualization.
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The ability to build Windows Live applications will be added to its Visual Studio toolkit.
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Microsoft Corp. has released a major update to its server operating system designed to make the product more stable and secure.
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Microsoft (Quote, Chart) is ready to ship Host Integration Server 2004, offering a Windows interface to mainframes and legacy applications.
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The newest edition of Host Integration Server, which replaces the 2000 version, is designed to make it easier for users to link Windows systems with IBM mainframes and midrange iSeries servers.
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Microsoft has rolled out an update to its CRM&#160;suite in eight of 25 languages that the software will eventually support.
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TechWeb - The upgrade helps manage virtualization technologies, SAN- and NAS-based storage resources, and network devices acting as routers, switches, firewalls, and load balancers.
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Microsoft gives us an update on Windows Home Server
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft on Friday finished development on a new version of its Exchange messaging server a week after the companyÂ celebrated its launchÂ alongside significant new releases of the Windows client OS and Microsoft Office. The company said it has shipped Exchange Server 2007 to manufacturing. Customers can sign up for a free evaluation of the software at this Web site. Additional information and technical resources about the software are available at the Exchange Web site and the TechNet Web site . Microsoft Exchange team members also have written about Exchange 2007 on the team's blog. Security, the mobile workforce, and regulatory and policy compliance are three areas where Microsoft has made enhancements in Exchange 2007. In the security realm, new built-in protection features include the ability for customers to purchase either on-premise antivirus software or a hosted version. As part of a new enterprise Client Access License (CAL) for the product, customers can purchase Microsoft's Antigen for Exchange antivirus software or Exchange Hosted Filtering services bundled with the Exchange CAL. For compliance, Microsoft provides the ability to set e-mail folder policies in Exchange to support compliance across the organization. For example, server administrators can set up policies to prevent employees from different groups in the company -- brokers and financial analysts, for example -- from exchanging e-mail. Administrators also can set up policies that automatically archive e-mail messages pertaining to certain topics, or automatically delete other e-mails. The new software also will allow users to send encrypted mail among servers running the product. Previously, extra set-up had to be done for this to happen. For the mobile worker, Exchange 2007 allows users to search through a greater number of e-mails on devices. The new software also will allow a remote user, even without administrator privileges, to wipe all Exchange Server-fed data from a device if it is lost or stolen.
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On Wednesday Microsoft announced that it had completed the development of Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005, its next-generation operations management server product, which will ship in separate versions aimed at enterprises and mid-sized businesses
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REDMOND, Wash. - Microsoft Corp. plans a Dec. 1 release for the latest version of its server software that aims to give companies more secure instant messaging and other corporate communications tools.
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Microsoft will accelerate the rollout of Windows XP Service Pack 2 over the next month and has released the first official update for SP2 to fix a problem some users had with virtual private networks.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft has released a major update to its server operating system, designed to make the product more stable and secure.
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(InfoWorld) - Windows VistaÂ isn't the only recently released Microsoft software that will give users headaches when they upgrade their systems. Corporate users, partners, and analysts said upgrading to Exchange Server 2007 from previous versions also may be a lengthy and painful process for companies, which may want to take a wait-and-see approach to the new software. New hardware requirements, incompatibilities with other Microsoft software, and the complexity of the product's new architecture are just a few of the issues that will make a move to Exchange 2007 from Exchange 2003 or earlier versions costly and difficult for IT administrators, said Microsoft partners and analysts. "There are about 6,000 pages of documentation that an IT administrator will have to wade through to deploy [Exchange Server 2007], said Keith McCall, a former Exchange director at Microsoft and now chief technology officer and founder of Azaleos, which offers an Exchange Server appliance and turnkey product. You need to think hard, and you need to plan your server infrastructure to add the value and new functionality of Exchange 2007." Exchange 2007 is the first major update since Exchange 2003, and it is the first version of the software that runs only on 64-bit servers. Previously, Exchange ran on 32-bit servers, so customers will not be able to just switch out their current version of Exchange to a new one. They will be required to update the hardware. To its credit, Microsoft alerted customers in November 2005 that this would be the case. But the 64-bit transition is not the only hardware headache associated with upgrading to Exchange 2007, McCall said. Because of the various server "roles" Microsoft has introduced for Exchange Server 2007, the software can no longer be set up for high availability on two servers -- one for the roles and one for failover, he said. There are five different server roles for Exchange 2007 -- mailbox, client access, unified messaging, routing and hub transport, and edge transport, which filters e-mail before it hits the mail store. "If you want to run all of the three primary Exchange 2007 roles (mailbox server, hub transport, and client access) with high availability, you need at least four servers, twice as many as you needed in Exchange 2003," he said. "If you want to add the unified message and edge transport roles, you need six servers." If you don't want high availability, you can run all the roles of Exchange Server 2007 on one server, except for the edge transport server, which requires its own, according to Jeff Ressler, director of the Exchange Server Group at Microsoft. He said Microsoft created Exchange 2007 with these new roles clearly defined because it is easier for administrators to proactively choose which role they want Exchange to play in a network. Previously, they had to go in and turn off the roles they didn't want. "In the new world, you would choose, 'I want that to be a client access server,' and just install those components," Ressler said. Hardware is not the only pain point for customers upgrading to the new version of Exchange. Duncan Greatwood, CEO of PostPath, in Mountain View, Calif., said there are some incompatibilities between Exchange Server 2007 and Windows Vista, the new version of Windows that was released to business customers in November and to consumers earlier this week. PostPath has a mail and messaging server that runs on Linux and can connect seamlessly with Exchange Servers on a network. A key problem is that the management tools for Exchange Server 2007 don't run on Vista, Greatwood said. Typically, an IT administrator will deploy Exchange and its management tools on a server and then deploy the tools on his or her own desktop machine so the server can be maintained from there, he said. However, if an administrator's desktop is running Vista, that desktop can't run the tools, Greatwood said. PostPath developed its software by figuring out Exchange's proprietary network protocols and building them into its product to enable the migration, Greatwood said. Microsoft also licenses some of Exchange's networking protocols to third parties, Ressler said. "If you have an Outlook desktop, in a completely unmodified way you can use PostPath just like Exchange," Greatwood said. "Outlook doesn't know it's talking to PostPath; it thinks it's talking to Exchange." For some companies, this could be a good alternative if they don't want to undertake the task of upgrading to Exchange Server 2007, said Maurene Grey, founder, and principal analyst of Grey Consulting. She said the move from Exchange 2003, which many people are running, to Exchange 2007 is the same as the leap from Exchange 5.5 to 2000, when Microsoft made a similar overhaul in the product's architecture. For some companies that are diehard Microsoft loyalists, however, the question of upgrading to Exchange Server 2007 is not one of if but when, Grey said. "When an organization made their last major upgrade will determine to a great extent when they'll make this upgrade," she said. "If a company just spent $2 million two years ago to upgrade from 5.5 to 2003, the CFO isn't going to be that eager to give them the money to make this upgrade."