Microsoft Plans to Ease Native PBX Integration to OCS
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Microsoft Corp has announced plans to make it easier for IP PBX vendors to integrate natively with its Office Communication Server collaboration platform, which is something achieved only by Nortel and smaller Canadian player Mitel.
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Biggest announcement is Managed IP PBX service that uses Nortel platform to provide advanced applications.
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InfoWorld - Windows Vista&#160;isn&#39;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.
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REDMOND, Wash. -- Help is on the way for developers struggling with using the Visual Studio 2005 development platform with Windows Vista, a Microsoft official stressed at the Microsoft SOA and Business Process Conference here on Tuesday.During a question-and-answer panel session, an audience member characterized the experience of using Visual Studio 2005 with Vista as "miserable." He wondered if the upcoming Visual Studio 2008 upgrade would be an improvement."Is the '08 experience on Vista likely to be better?" the questioner asked. Also known as Orcas, Visual Studio 2008 is due by the end of this year."It unequivocally is better," responded Dino Chiesa, Microsoft director of the .Net Framework. He advised the audience member to download the Orcas beta release and see the difference."We tried to be transparent about that, that Orcas was the Visual Studio release that was built to target Vista," Chiesa said.Other improvements also are awaited in Orcas, such as an improved build system in Visual Studio Team System for continuous integration."The performance and scalability of Team System is way enhanced," said Chiesa.But another audience member took issue with the use of templates in Orcas, saying distribution of templates was ad hoc. Chiesa responded there are some improvements in the general release with regard to templates.In a related issue raised during the session, Microsoft's J.R. Arredondo, senior product manager for Microsoft Office, said the company sees its Popfly technology, for quick creation of applications such as mashups and widgets, as a model for the future. The Office business application strategy at its core is about bringing simplicity and usability to the masses, Arredondo said.Another audience member, apparently a Microsoft business partner, asked how he would be able to sell Microsoft's BizTalk Server integration software with the company making available related technologies in the operating system and .Net Framework such as Windows Communication Framework and Windows Workflow.But Microsoft's Sam Guckenheimer, group product manager, countered that while he is passionate about capabilities for developers, users still would need a server platform for functions such as deploying an application across multiple farms.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft says it will focus on four key areas to improve interoperability between its own software and other vendors' products. Senior Microsoft representatives met with InfoWorld on Thursday to highlight identity management; Web services and related development; collaboration between information workers and system management comprise the new interoperability focus. "We are really working on new protocols in the WS-* [spoken as Web services star] space that enable interoperability across identity systems," said Jean Paoli, Microsoftâs general manager of interoperability and XML architecture. Lat week, Microsoft vowed to integrate its CardSpace identity management system with the OpenID Web authentication standard. Paoli emphasized the move as evidence of the commitment. WS-* represents a series of Web services-related specifications for standardization in areas such as security and messaging. A lot of the issues Microsoft has in interoperability tend to fall into these four categories, said Tom Robertson, the companyâs general manager of interoperability and standards. "Those are the four areas that we're hearing about now," as needing attention, Paoli said. "It doesn't mean the list is closed." Microsoft's identity management push, however, apparently will not be centered on its previous Passport initiative for Internet security.Â  "I've not been hearing about Passport in so long," Paoli said. Microsoft plans to be creative in addressing interoperability, using a host of tools at its disposal. "It's going to mean making IP available in a range of ways," Robertson said. The company already has dabbled in open source as a way to boost interoperability, offering a bridge between the OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft's Open XML electronic document formats, said Robertson. Paoli and Robertson listed multiple Microsoft interoperability projects in the past several years, such as its work with Novell on interoperability between Windows and Novell's Suse Linux. The company's interoperability effort with Sun Microsystems also was noted. But they remained upset with IBM for what Microsoft perceives are IBM efforts to block Open XML from becoming approved as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The two co-authored an open letter this week entitled "Interoperability, Choice and Open XML," that pointed fingers of blame at IBM. "The open letter is an effort to clearly articulate what Microsoft is trying to do," Robertson said. It is important to shine a light on what IBM is doing to block Open XML and block choice, he added. In response, an IBM representative pointed to the ConsortiumInfo.org Standards Blog, which states there is "significant commercial opposition" to Microsoft's electronic document proposal. Microsoft made a "bad bet " that ODF would fail in the marketplace, the blog stated.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. have wasted little time in demonstrating there is real work being done as part of their recent Linux interoperability pact. Just a month afterÂ the historic deal between the companies, Novell said Monday it will support the proprietary document format in Microsoft Office 2007, Open XML, in its open-source version of the OpenOffice productivity suite by the end of January. Novell also will release software that will bidirectionally translate word processing, spreadsheets and presentations between its version of OpenOffice.org's productivity suite and Microsoft Office to the OpenOffice.org project so Open XML can become a part of that open-source project, the company said. However, this does not guarantee that Open XML will be integrated into the OpenOffice.org code, said Justin Steinman, a Novell director of marketing for Linux. "We are going to release the code to the open-source community. Whether it gets integrated or not is up to the community," he said. Novell and Microsoft worked together on the translation project, which will allow users of a new release of OpenOffice due in January to create, save and send files as Open XML documents, Steinman said. Creating interoperability between the OpenOffice and Microsoft Office suites was a goal that was part of the companies' deal, announced Nov. 2, to make Microsoft's proprietary software work more seamlessly with Novell's Suse Linux and other open-source software from the company. The Open XML work will ultimately allow users to more easily share files between Microsoft Office 2007 and OpenOffice, which support different document formats, Steinman said. The native document format in OpenOffice is OpenDocument Format (ODF), an XML-based file format recognized as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Microsoft so far has chosen not to support ODF and instead created its own file format, Open XML, for Office 2007. Microsoft's lack of support for ODF has been controversial, and the company further stirred up concern in the industry that it was trying to promote its own proprietary file format as an industry standard instead of ODF by submitting Open XML to Ecma International in November 2005. Ecma is a standards organization that can fast-track technology standards through the ISO. Ecma plans to vote on whether to approve Open XML for submission to the ISO as an international standard on Dec. 7. Microsoft released Office 2007, which supports Open XML, last week to business customers. The suite is expected to be widely available to consumers in retail outlets on Jan. 30.
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Application migration specialist ArtinSoft is planning tools to smooth customers&#39; transition from Oracle to Microsoft Corp&#39;s SQL Server.
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Microsoft is turning the software into what it hopes will be a one-stop shop for e-mail, voice mail and faxes.
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Microsoft announced on Tuesday a program that will pay some transition costs for companies that want to move from Novell&#39;s NetWare operating system onto servers running Windows.
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Microsoft on Wednesday revealed that it has made its software development environment for small, embedded processors available for chipmaker Analog Devices' Blackfin platform. via EETimes
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(InfoWorld) - As Windows VistaÂ appeared in computer stores worldwide, Microsoft said Tuesday that part of the design of the new operating system is the work of the European Commission. "Following discussions with European Commission, Microsoft committed to make a number of changes to the Windows Vista operating system prior to release," the software maker said in a statement, pointing to three functions of the operating system: security, search, and fixed document formats. Windows Security Center (WSC), which looks like a dashboard, gives the user an overview of what security software is running on the system and the status of checks and upgrades of firewalls and antispyware protection. Rival security software firms and the Commission suspected this could give WSC an unfair advantage. Microsoft said it agreed to develop a new set of APIsÂ for release in the first service pack, scheduled for later this year, which can be invoked by third-party security programs to turn off the alerts presented by WSC. Similarly, PatchGuard -- software that protects against the modification of the kernel of the operating system -- has been added to Vista. Some security vendors have in the past made modifications to the kernel as part of the implementation of their security software. PatchGuard prevents such modifications in the 64-bit version. Microsoft is now working with vendors to develop new kernel-level APIs that will provide programmatic access to the kernel to address this issue, Microsoft said. The APIs will be available in Windows Vista 64 with the first service pack, scheduled for later this year. Regarding search, Microsoft has changed the way default settings are made for Internet search within both Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). "These changes now ensure for users that they are able -- through a series of windows and options -- to make a clear, conscious, and open decision on their default search provider. Furthermore, users will retain at all times the ability to change this and all further defaults in the operating system at will," Microsoft said. Microsoft's own fixed document format software is known as XPS. "In response to the Commission's concerns, the company has made fundamental changes to the licensing structure of the XPS fixed-format technology and has committed to submit the technology to an international standards body for adoption as an open industry standard," Microsoft said. The XPS standard will be made available under licensing terms that do not exclude any industry or licensing model including the GPL (general public license), it said. "In response to Commissioner Kroes' letter of March 2006, Microsoft created a singleÂ API so that independent software developers can create applications to allow users to save documents in XPS or other formats, such as Adobe's PDF," Microsoft said. Microsoft said it has also disclosed through a licensing program the relevant information to enable the implementation of XPS technology on competing client and server operating systems. Microsoft has also responded to a further Commission demand to submit XPS (as well as future extensions) to a standards-setting body. Microsoft will submit XPS to the Ecma International. Microsoft said it will also enable the implementation of XPS under an open-source business model (GPL) through use of a covenant not to sue -- a model that Microsoft has applied to Web services and open XMLÂ  document formats and that has, it said, "been welcomed by the open-source community." European customers and OEMs will be able to buy a version of Vista that has Microsoft's Media Player stripped out. This unbundled version of the operating system complies with the 2004 European antitrust ruling, which ordered the company to offer two separate versions of both the home and professional versions of the operating system. "In compliance with the European Commission's decision of March 2004, home and professional editions of Windows Vista without Media Player functionality will be released in Europe on the same schedule as the Windows Vista general availability launch," Microsoft said. These are called the 'N' versions -- denoting "no media player," the company said.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft says it will focus on four key areas to improve interoperability between its own software and other vendors' products.
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Microsoft exec announces new tool designed to make patching simpler.
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Higgins-project developers are creating a tool equivalent to Windows CardSpace but need Microsoft's go-ahead for certain features.
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Microsoft-sponsored open-source group expected to release ODF translator for Word.
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Microsoft announced today that they were rolling out a new set of tools under the âMid-Market Netware Migration Programâ banner, aimed at convincing existing NetWare clients to move to Windows Server 2003 instead of Linux.
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New dual-core processors will make conventional software licensing models obsolete. What's next?