MS out of the bundling business?
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Analysis No delay in EC anti-trust compliance
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The service pack for the newest Microsoft operating system is out and about, though not officially.
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The Motley Fool - The lure of bundling services has been hanging over the communications industry for the past six years or so, although many companies have been unable to perfect a winning strategy. Bundling brings together services such as wired (local and long distance) and wireless phone service, Internet access, and satellite or cable television services.
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Novell is consolidating operations in an effort to remove overlap between its four business units. The Waltham, Mass.-based software vendor is folding its Nterprise and SuSE Linux operations into a single
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ObjectStore suitably EdgeXtended by acquisition
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Not surprisingly, the company advises against using vLite, or other tools that make changes to which components of the OS are installed. Such changes could make a system unstable or prevent future updates from installing properly, it says.
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The rumour mill churneth Microsoft is planning to shake up its MS Works package, possibly making it available over the web.â¦
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It&#39;s a market that could use a shake-up. Backup and recovery still can be too expensive and complex for many small and midsize companies that rely on Windows, but the software is vital to their businesses.
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With the first end date deadline for the general availability of Windows XP just six months away, June 30, 2008, there are a number of XP licensing questions that are still on the minds of internal licensing desk managers and enterprise IT departments.Part of the confusion comes from the terminology Microsoft uses to describe the end date for license availability, and part comes from the lack of a simple description of what the terminology actually means.Following conversations with three different Microsoft Volume Licensing Specialists, most of InfoWorld's questions have been answered.There are basically just three types of system licenses available:* An FPP (Full Packaged Product) license, which is the boxed, shrink-wrapped version consumers obtain from retailers. * A Direct OEM/System Builder license, which comes in two versions. For the most part, a Direct OEM license is what a computer manufacturer like Dell, HP, or Lenovo would have preinstalled on the systems they sell. An OEM System Builder license is targeted more at VARs (Value Added Resellers), LARs (Large Account Resellers), and smaller white-box manufacturers who are registered with Microsoft but who buy their license through a distributor like Ingram Micro. * Volume Licensing programs, which include large enterprises as well as government and educational institutions. Volume licenses cover only Windows Client upgrades; otherwise the full operating system license is acquired as FPP or through either Direct OEM or OEM System Builder.The only OS license available through a Volume program is a Windows Vista Business Upgrade. Companies must already have a qualified OS on their systems, such as XP, so terms of buying XP rather than Vista, this scenario is moot. Therefore, the Microsoft end date availability is based on FPP and both versions of the OEM licensing systems.Both FPP licenses purchased from a retailer and Direct OEM licensees have a June 30, 2008 cutoff date for ordering an XP license.This does not mean a retailer or an OEM cannot sell XP after that date. It means neither entity can order XP after that date. If a retailer or an OEM wanted to order thousands of PCs with XP installed they can do so as long as the order is placed before June 30.An OEM System Builder License, used by VARs, LARS, and white-box manufacturers and sold through distribution, have a January 31, 2009 cutoff date for ordering an XP license. Again, if the distributor has enough XP inventory before the January 31 cutoff, it can keep selling XP, and resellers can keep buying it until there is no more inventory, so to speak, left.The same deadlines apply if you wanted to purchase additional licenses for additional virtual machines. It does not matter. Also bear in mind that the preinstalled operating system may not be transferred to another PC.Some complications arise due to the fact that some direct OEMs also have System Builder licenses. It is unclear how that affects their sales to the retail market or if selling direct to their largest customers.If a company discovers it needs more XP-enabled systems but the ordering date is past and the distributors they order from have no XP inventory left, is it too late? The surprising answer is no. Companies can trigger the so-called downgrade option. Microsoft will allow companies to downgrade to XP after an initial purchase of Vista. In other words, if the deadline has come and gone the company orders X number of computers from their supplier with Vista, it then uses the downgrade option to reinstall XP.One Volume Licensing Specialists at Microsoft said that while this may appear to be paying twice for one operating system this is not the case. The purchaser simply owns both OSes, and if in a year or two the company decides to finally upgrade to Vista, it already owns that license.What if your company has a site licenses for, say, 5,000 copies of XP and have used only 4,500. Can it get the other 500 of XP indefinitely? The answer is yes, if they were ordered before the deadline. "This is a perpetual license," said one of the specialists.In point of fact, the current XP ordering deadlines are nothing new, according to Rob Horwitz, CEO of Microsoft Directions, an independent company that follows Microsoft technology. OEMs have always been given about two years to transition to the new operating system, said Horwitz. "In the beginning, Microsoft thought they could speed up the time for shifting to the next OS, but certain realities came into play, such as responding to customer demand for more driver availability and bug fixes in Vista," said Horwitz.
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SANTA CLARA, CALIF. -- Noting two evolving areas of software licensing, Microsoft is pondering how to license when multiple instances of an application are run on a single computer, but is not eyeing a plan for utility-based computing, in which charges are based on individual usage.
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The software maker says the time has come to offer business software in versions that are both hosted and not hosted.
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(InfoWorld) - A U.K. company that has made a business out of selling preowned licenses for Microsoft Corp. products has brought its products to the U.S. for the first time. Disclic recently closed its first deal selling licenses it procured from companies going out of business in the U.K. to a company in the U.S., said Noel Unwin, a director of Discount-licensing.com, the Web site and trading arm of the company that sells the licenses. Discount-licensing.com sold licenses for Microsoft Office it obtained from two companies that divested their property in the U.K. -- Food Brokers and Quidnunc -- to WaferTech LLC, a U.S. semiconductor manufacturer, he said. Discount-licensing.com also recently made its first deal selling licenses it procured from a U.S. company to companies in the U.K., Unwin added. Discount-Licensing.com sold preowned licenses from an insolvent U.S.company, Cornell Trading Inc., to U.K. businesses in September and October. The U.K. businesses that purchased former Cornell Trading licenses were Benefit 2 Business, which purchase licenses for Exchange 2003; Abnormal Loads, which purchased licenses for Terminal Server 2003 CALs; 3D Computer Systems, which purchased licenses for Exchange, Windows and Terminal Server 2003 CALs; and Orange IS, which purchased Office 2003 Professional licenses. Unwin said his company did not sell preowned licenses in the U.S. until recently because it believed there would be license restrictions in reselling licenses from one region to another. Discount-licensing.com worked with Microsoft to ensure this was not the case before selling its licenses, he said. Microsoft could not be reached for comment through its public relations firm on Wednesday. But the company has acknowledged in the past it is legal to transfer product licenses for software owned by companies that are divesting. Disclic has built its Discount-licensing.com business since November 2005, gathering up Microsoft product licenses from insolvent companies and distributing them through its Web site. The company recently updated its site with comprehensive product search and ordering features, so customers can do their entire transactions online. Customers can access Discount-licensing.com's product search feature here Unwin said prices for U.S. customers are generally 15 percent less expensive than prices for U.K. customers. The company sells preowned licenses for about 35 percent to 40 percent cheaper than the original cost of the license. Because of these discounts, software resellers have been purchasing software from Discount-licensing.com to sell to their customers so they can make higher margins, Unwin added. Discount-licensing.com has added several hundred new customers so far in 2006, in addition to repeat customers. The most popular licenses the company sells are for Office XP, Unwin said. Other product licenses that do well include the SQL Server database and Exchange 2003 messaging server.
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They need help Comment Ashlee, I read you piece (NY Times bans Microsoft analysts from Microsoft stories) over the weekend and man did you hit a chord with me. I sweat this stuff, Iâm accused quite often of being a Microsoft shill and, as you point out, there is actually a cottage industry that has cropped up making that accusation to keep me from saying anything negative about OSS (open source software) or Apple. Since Iâve been doing the analyst thing for well over a decade, I think most journalists know I answer questions as honestly as I can and, while I do make mistakes, they are honest ones.â¦
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BetaNews is reporting that the auction site will be dropping Microsoft&#39;s .NET support somtime in January 2005. &quot;Auction site eBay announced to members on its Web site Wednesday afternoon that it will drop
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InfoWorld - SaaS (software as a service) platform vendor NetSuiteÂ has released SuiteBundler, a tool its partner ISVs and VARs can use to create reusable applications for verticals.
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UK mesh pioneer taken out of administration
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Also: Microsoft plans new BizTalk release for this year. [News.com Extra]