Microsoft CEO: Merger Strategy Unchanged
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Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O is still  targeting smaller companies for acquisitions, despite  speculation that now-scuttled merger talks with business  software giant SAP AG SAPG.DE signaled a shift in strategy,  Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Tuesday.
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Software group Microsoft  will not launch a product that competes directly with Apple Inc's  iPhone, Chairman Bill Gates said in an interview with Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is expected to mark progress in the company's strategy to provide digital content...
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By MATTHEW FORDAHL    SAN JOSE, Calif.  -- After years of battling Microsoft Corp...
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SEPTEMBER 01, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Addressing a gathering of software industry leaders in Boston today, Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer touted his company&#39;s vision for a bright future and cast doubt
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Yahoo's reputation for being an edgy startup is years out of date, while Microsoft is stodgy, but not as ossified as many might think. So, should the two merge, reconciling the corporate cultures many not be that difficult.
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This week, Martin Taylor, Microsoft&#39;s general manager for platform strategy, isn&#39;t touting any new Microsoft-funded studies aimed to demonstrate that Microsoft&#39;s total-cost-of-ownership numbers beat those of its Linux competitors.
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PC maker says mergers and acquisitions aren't the way to succeed.
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In an interview, Hank Nothhaft says Microsoft--and not life as an independent public company--was the best option for Danger. Nothhaft says he'll stay on through the deal's close, but is headed to greener pastures once Microsoft's done integrating Danger.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft's top executive outlined the company's plan to transition from a traditional software company to offering software plus services for the first time on Tuesday, giving some roadmap details for how the strategy will play out in the next year. In a keynote at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer shed more details on the plan other executives, such as Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, have been teasing out over the past year -- but not many more. He gave a time frame for the early part of the transition but mostly echoed what other executives have said about Microsoft's slow transition to adding hosted business services to its traditional software portfolio. "For software plus services, the time is now," Ballmer said, finishing off the first of a raft of keynotes on the first day of Microsoft's annual partner conference. He said that over the next year, Microsoft will continue to sell mostly on-premises software, but there will be more evidence of the transition to its hybrid model as the year goes on. Since Microsoft began talking about its plan to gradually transition to offering more hosted services last year in a speech by Ozzie at its TechEd Conference in Boston, many noted that the company had no choice. With such an entrenched business in enterprise and consumer desktop software, it would be impossible for Microsoft to be as nimble in offering hosted services as rivals like Google and Salesforce.com, which started their businesses as Web-based services providers. And a warmer reception for hosted services is clearly the direction the enterprise market is heading as businesses become more comfortable accessing Web-based services beyond the traditional consumer staples of e-mail and search that have been popular for years. The transition to providing more services will touch every part of Microsoft's business, but some changes will be more obvious than others, Ballmer said. The user interface will be an important place for innovation in this area, and Microsoft's Silverlight technology is the cornerstone of that, he said. Microsoft introduced Silverlight, a browser plug-in that allows for rich video and interactive media experience to be delivered within Web sites, in April. A solid services platform on which partners can build services and also that they can resell with Microsoft managing and hosting them also will be a clear sign of the transition, Ballmer said. Microsoft already is offering a combination of consumer-oriented services, such as Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Local Search, but will begin bulking up its portfolio of enterprise services as well, he said. Microsoft already has unveiled business services like Exchange Hosted Services for enterprise messaging and Office Live hosted service for small businesses. There will be new and expanded services like these as Microsoft progresses further with its software plus services strategy, Ballmer said.
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The software giant's CFO says a target as big as SAP is less likely, but some big buys could be in Microsoft's future.
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The chief executive of Delta Air Lines  told a U.S. senator on Tuesday there is no merger agreement yet with Northwest Airlines , but the two sides are continuing to work toward a deal.
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Microsoft Corp  Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Thursday the company aims to pursue an independent path, focusing on up to 20 smaller acquisitions of $50 million to $1 billion each annually rather than mega-deals.
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A top Microsoft executive defended desktop application software, the source of the company&#39;s revenue for three decades, arguing on Tuesday that even services-based companies such as Google still need it.The comments by Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft&#39;s business applications division, come as Microsoft is trying to position itself as a company capable of delivering applications over the Internet as well as on PCs, its traditional distribution model.&quot;It&#39;s interesting some our competitors who like to espouse the idea that software is dead,&quot; said Raikes said. &quot;I think they&#39;re worried that actually people like a lot of what they have at their fingertips and the real success is to use a combination.&quot;Microsoft has come under increasing pressure from companies such as Salesforce.com, which specializes in Web-based CRM (customer relationship management) applications and Google, whose&#160;Docs suite is an online alternative to Microsoft&#39;s Office suite. Web-based applications tend to be cheaper, easier to update and require little installation since applications are delivered through a Web browser.Raikes claimed during a keynote to about 3,300 customers and partners at its Convergence conference that only Microsoft can deliver &quot;the best of the traditional software model in combination with software as a service.&quot;Later, Raikes said Google realized its Web-based applications need further enhancement on the desktop by introducing Google Gears, a set of open-source tools to build applications that can run offline and then sync when a computer comes back online.&quot;It&#39;s fascinating to me to see that even some of those companies now are trying to backtrack on what we&#39;ve been saying and to offer things like Gears in order to be able to be offline and or take advantage of global computing power,&quot; Raikes said.Microsoft is using the desktop products such as Outlook e-mail and Internet Explorer as the user interface for hosted versions of its business applications. The big push at the Convergence conference is for the forthcomingrelease of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, previously known by its code-name Titan. It will come in both on-premise and hosted versions.Microsoft, which started its business applications division in 2001, now has 475,000 users of its CRM products in 11,000 customer companies, Raikes said. In its fourth quarter, Microsoft added 85,000 new users, he said.&#160;
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InfoWorld - The president of virtualization software leader VMware Wednesday questioned the strategy of rivals that are integrating virtualization functionality into their operating systems.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates on Thursday sent an e-mail to customers emphasizing the company&#8217;s commitment to being interoperable and stressing that open source and interoperability are not necessarily one and the same.
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Microsoft portrayed its Longhorn decision as a necessary winnowing to hit the 2006 timetable. The announcement on Friday, Microsoft executives insisted, did not point to a setback in software