Nortel Outlines Roadmap for Microsoft Partnership
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Next year will see the first iteration of Microsoft Corp's collaboration technology with PBX features supplied by Nortel Networks Corp.
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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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At a conference for users of its Project software, Microsoft demonstrated a variety of features that likely will be in the next version of the project management application.
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MANHASSET, NY - Nortel Networks Corp. announced Wednesday (Oct. 27) that it will postpone releasing its third-quarter 2004 earnings until December, as the network infrastructure company continues to work
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Microsoft is planning to include the ability for developers to add Windows Live services to applications in the next version of Visual Studio.
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(InfoWorld) - Cisco Systems and Microsoft will announce progress on a 2-year-old effort to link their separate technologies for network client health screening, commonly known as "network access control," according to sources familiar with the companies' plans.Â  The companies will use The Security Standard conference in Boston to unveil application program interfaces (APIs) in Microsoft's upcoming Vista operating system that will allow Cisco NAC-compliant switches and routers to evaluate the security posture of Vista systems. Network access control technology allows companies to perform health checks on endpoint devices such as PCs and mobile devices before they are granted access to company networks. For example, worker PCs might be checked to make sure they are not infected with a virus, have up-to-date antivirus definitions, and a desktop firewall enabled before being allowed onto a corporate LAN. Cisco first unveiled products that support its NAC architecture in June 2004. Since then it has slowly expanded NAC support from routers to switches and introduced a NAC appliance, formerly known as "Clean Access." Microsoft's Network Admission Protection (NAP) client health screening architecture has always been linked to its upcoming desktop and server operating system releases Vista and Longhorn, both due in 2007. In the face of strong customer pressure to simplify the competing architectures, the two companies said in October, 2004 that they would integrate NAC and NAP. However, the companies have been sparing with details of the collaboration during the two-year project, prompting speculation that the promised integration was more PR than reality. On Wednesday, the companies plan to show that they have made progress, putting features into Vista that allow companies with Cisco's Secure Access Control Server (ACS), Vista desktop systems, and a Longhorn network policy server to provide security status information from the Vista Security Center directly to Cisco switches, which can then evaluate the status against network policies. Systems that violate one or more security policies can be shunted off to quarantine for remediation, according to John Pescatore, an analyst at Gartner who has seen a demonstration of the system. The system will also allow companies to push out security updates, such as antivirus signatures, and actively monitor compliance, so users who turn off antivirus or firewall software after being granted access might have those programs automatically reactivated, Pescatore said. Cisco NAC and Microsoft NAP integration will make it easier for companies to deploy NAC technology, because they will not need to deploy any additional software client from Cisco, as is currently required, he said. "If you're a pure Cisco network and windows environment, and you're planning to go to Vista soon, you don't have to spend a lot of money," he said. However, the benefits of integrated NAC and NAP are at least a year away, as companies will have to wait for the delivery of Longhorn server and widespread adoption of Vista on enterprise desktops, according to Pescatore. "I think it's a 1990s announcement," said Jon Oltsik, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "They're treating the symptom but not the disease. Users want open solutions that support Linux clients and wireless and any kind of switch or router," he said. The integration between Microsoft and Cisco, while good for those companies, will hinder open standards efforts like the Trusted Computing Group's Trusted Network Connect (TNC) standard, Oltsik said. "I wish I had the money [Cisco and Microsoft] spent on this to get nothing," he said. "This is a big step back for client security."
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Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday plans to make available a connector kit that allows users to easily link Microsoft's Office Project Server 2003 with SAP AG's ERP (enterprise resource planning) products.
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Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has released Navision 4.0, a product that integrates financial, manufacturing, distribution, customer-management, supply chain, analytics and e-commerce data. The software is the first major release to come out of Microsoft's acquisition of Danish firm Navision in 2002.
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Cisco Systems Inc. is set to offer starting Monday a tool to help small and medium-sized businesses use Microsoft Corp. CRM (customer relationship management) software in combination with a Cisco IP (Internet Protocol) communication system.
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Microsoft Monday again revised its Windows server roadmap, this time delaying for nearly two years the release of features for controlling network access - in part to implement a new plan to develop the technology in unison with similar technology from
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Top executives from the two companies plan to host a press conference and webcast in late December or January as part of a monthlong interoperability webcast series put on by Microsoft.
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Verizon Communications Inc. will use Microsoft Corp.'s software technology to deliver video services over high-speed data lines, the companies said on Friday.
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Nortel Networks Corp. NT.TO said on  Thursday its cost-cutting plan will save $500 million in 2005,  and even more in future years, as it eliminates fewer jobs than  forecast, but plans to exit real estate.
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Microsoft Corp.  unveiled plans  on Sunday to work with hardware manufacturers to deliver on the  company&#039;s ambitions to use its software to simplify how workers  communicate with one another.
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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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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft and Cisco Systems played the role of proud parents on Sept. 6. But with so many questions about when NAC-NAP, as itâs been called, will be available, and how it will work with non-Windows clients and non-Cisco infrastructure, itâs been hard to figure out what the companies created. Now other companies with a dog in the NAC fight are stepping up with their own plans. Last week, it was Juniper Networks and Symantec, announcing a strategic partnership to build integrated, standards-based access control and end-point compliance solutions. The companies will integrate their end-point compliance and access control solutions, such as Juniperâs Unified Access Control and Symantecâs Sygate Enterprise Protection, to create standards-based solutions. âNAC is still immature, but itâs growing fast. Thereâs real value in collaborating in that area to drive adoption in the customer accounts we share,â said Jeremy Burton, group president of enterprise security and data management at Symantec. As opposed to Cisco and Microsoft, Juniper and Symantec will make their integration comply with the Trusted Network Connect (TNC) architecture. âWe want to make sure that what we bring to market allows customers to leverage their existing relationships,â said Hitesh Shech, vice president of security products at Juniper. The thorniest questions are about security policy definition and enforcement, which is what Symantec and Juniper focus on, Shech said. Steve Hannah, a Juniper engineer and co-chair of the TNC subgroup within the Trusted Computing Group, said architectures such as UAC, NAP, NAC, and TNC must converge. Even Microsoft is humming along to that tune. Mark Ashida, general manager of enterprise networking servers at Microsoft, said that his company has already proved NAP interoperability with other 802.1x-compliant network infrastructure providers. Microsoft will demonstrate NAC policy enforcement with gear from Enteresys, Extreme, Foundry, and Hewlett-Packard at Interop in New York this week, Ashida said. That all makes Cisco more Microsoftâs âMr. Right Now,â than âMr. Right.â
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Microsoft used a Seattle conference to show off some features of the next version of Project.