Microsoft supports rival SWsoft by answering the phone
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'Is that you, Serguei?' Microsoft continues to make nice with non-VMware entities in the server virtualization market. The software maker this week, for example, firmed up a support deal with SWsoft that will see its rival's customers gain access to Microsoft's own army of Windows Server experts.â¦
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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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Just three weeks after Skype development chief Eric Lagier said a Skype version for cell phones was a no-go, the company has signed an agreement with HelloSoft to license its VoIP software to enhance its Windows Mobile client.
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(InfoWorld) - Industry experts maintain that many business applications vendors are still struggling to successfully port their tools to mobile handsets. But some software makers claim that by partnering with wireless specialists to develop their systems, they are selling more licenses to end-users today. While larger business applications companies, including SAP and Salesforce.com, have gone the route of internally developing mobile versions of their existing products, others, such as enterprise software vendors NetSuite and SugarCRM, are finding it makes more sense to partner with third-party wireless applications providers. In addition to the cost savings and reduced time to market that working with such partners allows -- versus architecting their own wireless applications or acquiring firms that can do so, as in the case of Salesforce.com -- advocates of the emerging middleware model for mobile business applications claim the approach results in far more mature wireless services for customers. "We originally approached wireless development internally ourselves, and we've developed a lightweight client that can work in almost any browser. But we found that by enlisting a partner that is focused completely on mobile applications we could create something much more compelling," said John Roberts, chief executive of SugarCRM, in Cupertino, Calf. "Mobilizing a product seems like a straightforward process, but the truth is that understanding the way that a user navigates the handheld application, what needs to be in there and what is most useful, involves a lot more work than taking a traditional application and pushing it to a different form factor," Roberts said. To get its business applications onto smaller screens faster and more effectively, SugarCRM enlisted the help of iEnterprises, a Murray Hill, N.J.-based provider of wireless tools that has long specialized in pushing CRM systems to wireless devices. The company currently offers handheld iterations of CRM products made by IBM's Lotus division, SugarCRM, NetSuite, and Microsoft, along with its own applications. At the core of iEnterprises' strategy is its own Mobile CRM software module, which it also sells as a stand-alone product. Having spent years developing the right mix of features and formats for pushing business applications such as sales force automation (SFA) tools to mobile devices, the company claims it is accelerating the pace with which its partners can offer wireless applications to their customers. "Everyone in business software is trying to build a mobile module, but many vendors are finding creating that is harder than they thought, and that using something like our module makes a lot more sense," said Phil Sheehy vice president of wireless solutions at iEnterprises. "Because of the form factor of today's devices, the limited memory and bandwidth constraints of the network, it's very important and challenging to get the right mix of features into the applications themselves," Sheehy said. "The tools have to have enough utility to be useful, but the temptation for many is to try and cram too much into the program, which has resulted in a lot of products that end-users have found too cumbersome or awkward." Industry analysts continue to criticize the functionality of many mobile business applications for exactly those reasons. "It's going to take years for enterprise applications to become mobile because these were largely designed for the PC within certain parameters, which doesn't port well to the handheld," said Maribel Lopez, analyst with Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research. "Everybody wants mobile business applications but there's still a lot of massaging of the applications themselves that needs to happen before more customers will be ready to increase investment." Even those companies building the mobile devices agree that the middleware model for mobile business applications seems to make a lot of sense. Among the device companies iEnterprises is partnered with is Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry handhelds that have become arguably the most popular wireless business device in North America. "Companies like this that serve in the middleware role are bringing a lot of value to the market by allowing existing CRM companies and their customers to tap into mobility and pull in data from back-end systems," said Tyler Lessard, director of independent software vendor (ISV) alliances at RIM. "These companies have already spent a lot of time focused on making sure that CRM or other business applications work on a BlackBerry in the same way that popular mobile applications such as e-mail do," he said. "The larger applications vendors tend to offer a Web-based interface that can be used on the mobile device, but many customers are already looking for something richer that can store data locally; these customers are looking to middleware vendors to help." The middleware model is becoming so pervasive that some applications vendors have moved to acquire providers of the technologies, including Salesforce.com, which had previously worked with iEnterprises before buying Sendia, a provider of similar mobile products, for $15 million in April 2007. In addition to building wireless versions of its own hosted SFA tools, Salesforce.com has also committed to using Sendia's technologies to build mobile iterations of all the custom applications built by its partners under its AppExchange development program. Customers agree that the middleware-bred mobile systems are getting the job done well. Alan Tamny, national account manager for retail loss prevention specialists Checkpoint Systems, said that his company has been using iEnterprises' Lotus Notes CRM tools, along several other applications developed by the company, for several years with impressive results. Part of the lure of the applications is that they have been specifically tailored to work on the BlackBerry devices that Checkpoint has passed out to its workers, the executive said. "The ultimate endorsement is how well the applications get adopted by salespeople out in the field, as these types of workers won't use something like this unless they really see a benefit. The response has been really strong as these systems have worked so well," Tamny said. "We had to have something that was supported on BlackBerry -- that was probably the biggest driver of going with iEnterprises. But the information fits on the small screen really well and the synchronization with back-end systems works great, which is our biggest concern," he said. "Now our salespeople can truly have constant connectivity, which is a huge advantage in terms of them not having to replicate information into multiple address books and keeping data up-to-date without needing to sit down at a PC." Officials with Vettro, another mobile applications middleware player, said that many Fortune 1000 customers are approaching the firm in hopes of getting more advanced handheld technologies into workers' hands. Rather than building complete wireless applications or versions of other vendors' products, such as iEnterprises, the New York-based company sells its Vettro 360 platform directly to customers, who use it to create their own mobile applications, including field force automation programs. Large applications vendors and end-user firms may someday have the ability to build and support their own mobile applications, but company officials contend that there will likely always be a demand for middleware specialists that can help build and deliver the systems. "There's room for a lot of different types of players. It would be too simplistic to ever consider that one type of mobile applications provider or one model will take over. It really comes down to how much you're trying to do, and how core your mobile strategy is," said JiYoung Kim, vice president of marketing at Vettro. "The market is already evolving quickly," Kim said. "We started out building applications that largely shielded our customers from the complexity of mobility, but things have already begun to move more into customization and tailoring applications to whatever type of interface a customer needs to best configure their mobile devices for end-users."
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InfoWorld - SWsoft, the company behind the&#160;Parallels Desktop virtualization software for Macintosh, expects to release a beta version of a server edition of the software in the next four to six weeks. It is also working on new management tools for the datacenter that will control other vendors&#39; virtualization products.
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Microsoft on Wednesday posted advice for enterprises relying on Software Update Services (SUS) to prevent network slowdowns and server bottlenecks as they update thousands of PCs to Windows XP Service Pack 2 ...
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The software giant may be developing a Windows Mobile OS-based competitor.
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Microsoft releases Windows mapping, search, functions for phones.
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By MATTHEW FORDAHL    SAN JOSE, Calif.  -- After years of battling Microsoft Corp...
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Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has taken steps to help enterprise developers who want to test their applications against Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2).
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Software is designed to allow free video calls between Skype users with Windows or Mac machines.
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After long delay, SWsoft is set to test Windows version of its software that subdivides single copy of OS to look like several.
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The third-party widgets platform with Microsoft ties will ship with Windows Mobile phones, thanks to a renewed partnership with Microsoft.
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When Microsoft realized that enterprises needed help deploying and&#160;managing mobile phones, it turned to a partner it first found in the 1980s.Microsoft approached Mort Rosenthal recently with the idea of starting a company that could help enterprises design, deploy, and manage Windows Mobile mobile phones and services, Rosenthal said. He plans to formally launch the company, called Enterprise Mobile, on Tuesday at the CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment conference in San Francisco. Microsoft is a minority stakeholder in the Watertown, Massachusetts, company, which has quietly been doing business since June.Rosenthal began working with Microsoft in the 1980s when he founded Corporate Software, a company that resold software to large companies and offered them technical service and support.The enterprise mobile market looks similar to the software market at that time, when software was largely sold through retail stores without channels or support for enterprises, he said.&quot;What comes from the [mobile] market is consumer-driven devices,&quot; he said. &quot;We&#39;re about turning those consumer driven devices into enterprise devices.&quot;Enterprise Mobile will do that by offering a wide range of services to enterprises, starting with development of a vision, through to deployment and then including management and support services.Currently, an enterprise has to work with different types of companies that provide a range of services including security, asset management and expense management, said Kitty Weldon, an analyst at Current Analysis. &quot;What Enterprise Mobile brings is the ability for companies to just say, &#39;phew, I can go to this one set of people and they can do everything&#39;,&quot; she said.Enterprise Mobile will work exclusively with Windows Mobile phones so it won&#39;t serve companies that want to support a variety of devices, including BlackBerrys. However, there&#39;s a large market for companies that are happy to standardize on Windows Mobile and other providers similar to Enterprise Mobile might pop up to serve the heterogeneous companies, Weldon said.Enterprise Mobile customers can pay for the services in a number of ways, including a flat consulting fee for the design of a system and then a monthly per-device fee or a per-incident fee for ongoing support.One of the most attractive parts of the ongoing service offering will be that Enterprise Mobile serves as a single point of contact, Rosenthal said. &quot;Today if you have questions, do you call the operator, Microsoft or the OEM?&quot; he said. &quot;Here, we&#39;re the one throat to choke.&quot;Another problem facing many enterprises is challenges around device procurement. If an administrator is designing a new mobile deployment to launch in a few months, it&#39;s virtually impossible to find out if a chosen device will continue to be available by then. Operators and handset makers aren&#39;t forthcoming with that information, Rosenthal said.That&#39;s different from the PC world, where manufacturers will continue to support and make older models even while they introduce new ones.Enterprise Mobile hopes to help solve this problem by working closely with operators and phone makers and possibly even to create its own inventory of devices in order to maintain availability longer, Rosenthal said.Currently, Enterprise Mobile doesn&#39;t have much competition, Weldon said. Companies such as IBM, Accenture, and Electronic Data Systems do help enterprises deploy and manage mobile phones, but they often do so only in tandem with other large jobs, and they may outsource the work to various companies with expertise in different components, she said.However, Microsoft expects to partner with other companies like Enterprise Mobile that might emerge. &quot;We&#39;re kick-starting a new level of engagement&quot; with Enterprise Mobile, said John O&#39;Rourke, general manager of Microsoft&#39;s mobile communications business.Enterprise Mobile has implemented beta versions of Systems Center Mobile Device Manager 2008, mobile device management software that Microsoft plans to introduce on Tuesday.
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Yahoo Inc. YHOO.O on Wednesday said   its mobile services is now available for download on phones   that use Microsoft Corp.'s MSFT.O Windows Mobile operating   system.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft's recently announced Windows Mobile 6 software for smart phones is a step forward for the company, offering some important improvements over previous versions of the software. But just how good is the new software? On Thursday, Microsoft offered me the chance to play with Windows Mobile 6 ahead of the 3GSM show in Barcelona, Spain, next week. The short demonstration, which took place at Microsoft's office in Singapore, was done using a currently available handset: the High Tech ComputerÂ (HTC) S620 smart phone. The S620, also known by its code name Excalibur, sports a small QWERTY keypad, a 2.4-inch QVGA (320 pixels by 240 pixels) screen, and support for GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) networks. Powered by Texas Instruments' 200MHz OMAP 850 processor, the smart phone has 128MB of ROM and 64MB of DDR (double data rate) DRAM. But enough about the handset used for the demonstration. What about the software? At first glance, Microsoft's attempt to make Windows Mobile 6 look more like Vista has resulted in a better-looking piece of software, with a new font and a cleaner overall appearance. But the most important improvements to Windows Mobile 6 aren't cosmetic. For starters, Microsoft has added the ability for users to search e-mails and other information stored on Exchange Server 2007 from a smart phone. Windows Mobile 6 also allows users to configure their push mail settings and out-of-office notifications directly from their smart phone, instead of having to use their PCs. Previous versions of Windows Mobile for PDAs allowed users toÂ view Office documents, and that capability has now been added to the smart phone version of the software. In addition, users can now edit their documents. That feature may be useful for some Word and Excel documents, but I have a hard time believing anyone will be using Windows Mobile 6 to edit, or even view, PowerPoint presentations. The screens on these types of devices are just too small for this to be practical. Other improvements to Windows Mobile 6 include offering more information about the people on your contact list. Start typing the name of a contact, say "John" for example, and Windows Mobile 6 brings up a list of contacts named John. Clicking on any one of these names brings detailed information about the contact, including different phone numbers and e-mail addresses, as well as information about your last call -- or missed call -- with the contact. Microsoft also improved the browser and instant-messaging functions in Windows Mobile. For example, you can send text or voice messages to your MSN contacts, while chatting with several contacts simultaneously. If a contact doesn't respond, you can also send a "nudge," which causes the user's phone to vibrate, letting them know that they've received a message. Apart from these features, what struck me most about Windows Mobile 6 was its speed. The software seems much faster than previous versions. Applications opened instantly, without making the user wait. Overall, I was impressed by the newest version of Windows Mobile. Previous versions did not appeal to me, but the improved speed and added features mean Windows Mobile 6 is worth a closer look if you're in the market for a smart phone.
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Click cancel to continue Microsoft has admitted that the latest update to its Windows Genuine Advantage program will phone back to Redmond even if the user clicks cancel.â¦