Microsoft flattens Pyramid in grey market row
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Settles parallel import fight with UK distie Microsoft has settled a copyright infringement dispute with UK-based Pyramid Distribution over so-called "parallel importing".â¦
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In what&#39;s being called a shrewd licensing move, Microsoft last week put its competitors on the defensive and avoided price increases for customers by announcing it would not charge extra fees for server software running on dual-core, processor-based
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Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c51447)  has announced the addition of the Pyramid Research, Inc report:  Demystifying Opex & Capex Budgets - Feedback from Operator Network  Managers to their offering.
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SEATTLE -- Microsoft will do what it has long said could not be done: sell a stripped-down version of its flagship Windows software.
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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said Monday that the Windows application platform is to be fitted with "Fluent UI" ribbon capabilities now offered in Office 2007.The ribbon UI presents a new interface in Office 2007. "We usability-tested it massively, and fortunatel, it has had a very strong positive reaction," Gates said during a keynote presentation the 2008 Office System Developer Conference in San Jose, Calif. "We in the next version of Windows will be using this Fluent UI quite a bit across a number of applications," he said. "It turns out it's a user interface that works very well for the pen and touch [interfaces] as well as being a better way of revealing application functionality."The Fluent UI represented "a major risk that Microsoft took," Gates said. But the older interface with its dropdown menus was hiding so much functionality that the company was being asked for features that were already there but were concealed, he said.At the conference, Microsoft is promoting Office as a development platform with users able to write extensions. During Gates's presentation, third party applications were shown that extended Office with custom development, such as the MindJet MindManager planning application and FedEx's QuickShip for processing FedEx shipments from within Microsoft Outlook.During a subsequent question-and-answer session with the audience, Gates was asked to compare and contrast opportunities for developers working with platforms like Microsoft's with platforms like open source. Gates responded, "Our platform is a commercial platform where customers expect a very high level of service, a very high level of integration, but the nice thing about it is they are willing to pay for software."Free software has always been around, he said. "We've always had free software out there, it's not really a new thing. In fact, I'd say in some ways it's less of a factor than it's ever been," Gates said.Everyone has the same business model, he said: Software developers have free versions of their software, inexpensive software, and robust commercial versions of their software. "The commercial environment, I think, will always be the pre-eminent thing in terms of providing business productivity," said Gates.He advised those who want to develop free software to be careful which licensing model they choose and to select an option that does not restrict commercial versions of their software.Asked about Yahoo, which has rejected Microsoft's $44.6 billion acquisition offer, Gates said the question was whether Yahoo should be a media company or focus on engineering. In an ad model, scale is needed, he said. Yahoo's engineering could be combined with what Microsoft has done, he said.Gates's overall presentation did not impress one attendee, who nonetheless was impressed with Gates himself."Bill is definitely a visionary, and he's one of the greatest men in the 20th century, but I have to wonder how much of that was just reading from a script," said Aaron Alanen, senior consultant at Sogeti."I did see in his questions later on that he really had some deeper knowledge," Alanen said.During Gates's presentation, he also played a tongue-in-cheek video about what he would do during his upcoming semi-retirement from Microsoft. Included were possibilities such as getting into politics, joining the rock band U2, and becoming a rapper or actor. Guests featured in the video included, among others, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Bono from U2, and George Clooney.
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New .mobi and .jobs, a shift in the ownership of .net
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After years of expensive litigation aimed at weakening its hold on the software market, Microsoft (MSFT:Nasdaq - news - research) is on the verge of settling with nearly all of its opponents.
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A new Web Services for Management (WS-Management) specification edited by Alan Geller (Microsoft) has been published. This initial joint publication of the specification names Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Dell
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The computer is impersonal again If you thought adverts on the web have become more offensive and more intrusive than ever before, then it might be time to find alternatives to using software from Microsoft.â¦
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Microsoft continues to make acquisitions to boost its online services and advertising strategy. Early Wednesday, the company said it snapped up Multimap, a U.K. company that provides online mapping for Europe, North America, and Australia.
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(InfoWorld) - Companies that want to move beyond cutting and pasting information into Excel spreadsheets will have to adopt a set of APIs and create lightweight mashup applications that automate business processes, executives said during a Webcast Thursday. The event was a first of a projected series of online discussions hosted by software provider Nexaweb, which also announced a partnership with Kapow Technologies. Under the agreement, Kapow will help companies implement its Mashup Server, a visual scripting tool for making Web 2.0 applications, along with Nexaweb's platform, whose platform focuses on AJAX (asynchronous Java and XML) within service-oriented data systems. The idea is that companies that are trying to create a more efficient IT environment based on SOA could also develop online applications that tie into those systems. Kapow Technologies CTO Stefan Andreasen said the partnership would facilitate the creation of so-called enterprise mashups, which combine services in network-based data into multiple applications and make them available through a dashboard of some kind. These kinds of tools make it much easier for companies to offer self-service features to their users, he said, while making use of existing IT infrastructure. "This is not a competition with SOA but a complement that meets a different set of needs," he said. The mashups will give users better-automated tasks and the ability to deliver software programs more quickly, Andreasen said. They would in essence be what developers are calling RIAs that use APIs, such as SOAP and RSS, and offer a downloadable "offline" mode as well as an online one. "The number-one obstacle is to get access to the data," he said. "A lot of enterprises have 6,000 internal Web applications with no API ... the information the knowledge workers have is only what they can personally see on their screen." Nexaweb's chief architect, Bob Buffone, said the prime candidates for enterprise mashups will be complex, composite applications with dynamic, non-linear workflows. "We're not talking about (spreadsheets) with a few rows of information. We're talking about data that has thousands of rows that need to be updated in real-time," he said, using the example of a foreign exchange application that has to update information about currency prices with minimal latency. "Right now in companies, there's a lot of heads-down data entry. These kinds of applications will need something that doesn't require a mouse, more of a tab-type interface." Buffone said it will be important that enterprise mashups leverage existing code tools, and development infrastructure and build on the paradigms that are already in place. The goal is to create software that has the performance of a desktop application but can be deployed in a browser -- or just on a PC. "This concept of offline Web application is going to grow predominantly in the enterprise," he predicted. "No one can always be sure the Internet is going to be there when they use their application." Although some firms have been making their own mashups on an ad-hoc basis, Andreasen suggested that is going to change. "To make this work well, you will need a mashup infrastructure and products in place to leverage the opportunity," he said. Nexaweb will be hosting its next Webcast, on securing Web 2.0 applications, next Thursday. Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
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Microsoft's decision to reposition its .Net Passport identification system comes as Monster is dropping support for the authentication service.
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(InfoWorld) - Business Objects has released the second of three planned versions of its Crystal Decisions business intelligence software suiteÂ aimed at midmarket users. Rather than viewing other BI pure-plays as its main competitors, the vendor increasingly sees Microsoft as its rival for midmarket customers' loyalty and is trying to differentiate its offerings accordingly. Crystal Decisions Professional Edition, which debuted Tuesday, follows the February release of a Standard version of the suite aimed at users with no previous experience with BI software. The Professional version builds on the Standard Edition, adding data integration so that users can extract information from a variety of databases, including Microsoft's SQL Server, IBM's DB2, and databases from Oracle, Sybase, and Ingres. Still to come is the third member of the family, Crystal Decisions Premium Edition, due out in the fourth quarter. The Premium release will also include performance management functions such as score cards, metrics, and goals, according to Todd Rowe, vice president of worldwide midmarket business at Business Objects. "We took a stair-step approach in adding functionality" when designing midmarket versions of the company's enterprise BI software, Rowe said. All offerings share the same code set so thatÂ a midmarket user has the ability to upgrade to the enterprise software. The midmarket offerings are focused on simplicity, integration, and aggressive price points, he added. Business Objects has added wizards, prebuilt templates, reports, and data marts for users who are migrating to their first BI software from simple spreadsheet applications. The vendor has also spent time creating integrated suites since, unlike enterprise users, midmarket customers don't tend to have employees who work on tying together individual BI modules. The midmarket products sell from theÂ low tens of thousands of U.S. dollars compared to $100,000 to $150,000 for enterprise versions. Business Objects defines midmarket companies as those reporting less than $1 billion in revenue or with less than 1,000 staff. With perhaps only 10 to 15 percent of those customers currently using BI software, Rowe said the primary competitor for Business Objects in the midmarket is market awareness. The market is also highly fragmented, with analysts estimating that 18 software vendors divide up 80 percent of the market. "Microsoft is our primary competitor for midmarket for the medium to longer term," Rowe said. "We're no longer focusing as much on CognosÂ or other BI pure-plays." Business Objects is trying to differentiate itself from Microsoft by offering Crystal Decisions not only on Windows but on two flavors of Linux: Red Hat and Suse. The company also believes it's ahead of the game in providing the Professional version that includes BI and data integration in a single product. Business Objects has made a number of acquisitions in performance management, including the recent purchase of Cartesis for around $300 million. The vendor is currently integrating the planning and budgeting capabilities it has bought but will look to offer that functionality for the midmarket in 2008, Rowe said. Business Objects has yet to determine what that midmarket budgeting and planning product will look like. It could be the fourth member of the Crystal Decisions family, or itÂ could be a separate offering, he added. Pricing for Crystal Decisions Professional Edition starts from $35,000 in North America for five concurrent users on a single Windows or Linux server. Pricing elsewhere in the world will vary according to local market conditions. The software is available in 12 languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.
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Ford has ditched Oracle&#39;s online purchasing system eVEREST, because of flaws in the software. The car manufacturer has reportedly spent more than $200m trying to get the system to work since it bought it in 2000.
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In an attempt to level the playing field with Google Earth, Microsoft has scooped up Caligari, makers of 3-D rendering software.
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Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday it may  offer a free, advertising-supported version of its basic word  processing and spreadsheet software, in an apparent bid to fend  off a nascent challenge from Google Inc. in the business  software market.
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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¦