Ballmer talks up software as a service
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Core difficulties The most compelling part of Steve Ballmer's hour-long keynote during this week's Worldwide Partner Conference were the first and last five minutes.â¦
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Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer is reviving profit and sales growth by stemming customer defections to Linux, a computer operating system available for free on the Internet.
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The company plans to making available free software that connects its Windows operating system to software services delivered on the Internet.
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(InfoWorld) - While it's taken Microsoft Corp. half a decade to bring out a new version of its client operating system, the real development work on Windows Vista only took around two years, according to the head of the company. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive officer, reflected on what Microsoft had learned from the process and delays inÂ bringing Vista to marketÂ during a question-and-answer session followingÂ the business launch of the OSÂ Thursday in New York. "Time is sort of a funny thing," Ballmer said. "You need to give new technologies time to incubate before you try to bring them together," he added. "Let each [technology] come to market individually and then do the integration." Microsoft spent the first two years of its Vista development process building a variety of new technologies and then struggled to integrate them, according to Ballmer. The third year went smoothly as Microsoft's developers focused their efforts on the Windows XP Service Pack 2, with some of that technology ultimately winding up in Vista, not XP. The bulk of what has now been released as Vista Microsoft developed in the last two to two and half years, Ballmer said. With his habitual flair for superlatives, Ballmer described Vista as."the highest quality, most secure Windows operating system ever." However, he was quick to add that Microsoft won't rest on its laurels. In its next Windows client OS release, the vendor will look to do more to support the major changes already under way in computer hardware, notably the shift from single-core to multicore processors and improvements in network infrastructure, he said. Microsoft also wants to offer more functionality in its OS for IT administrators so that the software is simpler to manage and for software developers in relation to storage management and other features that didn't make it into Vista, according to Ballmer. A future operating system also needs to take into account the move from software to software-as-a-service or as Ballmer said, "software plus service." Users can expect to see "a lot more service enablement" in the Windows OS, he said. Ballmer estimated that by the time Microsoft launches the consumer versions of Vista and Office 2007 scheduled for Jan. 30, 2007 worldwide, the company will have spent "hundreds of millions of dollars" on marketing the new software. Â
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Windows computing environments are cheaper, more secure, and lower risk than those based on Linux and open-source software, CEO Steve Ballmer asserts in an E-mail sent Wednesday to Microsoft&#39;s customers and partners.
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Software makers are eyeing more ways the one-computer-as-many approach can help businesses and beyond.
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(Source: Webex)  With the growing array of hardware, software, and systems necessary to support businesses, today more than ever, software-as-a-service or on-Demand solutions offer feature-rich, real-time functionality without the burden associated with deploying, managing and supporting an in-house approach.  See if it's right for you.
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A new product lets workers combine simple bits of software to create business tools.
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Thursday detailed his company's progress on Web 2.0, saying the company had launched Popfly and the extension of several other Live Services.
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Speaking at the Gartner Symposium and ITxpo 2004 in Orlando, Florida, yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer outlined new security initiatives, some of which would make it into a pre-Longhorn &#39;Release 2&#39; for Windows, next year.
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Trying to retain Microsoft's dominance in the Indian software market amid increasing competition, company CEO Steve Ballmer brought his campaign Tuesday to the country's leadership.
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As software and services shift online, Microsoft Chief Steve Ballmer feels it is ''better that we cannibalize ourselves.''
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Vishal Sikka, SAP's chief software architect, describes the company's software-as-a-service approach.
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LONDON--Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, speaking to a gathering of reporters here, didn&#39;t pass up the opportunity to take several digs at archrival Apple Computer.
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The company hopes to lure software partners by promising to save them from infrastructure headaches.
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At a New York event, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer launches Vista, Office 2007 to businesses.
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With its open-source model, the company has the potential to shake up the industry, one analyst says.