Microsoft buys data management vendor
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Stratature's software manages a central repository that can be used to share information among disparate applications, including Office and SQL Server.
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Microsoft Corp. on Friday said that together with Dell Inc. it will provide the Air Force with software and related support services to simplify the acquisition process in an agreement worth up to $500 million over six years.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft has offered to buy enterprise search software company Fast Search And Transfer for 6.6 billion Norwegian kroner ($1.2 billion), it said Tuesday.
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(InfoWorld) - MicrosoftÂ  has bolstered its group-policy desktop management offering with the acquisition of New Hampshire software vendor DesktopStandard. Under the terms of the cash deal, Microsoft is acquiring the company's GPOVault, PolicyMaker Standard Edition, Registry Extension, Software Update and Share Manager products. Microsoft plans to integrate them into its Group Policy Management Console (GPMC), which sets standard policies -- such as which users have access to certain information or applications -- for desktop and laptop computers across an enterprise, said Praerit Garg, a senior director in the Microsoft Windows Enterprise Management division. The acquisition is especially important in providing GPMC better change-management functionality, Garg said. Managing changes in group-policy objects created by different administrators in an organization is one of the "pain points" customers said they were having with managing Windows computers across their companies. GPOVault especially should help alleviate this problem, he added. Microsoft also is acquiring a talented group of employees -- about 35 in all -- Garg said will help the company develop its next-generation of group-policy management tools. However, Microsoft did not acquire all of DesktopStandard's portfolio. Twenty of DesktopStandard's employees, under the direction of former DesktopStandard Chief Executive Officer John Moyer, have formed another company -- BeyondTrust Corp. -- which will sell Policy Maker Application Security as its flagship product. Microsoft decided not to purchase Policy Maker Application Security from DesktopStandard because it was not consistent with the company's group-policy management plan going forward, Garg said. The product, which BeyondTrust's Moyer said was the fastest-growing product at DesktopStandard, allows users to have elevated privileges to certain applications without granting users temporary administrator rights to every application. The next version of Windows, Windows Vista, will tackle the same issue with a new feature called User Account Control that will allow network administrators to grant individual users temporary administrator passwords. The key difference between that feature and Policy Maker Application Security is that administrators can set up elevated rights for users when they are using an application, giving the privileges to the application, not the user, said Scott McCarley, director of marketing for BeyondTrust. This is because with Policy Maker Application Security, the user will not need a temporary administrator password to get into the applications he or she needs, he said. "We believe our customers can't give out administrative passwords to all of their users [to access applications]," he said. Though the purchase of DesktopStandard is closely timed with the planned delivery of Windows Vista to business customers -- which Microsoft expects will happen next month -- Garg said Microsoft did not purchase the company specifically for Vista's release. However, Eric Voskuil, former chief technology officer for DesktopStandard and now a software architect at Microsoft, said that many of DesktopStandard's customers time their purchases of group policy-management software with product migrations. The release of Vista and the subsequent adoption of the OS by businesses should give the products a sales boost, he said. "As people transition to Vista, it will be a natural tendency to want to standardize the [group policy] configuration," Voskuil said. Both BeyondTrust and the employees from DesktopStandard who will now work within Microsoft's Windows Enterprise Management Division will remain in offices in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Voskuil said. Prior to the acquisition, DesktopStandard had two offices in Portsmouth; Microsoft will take over one, and BeyondTrust will occupy the other.
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Backed up and integrated IBM plans on purchasing Ontario-based data protection firm DataMirror for approximately $161m. IBM will pay cash for the company, acquiring all outstanding stock for $25.88 per share.â¦
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NOVEMBER 15, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Dell Inc. and Microsoft Corp. said today that they&#39;re working together to integrate their systems management applications to allow customers to update server hardware and software with a single tool.
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(InfoWorld) - Two years after creating a division that offers managed services, MicrosoftÂ has signed three more pilot customers and continues to expand its datacenter investments to pave the way for more deployments. In addition to its flagship customer, battery maker Energizer Holdings, Microsoft now is providing managed services for XL Capital in Bermuda as well two other customers that do not wish to be named, said Ron Markezich, vice president of Microsoft managed services. He discussed the business in an interview on Monday at the TechEd 2007 conference in Orlando. The company has received a lot of feedback from its initial deployment with Energizer and is using that information as it expands its offering to other customers, he said. Microsoft hosts and manages only its own software products for customers, though those products often run in heterogeneous IT systems. Microsoft manages a deployment of Exchange Server, SharePoint, and Live Communications Server, as well as runs a remote desktop service through its System Management Server product for 8,000 Energizer desktop users, Markezich said. The software runs in Microsoft's datacenter outside of Seattle, where Microsoft also runs the back end for its Windows Live services. Microsoft entered managed services later than many of its competitors, such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, and a diminishing group of independent managed services providers that have found it hard to compete with large vendors or have been acquired. However, Microsoft considers hosted services -- including both online consumer services and enterprise services such as its managed offerings -- as a top priority for the next several years. Two years ago, Microsoft purchased e-mail managed services provider FrontBridge Technologies. The company recently opened a new datacenter in Quincy, Wash., a location chosen for its energy prices, Markezich said. Cost is only one reason customers find managed services an attractive option, Markezich said. He declined to comment specifically on how much Microsoft charges for its services, since it is different depending on the customer. He also wouldn't say how much customers stand to save by having Microsoft manage IT assets rather than host and deploy them on premises. But he said there are other perks to going the managed services route. Unlike many other providers of managed services, Microsoft does not charge customers for rolling out a software update, so customers can get the latest software from the company without having to purchase it and deploy it themselves. "We don't say, to roll it out you have to pay us more," Markezich said. "It just comes as part of the standard service fee." Microsoft is currently deploying the newest version of its Office suite, Office 2007, at Energizer, he said. Markezich said customers also like having Microsoft host and manage their software for them because it frees up IT employees and resources that can be used in another area of the business.
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Microsoft has offered to buy Norwegian Internet-search software firm Fast Search & Transfer for about $1.2 billion.
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Yosemite Technologies, a provider of data protection software for servers, has acquired FileKeeper, which focuses on data protection software for desktop and laptop computers.
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InfoWorld - Hewlett-Packard Co. is acquiring a storage software company that the company says will give it important leverage in the enterprise-class network-attached storage (NAS) market.
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Microsoft has offered to buy enterprise search software company Fast Search And Transfer for 6.6 billion Norwegian kroner ($1.2 billion), it said Tuesday.The acquisition will bring Microsoft powerful high-end search technologies to complement its enterprise infrastructure offering, the company said.Microsoft&#39;s recent efforts in the enterprise search market have been aimed at the other end of the market. In November, It introduced two new low-end enterprise search products,&#160;Search Server 2008 and Search Server Express 2008, both based on its SharePoint Server 2007 business productivity platform. It is pitching&#160;Search Server 2008&#160;as a cheap entry into enterprise search, while the Express version is free for single installations.By integrating Fast Search&#39;s products with SharePoint, and drawing on its worldwide network of partners, Microsoft hopes to bring Fast Search&#39;s products to a wider audience, it said Tuesday.It is also counting on Fast Search&#39;s Norwegian research team to bolster its research efforts in Europe. Microsoft has laboratories in Cambridge, England, and in Copenhagen, Denmark.The directors of Fast Search, based in Oslo, have recommended that shareholders accept the offer, which represents a premium of 42 percent over Fast Search&#39;s share price at close of business on Friday. The companies expect the deal to close in the second quarter, subject to customary closing conditions, including the approval of the holders of at least 90 percent of Fast Search&#39;s shares.Fast Search&#39;s rivals in the market for specialized enterprise search tools include Google, with its Search Appliance; French search company Exalead, and Autonomy, which recently acquired Meridio and Zantaz.Representatives of Fast Search could not immediately be reached for comment.&#160;
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Microsoft Corp.  said on Monday  it will buy Medstory Inc., a California-based start-up company  that develops Web search technology for medical information.
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Blog: To build up the business intelligence tools in Office, Microsoft acquires privately held Stratature.
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The acquisition will bring Microsoft powerful high-end search technologies to complement its enterprise infrastructure offering, Microsoft said.
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Microsoft has purchased Giant Company Software, a small anti-spyware software company it hopes will shore up its security defenses.
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Microsoft today announced that it will buy Giant Company Software, a developer of anti-spyware and Internet security offerings. The Redmond, Washington, firm will use technology from the acquisition
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U.S. software giant Microsoft Corp.   MSFT.O has bought Israeli start-up Gteko, a developer of   technical support products, Israeli newspapers reported on   Wednesday.