RSA: Microsoft says Vista follow-up likely in 2009
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Details are scarce at this point, but the next client OS will have a "fundamental piece of enabling technology," a Microsoft executive said this week, such as a hypervisor or new type of interface.
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Windows Vista was hit by significantly fewer publicly disclosed security flaws in its first year than Windows XP and open source rivals were, the software giant says.
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Microsoft Corp. said on Wednesday it  plans to release the first major update to its Windows Vista  operating system early next year.
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Microsoft expects that a second vote early next year will result in approval, the company said.
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(InfoWorld) - IT procurement managers are finding that Microsoft's Software Assurance maintenance program may not save them money as hoped, according to a survey by Forrester Research. The Microsoft program guarantees updates to new products along with support and training tools. One of the most compelling reasons to buy Software Assurance was free upgrades from, for example, Windows XP to Windows Vista. But Microsoft hasn't stuck to a consistent release schedule, which can actually mean the program could cost companies more money than simply buying new licenses as needed, according to the four-page Forrester report, written by Julie Giera, a vice president at the research firm. For desktops, Software Assurance (SA) is 29 percent the cost of an annual license. If Microsoft goes at least four years between releases -- the company went about five years between XP and Vista releases -- the cost of Software Assurance works out at 116 percent of a new desktop license, Giera wrote. For servers, Software Assurance is about 25 percent the annual cost of a license. "The uncertainty regarding product releases makes it difficult for IT procurement and sourcing professionals to justify a three-year SA renewal," the report said. Microsoft has also not yet published a road map for products released since November 2006, such as Windows Vista, Office 2007, SharePoint 2007, Exchange 2007, and other products. Of 63 IT procurement professionals Forrester surveyed, 86 percent said their licensing arrangement with Microsoft will expire this year. Twenty-six percent said they will not renew Software Assurance with 31 percent still undecided. Another 18 percent said they would renew for some products, with the remainder saying they would either probably or definitely renew. About 74 percent of those who said they would not buy the same amount of Software Assurance maintenance said the economics did not make sense, and 59 percent said they did not expect to get a new product release. Forrester is advising companies to negotiate early with Microsoft and hold out for better deals. "Discounts in the 7 percent to 15 percent range, depending on your size and level of spending, should be the foundation of any renewal discussion," the report said. Companies should also simply do the math. "This sounds like common sense, but we're continually surprised by the number of companies that don't take the time to conduct a financial analysis of the costs and benefits of SA," Forrester said. Microsoft could not be reached for immediate comment.
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Microsoft Corp.  will most likely ship its upcoming Windows Vista operating system on time and meet its deadline for both corporate and retail consumers, a Wall Street analyst said on Wednesday.
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(InfoWorld) - As Windows VistaÂ appeared in computer stores worldwide, Microsoft said Tuesday that part of the design of the new operating system is the work of the European Commission. "Following discussions with European Commission, Microsoft committed to make a number of changes to the Windows Vista operating system prior to release," the software maker said in a statement, pointing to three functions of the operating system: security, search, and fixed document formats. Windows Security Center (WSC), which looks like a dashboard, gives the user an overview of what security software is running on the system and the status of checks and upgrades of firewalls and antispyware protection. Rival security software firms and the Commission suspected this could give WSC an unfair advantage. Microsoft said it agreed to develop a new set of APIsÂ for release in the first service pack, scheduled for later this year, which can be invoked by third-party security programs to turn off the alerts presented by WSC. Similarly, PatchGuard -- software that protects against the modification of the kernel of the operating system -- has been added to Vista. Some security vendors have in the past made modifications to the kernel as part of the implementation of their security software. PatchGuard prevents such modifications in the 64-bit version. Microsoft is now working with vendors to develop new kernel-level APIs that will provide programmatic access to the kernel to address this issue, Microsoft said. The APIs will be available in Windows Vista 64 with the first service pack, scheduled for later this year. Regarding search, Microsoft has changed the way default settings are made for Internet search within both Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). "These changes now ensure for users that they are able -- through a series of windows and options -- to make a clear, conscious, and open decision on their default search provider. Furthermore, users will retain at all times the ability to change this and all further defaults in the operating system at will," Microsoft said. Microsoft's own fixed document format software is known as XPS. "In response to the Commission's concerns, the company has made fundamental changes to the licensing structure of the XPS fixed-format technology and has committed to submit the technology to an international standards body for adoption as an open industry standard," Microsoft said. The XPS standard will be made available under licensing terms that do not exclude any industry or licensing model including the GPL (general public license), it said. "In response to Commissioner Kroes' letter of March 2006, Microsoft created a singleÂ API so that independent software developers can create applications to allow users to save documents in XPS or other formats, such as Adobe's PDF," Microsoft said. Microsoft said it has also disclosed through a licensing program the relevant information to enable the implementation of XPS technology on competing client and server operating systems. Microsoft has also responded to a further Commission demand to submit XPS (as well as future extensions) to a standards-setting body. Microsoft will submit XPS to the Ecma International. Microsoft said it will also enable the implementation of XPS under an open-source business model (GPL) through use of a covenant not to sue -- a model that Microsoft has applied to Web services and open XMLÂ  document formats and that has, it said, "been welcomed by the open-source community." European customers and OEMs will be able to buy a version of Vista that has Microsoft's Media Player stripped out. This unbundled version of the operating system complies with the 2004 European antitrust ruling, which ordered the company to offer two separate versions of both the home and professional versions of the operating system. "In compliance with the European Commission's decision of March 2004, home and professional editions of Windows Vista without Media Player functionality will be released in Europe on the same schedule as the Windows Vista general availability launch," Microsoft said. These are called the 'N' versions -- denoting "no media player," the company said.
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(InfoWorld) - Itâs not easy being Ben Fathi. As corporate vice president of Microsoftâs Security Technology Unit, Fathi took the place of longtime STU leader Mike Nash in March amid a larger management shake-up just days after Microsoft announced that the shipment date for Vista was slipping yet again. After Nashâs high-profile tenure, Fathiâs charge is more subtle: building what he calls a âtrust ecosystemâ around Vista and its new security features and promoting the companyâs secure development practices. But first he must help get Vista out the door. Fathi sat down to talk with InfoWorld Senior Editor Paul Roberts at the recent Security Standard Conference in Boston about Vistaâs progress, and the world after Vista. InfoWorld: Recently thereâs been some back and forth with Symantec about issues such as Vistaâs Kernel Patch Protection feature for 64-bit systems, as well as some public criticism of Vista code for having security holes. What should enterprise folks make of that? Ben Fathi: First, on the paper Symantec published: We thank them for their input. I think itâs unusual for a partner to go public with a paper like this on a beta product, but they did identify a few issues. To the best of my knowledge, all those were already fixed in more recent beta releases. We love to hear feedback on beta products. Thatâs why weâre in beta. Itâs a test. Weâll fix them as long as they report them to us. As for the kernel patching, we fundamentally believe that the current model of kernel patching is broken and not sustainable. We never recommended it or supported it on any version of our operating systems. As weâve been telling our vendor partners, this is the only chance we have, as 64-bit computing becomes available, to start with a clean architecture and build on top of that. We want to work with you to find ways to extend the kernel functionality by having a clean architecture, APIs, and filters. â¦ instead of patching instructions and data structures in the kernel. In the long term, what we want to do is move a lot of these functionalities to a hypervisor that sits under the kernel to make the kernel even smaller and the trusted computing base even more secure. We still have a window of opportunity here. â¦ and weâre working with two or three vendors in the space to come up with that kind of architecture. One of the other comments thatâs been made is that [Kernel Patch Protection] is anti-trust. That weâll go back in with our own products and get around it. Thatâs absolutely not true. Weâd never do that. IW: You recently patched a beta version of Vista. Is it a bad sign that youâre patching beta Vista? BF: I believe that Vista is significantly more secure than any version of XP or anything else weâve shipped in the past. Just SDL (secure development lifecycle) in general and the process of penetration testing and hardening kernel services. These all created a stronger, defense in depth strategy. What I would say is, Yeah, there will be patches and vulnerabilities as we move forward. What weâre hoping is that by creating these layers of defense, weâre giving customers, especially enterprise customers, a longer time to test and make sure things are not broken. IW: Do you see your job description and responsibilities changing after Vista? BF: There are six different areas that we call âBig Betsâ that have been identified in my division. I will mention two. The first, Application ID, is a way to identify an application that includes an executable, the library it uses, configuration files, registry settings, any patches that are applied to it. So youâll have a cryptographically signed version of the application, and youâll be able to identify that and whitelist or blacklist that. When we talk about a trust ecosystem today, the ability to trust people based on an ID and trust machines based on an ID, we canât do that with applications. If itâs called powerpoint.exe, we go and run it. So having strong IDs based on the application and [making] sure they havenât been tampered with after download is an important investment for us. The second area is isolation. Creating guest operating systems that sit on top of hypervisors allow us to create better isolation mechanisms so that even if malware comes in, it only affects one subset of the machine and not everything else. Weâve done some great work on server hypervisors and server virtualization. We need to extend that to the client. Weâre seeing partners do that already, and so weâre going to invest in that space.
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Now that Vista and Office 2007 are officially out the door, Windows enthusiasts have been busy scrounging up what they can about the next versions of both products. Not much has turned up besides code-names and potential features, but a number of blog posts prompted Microsoft to say publicly that it's not saying anything.
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(InfoWorld) - AfterÂ several delays, it appears Microsoft may get theÂ next generation of its Windows operating system to customers according to its current schedule. As was expected, the company made Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 available on Friday, which means the OS is in its final round of bug fixes and tweaks before it will be ready for release to the general public. Windows Vista RC1 is available to TechBeta and Technology Adoption Program (TAP) program subscribers Friday, but MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) and TechNet subscribers won't get the OS until next week, Microsoft said. Microsoft has said since March that Vista will be available to business users in November and consumers in January 2006. With the last major upgrade to Windows, Windows XP, it was about two months between RC1 and the product's release to manufacturing. If Vista follows a similar schedule, with RC1 out Friday, the release to manufacturing -- and a release to business customers -- could happen as soon as early November. OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) typically need about six weeks to get the OS installed and tested on PCs before putting those machines on the market. If Windows Vista makes it to manufacturing by the end of November, it could hit its January release date for consumers. Online retailer Amazon.com isÂ already taking pre-orders for Vista, and has listed availability of the OS as Jan. 30, 2007 on its Web site. In a letter to TechBeta subscribers on Friday, Jim Allchin, Microsoft co-president of the Platforms and Services Group, thanked them for their support and feedback, and mentioned several improvements to the OS that have been made since Beta 2 was released in May. "Weâve made some UI [user interface] adjustments, added more device drivers and enhanced performance," Allchin wrote in the letter. He added that Microsoft will continue to work on Vista's "application compatibility, as well as fit and finish" until its release to manufacturing, which is yet to be determined. Allchin also advised ISVs (independent software vendors) to use RC1 to certify its applications to run on Windows Vista, and asked for more feedback from testers to improve the OS before its final release. "Windows Vista is going to touch hundreds of millions of lives all around the world," he wrote. "Thanks for everything youâre doing to help us give them the best experience possible." Allchin's letter is available on theÂ Windows Vista team blog .
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With Windows Vista already a firmly entrenched product in many homes and some businesses, and with Windows Server 2008 cruising toward a final release in the second half of this year, Microsoft may feel it's time for its many partners and developers with an interest in Windows' success to stand and deliver.  Will they be willing to make changes in their development strategies?  We may find out next week at TechEd 2007 in Orlando.
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Software maker plans first update to Vista for first quarter of next year, while third and final XP service pack is due before June.
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Following reports that Microsoft would deliver a beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 this week, well before the originally-stated November date, the company has taken the unusual step of issuing a statement to quell any expectation, saying no changes have been made to the release timeframe.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft will introduce a new system for fighting software piracy with its upcoming Windows Vista and Windows Longhorn Server operating systems, the company said Wednesday. Called the Microsoft Software Protection Platform, it's a collection of technologies that aims to do better at detecting pirated versions of Windows, and will also force unauthorized versions of its software into a limited-functionality mode, encouraging users to obtain a legal copy. People using unlicensed copies of Vista will be blocked from accessing certain features, including a new interface design called Windows Aero, and software for fighting pop-up advertisements called Windows Defender, Microsoft said. The company has already used a reduced functionality mode with Windows XP. Users with an unlicensed versions of Windows will also see a persistent reminder message in the corner of their screen, reading "This copy of Windows is not genuine." The new software is bound to come under scrutiny. Microsoft's previous attempt to reduce unauthorized use of its software, Windows Genuine Advantage, was partially rolled back after it wasÂ criticized as "spyware"Â for stealthily installing itself on users' PCs and reporting information back to Microsoft. Microsoft said the new technologies are necessary to fight software piracy, and said end-users can also benefit because they are less likely to be exposed to faulty or compromised software. End-users installing pirated Vista copies, or who don't register their software using a product key within 30 days, will have their OS functionality reduced. The product key is an ID number assigned to customers for each purchase of Windows. The company said it will also be able to track more easily when products are activated with product keys that have been stolen from a business. Regardless of the authenticity of their Vista copy, all users will have access to Microsoft security updates, the company said. For businesses that use volume license keys for Vista and Longhorn Server, Microsoft will introduce new, policy-based tools for activating those systems. The new tools, called Microsoft Volume Activation 2.0, won't be linked to Microsoft's software billing systems, the company said. Windows Vista and Windows Server Longhorn -- the code name for the next version of Microsoftâs server software -- will be the first products to ship with the antipiracy technologies, but they'll eventually be used in more of its products. Around 35 percent of all software installed worldwide in 2005 was pirated or unlicensed, Microsoft said, citing a figure from the Business Software Alliance, an industry group. More information isÂ available here.Â
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InfoWorld - Microsoft has finally broken its silence on the timing of the release of the&#160;highly anticipated Windows Vista Service Pack 1, saying the software updates should be in final release in the first quarter of next year with the company shipping off a beta next month to 10,000 to 15,000 testers.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft plans to issue two security updates for its Windows operating system products next Tuesday as part of its regular software patch cycle.
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NOVEMBER 05, 2004  - A Microsoft Corp. vice president this week confirmed that the company intends to continue its track record of shipping a new version of its Office System software every two to three years.