Air Force to launch enterprise Microsoft initiative
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The U.S. Air Force tomorrow plans to announce an enterprisewide Microsoft software initiative that some analysts see as a prime example of how users can leverage their spending power to force vendors to deliver more secure products.
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To nab network-centric work at the Defense Department, Boeing Co. and IBM Corp. today announced a 10-year alliance. The two companies estimate that DOD will spend $200 billion for ground- and space-based systems for net-centric operations.
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Microsoft has released tools designed to help enterprises deploy Windows Vista more easily.
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CAPE CANAVERAL-- The explosive growth of tools and toys using data from the US military&#39;s array of Global Positioning System satellites is showing no signs of letting up, and the US Air Force aims to meet demand.
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Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday plans to make available a connector kit that allows users to easily link Microsoft's Office Project Server 2003 with SAP AG's ERP (enterprise resource planning) products.
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Microsoft is preparing a wave of enterprise products, including the long-awaited update to Windows Server.
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New deal aims to simplify and protect Air Force networks by introducing standard configurations.
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(InfoWorld) - Although Microsoft may not have the first service pack for Windows Vista ready at the end of this year as some expected, financial analysts say that a delay should not have a negative effect on enterprise adoption of the OS. Many large enterprise customers have said they will wait for the first service pack for Vista to deploy the software across their companies. Some were expecting SP1 before the end of the year after Microsoft Senior Vice President Bob Muglia said in a published report last November it would be released with Windows Server, code-named Longhorn, due by the end of 2007. However, rumors swirled last week that the release of the pack would be pushed into 2008 after Microsoft said in a court filing dated June 19 it would have only a test version of Vista SP1 out before the end of the year. According to the document, filed as part of the ongoing antitrust case with the U.S. Department of Justice, the software is to be released by then to answerÂ a complaint by GoogleÂ thatÂ the OS's built-in desktop search capability interferes with the use of Google's competing search technology. The rumors caused investors to worry about enterprise adoption of Vista being pushed further out, and company stock declined 2.4 percent Friday, opening at $30.03 and closing at $29.54. UBS Investment Research analyst Heather Bellini tried to allay investor fears in a research note published Monday, saying that the end-of-the-year release of a beta listed in the document "probably represents a 'drop-dead' date." "The company most likely has accounted for the possibility of unforeseen delays in this timing," according to Bellini's note. "As such, we believe Vista SP1 could be available sometime before the end of the year barring any material delays." Andrew Brust, chief, new technology, for consulting firm and Microsoft partner Twentysix New York, who is familiar with the company's plans, said he also believes Microsoft will have SP1 out the door before the end of 2007. He would not disclose specifics, but Brust said that what he's heard "contradicts the chatter." "Microsoft is quite aware of the need to get an SP out there; I promise you that," he saidÂ Monday. Through its public relations team, Microsoft said Monday that it has never committed to a release date for SP1 and confirmed the company will be releasing test builds of the software from now throughout the end of the year. Despite Muglia's comments last year, even a 2008 release for Vista SP1 should not be considered a delay because the company never announced a firm date for release, Microsoft said. Enterprises are most likely waiting for the release of Windows Server Longhorn -- now known by its official name, Windows Server 2008 -- before deploying Vista, making SP1 less relevant to enterprise deployment than some think, according to a research note from Citigroup Global Markets.
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(InfoWorld) - SkypeÂ is working to make its Internet telephony service more enterprise friendly, and expects to introduce a beta version of its software with support for enterprise management functions within weeks. The update will allow system administrators to use standard Windows management tools to set how the Skype software connects to the Internet, or to disable any of half a dozen functions, including file transfers, said Skype's vice president of telecommunications and Skype for business, Michael Jackson. Use of Skype in business is widespread: Of Skype's 113 million registered users, 30 percent say they use it for business, Jackson said, speaking at the IDC European IT Forum in Paris on Monday. The proprietary and hard-to-block connection protocols used by Skype's peer-to-peer communications system have raised concerns about security in some businesses. "There was a rumor we disrupt networks to get around things," Jackson said. That started, Jackson said, "because we design things for consumers so they work in any network environment. The back end of that is, it works in any network environment." That makes it difficult for enterprises to block the software, he said. That was a concern for Intel's chief information officer, John N. Johnson, when some Intel employees installed Skype software on their own initiative. "What if some vulnerability developed, or if someone came up with a way to use it as a transport into the enterprise? We couldn't tell who was using it, or where, if it needed to be patched," said Johnson, speaking on the sidelines of the forum. Skype has worked with Intel to meet the company's security requirements, Johnson said. Together, they came up with a proxy server approach, allowing Johnson to cut off the software's network access if a security problem is identified. "It doesn't go straight out onto the Internet any more," Johnson said. To make Skype connect via the proxy server, Intel forced its Skype-using employees to upgrade their software client to a version supporting proxy connections. For Johnson, that presented no problem: "I have a way to scan the environment to see what's installed." Skype, designed for consumer use, has much in common with text instant messaging, Johnson said. "IM started as a consumer technology. Now most businesses couldn't work without it." Johnson himself used Skype "for a bit," he said -- but stopped because Skype wasn't part of the standard software image on a new computer. "I keep changing computers, and I don't have time to reload every little thing on it," he said.
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Triple alliance. Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) on Friday announced that it will join with Dell (nasdaq: DELL - news - people ) to furnish the US Air Force with software and related tech support
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The Air Force is scheduled to launch a new Delta 4 rocket on Saturday in a test that will help determine whether it can become a vehicle to carry billion-dollar military satellites.
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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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Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates will share the stage Tuesday with nearly 15 system builders in a program to officially launch Microsoft&#39;s latest version of its
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(InfoWorld) - MicrosoftÂ on Tuesday said it would formally unveil the next wave of its enterprise products -- including the long-awaited "Longhorn" version of Windows Server -- in February 2008 at a launch event in Los Angeles. In a keynote at the Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner revealed that Microsoft willÂ launch Windows Server 2008Â (formerlyÂ code-named Longhorn),Â Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008Â in Los Angeles on Feb. 27, 2008. As is customary when Microsoft rolls out major products, the event will be the first in a wave of launch events across the world. The timeframe may seem a bit off for customers expecting Windows Server 2008 to be available before the end of 2007, which is the current plan. According to Microsoft, there will be no change to this schedule, though the formal product launch won't come until next year. Turner called the trio of products the "big dogs" of Microsoft's enterprise product portfolio. "It's the biggest single launch we will have at Microsoft in one day [in 2008]," Turner said, adding that colleague Andy Lees, a corporate vice president in Microsoft's server and tools business, told him to call it a "feeding frenzy of opportunity" for partners. "There are hundreds of billions of dollars available to you through the monetization of these products," Turner said. While that's all well and good, one partner attending the keynote said it's sometimes a daunting task for a partner -- especially a small business -- to work with Microsoft to seize the opportunity Turner mentioned. "Figuring out how to work with this organization [is] a constant struggle," said Linda Gillis, marketing director for Squirrel Systems, a British Columbia company that provides restaurant point-of-sale software and services. She said her 175-person company has a particular challenge because while it is based in Canada, 80 percent of its sales are in the U.S., so it's hard to find the right person within Microsoft to work with on sales engagements. However, "we are making headway," Gillis said. One of her goals at the partner conference is to make even more gains in this area, she said. During his keynote, Turner reminded thousands of partners in the room that Microsoft has made a concerted effort to be more transparent about its product strategy to prepare them for releases, and reminded them of the products the company delivered in 2007. Those included Windows Vista, 40 million copies of which Turner said Microsoft delivered in the first 100 days of release, and Microsoft Office 2007. "We talked about those products for a lot of years and they came to fruition [in 2007]," Turner said. Vista and Office are especially conducive to helping partners earn revenue, the former in particular representing a "$300-billion partner opportunity," he said. Microsoft said about 10,000 partners are attending its annual partner conference in Denver this week. The conference runs through Thursday.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft hopes to better meet the back-office needs of smaller businesses with a new take on enterprise resource planning (ERP) software called Dynamics Entrepreneur Solution.
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An SAP initiative to more tightly align its business software with Microsoft's tools is about to bear fruit.
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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