Microsoft Teams on Subscription PCs in Russia
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A Russian mobile-phone operator is the latest service provider to team with Microsoft to offer Windows-based PCs on a subscription basis through the company's Unlimited Potential program.
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Russian, U.S. experts trying to fix space station computers   WASHINGTON, June 15 (Xinhua) -- Russian and U.S.
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Microsoft Corp., world&#39;s largest software maker, announced that it has added Russia to its Windows XP Starter Edition pilot program today.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft is offering a new subscription model to small businesses that will allow them to use the company's software for less cost than the currently available licensing model.
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Companies to create real-time, rich-media collaboration for Windows Messenger users and later for Office Live Meeting users.
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Microsoft Corp. has signed up the first licensee for the workgroup server protocols the European Commission ordered it to open up to competitors in a 2004 antitrust ruling, it said Thursday.
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When Microsoft realized that enterprises needed help deploying and&#160;managing mobile phones, it turned to a partner it first found in the 1980s.Microsoft approached Mort Rosenthal recently with the idea of starting a company that could help enterprises design, deploy, and manage Windows Mobile mobile phones and services, Rosenthal said. He plans to formally launch the company, called Enterprise Mobile, on Tuesday at the CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment conference in San Francisco. Microsoft is a minority stakeholder in the Watertown, Massachusetts, company, which has quietly been doing business since June.Rosenthal began working with Microsoft in the 1980s when he founded Corporate Software, a company that resold software to large companies and offered them technical service and support.The enterprise mobile market looks similar to the software market at that time, when software was largely sold through retail stores without channels or support for enterprises, he said.&quot;What comes from the [mobile] market is consumer-driven devices,&quot; he said. &quot;We&#39;re about turning those consumer driven devices into enterprise devices.&quot;Enterprise Mobile will do that by offering a wide range of services to enterprises, starting with development of a vision, through to deployment and then including management and support services.Currently, an enterprise has to work with different types of companies that provide a range of services including security, asset management and expense management, said Kitty Weldon, an analyst at Current Analysis. &quot;What Enterprise Mobile brings is the ability for companies to just say, &#39;phew, I can go to this one set of people and they can do everything&#39;,&quot; she said.Enterprise Mobile will work exclusively with Windows Mobile phones so it won&#39;t serve companies that want to support a variety of devices, including BlackBerrys. However, there&#39;s a large market for companies that are happy to standardize on Windows Mobile and other providers similar to Enterprise Mobile might pop up to serve the heterogeneous companies, Weldon said.Enterprise Mobile customers can pay for the services in a number of ways, including a flat consulting fee for the design of a system and then a monthly per-device fee or a per-incident fee for ongoing support.One of the most attractive parts of the ongoing service offering will be that Enterprise Mobile serves as a single point of contact, Rosenthal said. &quot;Today if you have questions, do you call the operator, Microsoft or the OEM?&quot; he said. &quot;Here, we&#39;re the one throat to choke.&quot;Another problem facing many enterprises is challenges around device procurement. If an administrator is designing a new mobile deployment to launch in a few months, it&#39;s virtually impossible to find out if a chosen device will continue to be available by then. Operators and handset makers aren&#39;t forthcoming with that information, Rosenthal said.That&#39;s different from the PC world, where manufacturers will continue to support and make older models even while they introduce new ones.Enterprise Mobile hopes to help solve this problem by working closely with operators and phone makers and possibly even to create its own inventory of devices in order to maintain availability longer, Rosenthal said.Currently, Enterprise Mobile doesn&#39;t have much competition, Weldon said. Companies such as IBM, Accenture, and Electronic Data Systems do help enterprises deploy and manage mobile phones, but they often do so only in tandem with other large jobs, and they may outsource the work to various companies with expertise in different components, she said.However, Microsoft expects to partner with other companies like Enterprise Mobile that might emerge. &quot;We&#39;re kick-starting a new level of engagement&quot; with Enterprise Mobile, said John O&#39;Rourke, general manager of Microsoft&#39;s mobile communications business.Enterprise Mobile has implemented beta versions of Systems Center Mobile Device Manager 2008, mobile device management software that Microsoft plans to introduce on Tuesday.
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Microsoft has announced that it is planning to distribute the low cost stripped down version of Windows XP in Russia, sources say.
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Faced with continued customer foot-dragging on license renewals and deployment, Microsoft said Friday has decided to offer &quot;custom&quot; Windows NT 4.0 support contracts to enterprises that still haven&#39;t migrated to later versions of the network operating
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Microsoft has expanded its initiative to provide a low-cost distribution of Windows in Asia. Although the program was originally directed exclusively toward social welfare programs in Thailand and Indonesia, it will now be expanded to Malaysia. The software will be available in all three countries by October.
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Microsoft Corporation said it would share the source code of its Microsoft Office desktop software with more than 60 governments, including China and Russia.
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Supporters of PC operating system  Linux are preparing to counter a recent deal penned by  Microsoft Corp  which establishes for the first time  the principle of paying the software giant for the operating  system, whose license requires it to be free.
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In the six months since Microsoft announced Unlimited Potential, a company-wide plan to help bring technology skills and resources to developing countries to foster social and economic growth, it has been building programs and testing products around the world, said Will Poole, corporate vice president for the effort.Poole was in New York Friday to discuss Unlimited Potential, a program through which the company works with community leaders in countries where technology has not yet had as much of an impact on businesses and communities as it could.&quot;If you look at the challenge of addressing the needs of [developing countries], it isn&#39;t going to be met by donations by Microsoft [and others], it&#39;s going to be met by people building a business to serve the needs,&quot; Poole said.Analysts and observers have suggested another reason Microsoft is interested in working with emerging markets on technology efforts: The fight against Linux, which is proving a less expensive and easier to access option for people in countries with scant access to technology. In its effort to make it a Windows world, Microsoft has recognized the need to foster education and business development to get software like Windows and Office in the hands of people who wouldn&#39;t typically be able to afford it, they said.To do this, Microsoft is working with business leaders in countries to find the most viable business methods for bringing PCs to as many people as possible. Through this work, the company recently tweaked its FlexGo pay-as-you-go computing program it was piloting in Brazil with partner Telefonica to offer PCs on a subscription basis instead because it was a better fit for customers, Poole said.&quot;It depends on the dynamics of each market and the development of that market&quot; what kind of business models work in that country, he said.In fact, the new business model for PCs in Brazil grew out of work Microsoft had been doing in Mexico with telecom partner Telmex to offer PCs on a subscription basis as part of a bill for monthly Internet access and phone service, Poole said. That work was done through the Subscription Computing Program, which preceded the idea of linking Microsoft&#39;s global efforts under the Unlimited Potential umbrella but has since been subsumed into that more focused effort.&quot;We use the &#39;Unlimited Potential&#39; label to apply to ... things that have been going on for a number of years as well as new things,&quot; Poole said.Microsoft also is making progress on its commitment to building 200 more Microsoft Innovation Centers -- aimed at helping local software communities develop skills and create jobs -- in 35 more countries by 2009. Innovation centers in Hungary and Romania have opened in the last six months, Poole said.Another program that has been in place since 2004, Partners in Learning, is making progress as part of Unlimited Potential. Through the program, which promotes digital literacy for educators and hooks them up with one another to share best practices for teaching students about technology, Microsoft is sponsoring the Innovative Teachers Forum, which kicks off Monday in Helsinki. The forum brings together teachers worldwide who won regional prizes for sharing their methods to educate students about technology and promote digital literacy. Since its inception, the Partners in Learning program has trained nearly 3.5 million teachers and reach over 71 million students in 101 countries, Poole said.Microsoft also is piloting other technologies around the world that were developed specifically to meet the needs of people in developing countries. One of those is Windows Multipoint, a technology that enables multiple users to use one PC simultaneously to collaborate through educational software programs.Microsoft also developed technology called SteadyState out of research done in emerging countries that offer shared-access facilities like Internet cafes and libraries to give people access to PCs and the Internet. According to Poole, it was reported that it&#39;s difficult to maintain and manage these facilities because people make changes to the PCs -- like downloading software or deleting files -- that makes them crash or pick up viruses that disrupt other users&#39; experience with them. To remedy this, Microsoft developed SteadyState, which restores a PC to its original settings anytime it is turned off and turned on again.&quot;We looked at the global trend around shared access and made that trend more effective,&quot; Poole said.Microsoft will provide more progress reports on Unlimited Potential in the next six months, he added. More information on the initiative can be found on Microsoft&#39;s Web site.
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(InfoWorld) - At its partner conference this week MicrosoftÂ released new tools to help partners navigate two of the company's more complicated offerings: product licensing and the Windows Vista client OS. The licensing tool, called Microsoft LicenseWise, builds upon a previously released tool for Microsoft customers, Product License Advisor. Product License Advisor helps customers configure an IT environment and generate a report online that would tell them what licenses they would need and the cost, Mike Oldham, general manager for Microsoft's worldwide licensing and pricing, said in an interview at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver. LicenseWise picks up for Microsoft's business partners where that tool leaves off, he said. It allows a partner to access a quote a customer generated in Product License Advisor, build its own pricing into it, and then generate a proposal back to the customer for how much it would cost to license those products through the partner. Microsoft's complicated licensing schemes have long been a headache for partners and customers, but the company has made a concerted effort in the past several years to simplify the process, Oldham said. For instance, just two years ago, Microsoft had 74 licensing models customers could choose from; now they have nine, he said. More information about LicenseWise can be found on Microsoft's partner Web site. The new Vista tool also is an extension of software that is already available, called Windows Vista Hardware Assessment, said Mike Sievert, corporate vice president of the Windows business group. That application helps business users see how much effort it will take to migrate desktops in a company to Vista by testing the hardware and device-driver capability of PCs against the OS and issuing reports about those results The new tool, Windows Vista Business Value Assessment, allows partners to sit down with customers to not only assess how Vista will impact their network, but also figure out how to improve the TCO (total cost of ownership) of the installation, Sievert said. TCO is "front and center on the minds of our customers" when it comes to Vista, he said. Sievert acknowledged that business customers are still in the early stages of deploying the OS, which was released to business customers last November, so it's important Microsoft articulate how to upgrade to Vista in the most cost-effective way possible.
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(InfoWorld) - For business users who want Microsoft Office on their cell phones, Windows Mobile 6, the upcoming version of Redmond's mobile operating system to be unveiled next week, will be a must-have upgrade. Mobile 6 comes with mobile versions of Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. With the continuing increase in sales of smartphones at the expense of handheld devices, Office makes a lot of sense, especially for synchronizing with desktop files, according to Rob Enderle, principal at the Enderle Group. Carriers and handset manufacturers who believe they can put the limited memory and storage to better use, however, are out of luck. Microsoft Office still comes with Mobile 6. According to John Starkwether, a product manager in the Mobile and Embedded Devices Division at Microsoft, Office is part of the package. Starkwether conjectured that if a vendor really wants to exclude Office from the operating system, an accommodation might be possible. Additional upgrades to the mobile OS include Microsoft's Direct Push Technology with automatic synchronization of Outlook calendars, tasks, and contacts using Exchange Server. For security and management, Mobile 6 will also give mobile network managers the capability of remotely wiping out all data from a device should it be lost or stolen. Other security features include certificate options and storage card encryption. Business users will also be pleased with the inclusion of mobile versions of the .Net Compact Framework and SQL Server in order to access a company's standard line of business applications remotely. The Office applications are the most robust to date for the limited capacities of a cell phone. Spell checking in Word, though, is not included. E-mail viewing will be easier on the eye with formatting, tables, and pictures viewable as originally generated. One-click options for e-mail, such as "reply all", moving a message to a subfolder and "delete" have been added to accommodate the restricted functionality of a small device. Windows Vista users on the desktop will be able to swap music, pictures, movies and Outlook information between the Vista PC and the mobile device. Windows Live will integrate mail, messenger, search, contacts, and spaces. Call history is now placed inside the individual contact card. Enderle said that although there was "a lot of great stuff" in Mobile 6 Microsoft still has to focus on ease of use. "Compared to the Apple iPhone with its simplified interface, Mobile 6 is still complex to use," Enderle said. Devices with Windows Mobile 6 will ship worldwide in the second quarter.
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A pro-business think tank in Europe has recommended unbundling Microsoft Corp.&#39;s Windows operating system from sales of new PCs in order to give customers more choice when buying a new computer.
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Indian PC users can expect to see a localized, stripped-down version of Microsoft&#39;s XP operating system early next year. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft plans to ship the low cost version of its PC operating