State will keep Office after Microsoft makes change in software
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The state of Massachusetts says a new document format from Microsoft Corp. meets revised state standards, ensuring that state agencies can keep using Microsoft's popular Office software suite.
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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said the next version of Microsoft Office will give users new ways to access their applications online.
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Microsoft's decision to pare back features of the upcoming OS is not bad news, some say.
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Microsoft Corp. said on Sunday that it  would share the underlying software code for its Office program  as part of its efforts to make governments more confident in  the security and compatibility of the world's largest software  maker's products.
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Microsoft will make changes to its desktop search program following a complaint to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) by Google, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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Microsoft is shaking up its plans for the next version of Windows to get the software off the drawing board and into PCs by the end of 2006.
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Concerns about compatibility and other issues move DOT and NIST to prohibit upgrades to Vista, Office 2007 and IE 7, for now anyway.
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Software maker has its eye on consumers who might be ready to make the switch from Windows.
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Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O is planning to  release a new version of its Office program for small  businesses that handles accounting and customer management  tasks, the world's largest software maker said on Friday.
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After issuing seven patches as part of its monthly round of updates earlier this week, Microsoft recalled a fix for the Mac version of its Microsoft Office productivity suite. According to a posting on Microsoft's Security Response Center site, the updates were "accidentally published" before full testing was complete.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft officials deny that theÂ Department of Transportation's recent moratoriumÂ on adoption of Windows Vista is indicative of any widespread reluctance in the government sector to install the new operating system. In a report that was circulated internally within the department by DOT Chief Information Officer Daniel Mintz in late January 2007, that only surfaced publicly on March 5, the IT manager placed an indefinite halt on procurement of the software and any planned desktopÂ upgrades to Vista Among the reasons cited by Mintz in ceasing any deployment of the newest OS from Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft were questions about its compatibility with other programs, including earlier versions of Windows, and the estimated costs for moving to Vista. Despite the setback, Microsoft executives claim that Vista adoption is moving forward at a consistent pace in the government sector, and on par with similar installations among private industry. Although aware of the budgetary and scheduling conflicts that often cause the federal government to lag behind businesses in bringing onboard major new platforms, Microsoft contends that the OS is already finding a home in the space. "We're wrapping up the largest early adoption program for the windows OS ever, and over ten percent of our partners were from the federal government," said Patrick Svenburg, Windows client solution specialist with the Microsoft Federal group. "This also represented our largest partnership ever with the federal government; we worked closely with them throughout the entire development cycle to address their concerns and priorities." Svenburg said that Microsoft is planning to host senior officials from the Department of Transportation in Redmond before the end of March to address the concerns the department expects to encounter in moving to the OS. In his memo, Mintz specifically cited "lack of a compelling business case" as his rationale for temporarily banning the move to Vista, along with Microsoft Office 2007 and the Internet Explorer 7 browser. To be fair, Mintz and other DOT officials attributed some of the department's reluctance to upgrade on the agency's planned move to a new Washington headquarters later this year. The DOT technology executive didn't immediately respond to calls seeking further comment on the Vista moratorium. Microsoft representatives said that like many of its largest, Enterprise Agreement-level customers, government organizations such as the Transportation Department will need to avail themselves of the software maker's compatibility and deployment automation programs to help overcome some of the perceived challenges with Vista deployment. Some industry watchers believe, however, Â that it may still be hard for many federal agencies to make a sufficient business case for spending the time and money needed to move to the platform. Specifically, most of the major departments have invested heavily in moving their critical applications to Web-based systems, which could serve to dampen enthusiasm and demand for migration to the new OS and productivity suite, said Shawn McCarthy, a government IT analyst with IDC, based in Framingham, Mass. "A lot of government sites have been trying to migrate more applications to Web interfaces that any desktop system can access, and that's taken pressure off the organizations on the client side," McCarthy said. "The individual agencies are under a lot of pressure to make a business case anytime they want to do systems upgrades; if they can't really justify with benefit that will be seen, the upgrade either doesn't happen or migration is slower." The analyst said that despite Microsoft's claims that features such as improved security will convince government CIOs to get behind adoption of Vista, federal decision-makers will take a wait-and-see attitude toward the product and hold-off on moving over until the operating system's advantages are proven by others. Other experts said that it's too early to pass judgment on government or private-sector adoption of Vista since large organizations don't typically move to new technologies quickly. Michael Cherry, analyst with independent research firm Directions On Microsoft, based in Kirkland, Wash., said that the Transportation Department and other agencies will likely move to Vista incrementally over time. Organizations will also need to spend valuable time and money doing extensive evaluations of the OS before any installation begins, which could push back adoption further, he said. "When I read the [DOT] memo, I heard an IT department asking its people to refrain from buying ad hoc Vista licenses and machines, because they can't support that yet," said Cherry. "Something else to consider is that IT people have a lot of projects that they're already working and limited resources; Vista is not the kind of thing that merits dropping everything else to move on it quickly." Cherry said that he does believe federal agencies will begin adopting the OS at the same rate that they retire older desktop systems, although he noted that IT departments will likely give more consideration than ever before to alternatives including open source and Apple products. The first types of government users the analyst believes are likely to install Vista for functional reasons will be employees who carry sensitive data on their laptops, or view such information remotely on their PCs, he said. Those users will be seeking the onboard protection offered by the BitLocker encryption feature of Vista, according to the expert. In general he believes it's too soon for anyone to worry about adoption of the new OS. "It's way too soon to be taking individual cases or data points and trying to make a trend of them," Cherry said. "Vista might be good, but it's not so good people are going to dump their existing machines overnight just to get it."
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California Attorney General Jerry Brown said Wednesday that Microsoft Corp. has agreed to make "significant changes" in its new Vista operating system to stay in compliance with a U.S. court agreement in Microsoft's antitrust case.
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Microsoft announces end of support for the upgrade, urges move to SP2.
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By Benjamin J. Romano, Seattle Times  Jun. 1--If Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer were in charge of Washington state, shoring up education would be a higher priority even than easing the commute to Redmond.
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Microsoft Corp. will make changes to its desktop search program following a complaint to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) by Google Inc., a news report said late Tuesday.
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The U.S. Department of Justice and state officials want more information about changes that Microsoft says it needs to make in schedule for releasing Vista documentation.
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Redmond software company Microsoft Corp. said it will add the source code of its Office 2003 flagship software suite to its program for sharing the details of its products with government entities.