The deadline Microsoft gave Yahoo for making a deal or facing a proxy fight came and went this weekend without a word from either party. But even if Microsoft doesn't succeed now in its bid for Yahoo, the company made clear last week, both in private meetings with reporters and in public comments, that it's determined -- come hell or high water -- to move forward with its services strategy.
In the thick of its battle for Yahoo, some Microsoft executives made time to host reporters at the Redmond, Washington, campus, and provided a snapshot of the company's strategy.
As COO of Microsoft, Kevin Turner is responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of some 38,000 employees in Microsoft's worldwide sales, marketing and services units. And along with Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and five other top executives, Turner sits on the senior leadership team that charts Microsoft's strategy.
In a briefing at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Wash., this week, Turner noted that there were four key enterprise trends shaping Microsoft's strategic direction and future product offerings as well as how it will spend US$7 billion in its R&D department.
Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization software will have an advanced "synthetic device" approach to virtual machine I/O, addressing a key virtualization bottleneck, when it gets added to Windows Server 2008 later this year.
The production version of Hyper-V may be ready before Microsoft's oft-stated August delivery date. Knowledgeable observers, such as Paul Ghostine, CEO of Provision Networks, a supplier of desktop virtualization under Hyper-V, says Microsoft will try to add Hyper-V to Windows Server 2008 by June or July.
Linux and Unix software from Microsoft? That will be one of the upshots of Microsoft's proposed buyout of Fast Search & Transfer, Microsoft officials said today. But that doesn't mean you'll see Microsoft software shifting platforms.
"You shouldn't expect to see SharePoint running on Unix," according to Kirk Koenigsbauer, general manager of Microsoft's SharePoint Business Group.
Microsoft has completed its $1.2 billion purchase of FAST Search & Transfer and will install the company's CEO as head of a newly formed enterprise search group, it said Friday.
FAST will become a subsidiary of Microsoft and its research team will be based in Oslo, Norway, according to a statement.
The company's existing sales and support teams will be maintained, and there are no immediate plans to alter pricing or licensing
agreements, a spokesman said.
FAST CEO John Markus Lervik will become corporate vice president of enterprise search at Microsoft, reporting to Jeff Teper,
corporate vice president for the company's Office Business Platform.
Microsoft may appear to be under fire from a lot of quadrants these days, but that doesn't appear to have harmed the company's ability to print money.
The company announced Thursday another record for its fiscal third quarter in terms of gross revenues, and Microsoft executives say they are optimistic that they can keep that pace through the end of fiscal 2008 and into 2009.
For its third fiscal quarter, ending March 31, the company brought in $14.45 billion in revenues and operating income of $4.41 billion. That compares with $14.4 billion in revenues for fiscal 2007's third quarter, and operating income of $6.59 billion.
Microsoft flipped the switch Thursday to start automatically upgrading some copies of Windows Vista to SP1, the company announced.
Users who have WU set to automatically download and install important patches, hotfixes and other updates
will start receiving SP1 beginning Wednesday, a Microsoft spokeswoman said. "Today Microsoft will begin automatic distribution
of SP1," she said. "This means that users with the Automatic Update feature turned on will automatically download SP1 to their
PCs.
Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said he doesn't plan to raise his $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo Inc., setting the stage for a fight to control the board that may start this weekend.
"We are offering a lot of money," Ballmer said Wednesday at a conference in Milan, Italy. "If Yahoo's shareholders like it, that's great. We are prepared to go forward without a merger." On April 5, he threatened to oust Yahoo's board and consider lowering the bid if the directors failed to negotiate within three weeks.
While SPOT devices were released to great fanfare four years ago, the company says it will stop selling new watches. Smart watches with the MSN Direct service have sold out, and the company has no intentions of producing new models. It says however, that it would continue to seek out new channels for the SPOT technology.
"We, along with our watch partners, do not have immediate plans to create a new version of the Smart Watch, as we are focused on other areas of our business," MSN Direct chief Jon Canan said in a statement. Canan added that feedback the company had received on the product would be incorporated into future devices, just not apparently in watch form.
In the face of better-than-expected financial results last quarter for Yahoo, Microsoft now seems to be indicating that it is ready to move on. Over the past two days, CEO Steve Ballmer has made comments that Microsoft's offer for Yahoo will not change, and that the company will soon move on if necessary.
The most recent comments came Wednesday at a conference in Milan, Italy where he reiterated that his company's $44 billion offer for Yahoo properly valued the company, calling it "a lot of money."