Microsoft is experimenting with a potential product that would give companies more control over the electronic messages their
staff exchange in order to better meet regulatory requirements and e-discovery laws.
The product, which has been informally dubbed Employee Managed Mailbox, is being used internally at Microsoft and may
eventually turn into a commercial offering, according to Joel Freedman, chief financial officer at Microsoft Canada.
"Instead of e-mail that would be utilizing the hard drive, you'd have e-mail that gets managed by a server," he said, adding
that a server-based product could help companies do a better job of adhering to compliance-related policies.
Microsoft hopes to beef up its security capabilities with the acquisition of Komoku, a developer of rootkit detection products,
announced on Thursday.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Microsoft plans to add Komoku's technology into its Forefront and Windows Live OneCare products. Forefront is Microsoft's suite of enterprise security software that includes malware protection for PCs, security tools for Exchange
and SharePoint servers, and gateways that secure remote access to corporate data.
Microsoft unveiled a new Web site yesterday that provides resources for developers to improve and test the accessibility of their applications. The idea is to make it easier for those with visual and hearing impairments to use software.
The new MSDN site, called Microsoft Accessibility Labs, has links to technologies, tools and blogs associated with improving accessibility.
One of the new accessibility tools on the site is AccChecker, which helps check the accuracy of user interfaces that support Microsoft Active Accessibility, a technology for applications that run on Windows.
This morning, Microsoft announced the availability of a release candidate version of its Hyper-V virtualization platform, a component of the recently-released Windows Server 2008 operating system. Hyper-V ships in beta form with the shipping version of Windows 2008, and Microsoft has pledged to ship the final version of the technology to customers by August 2008."As customers begin deploying Windows Server 2008, we want to ensure they have the tools to optimize their IT infrastructure," says Bill Hilf, the general manager of the Windows Server division at Microsoft.
Just a few hours after Amazon told its customers that Windows Vista SP1 packages would be shipping tomorrow, Microsoft made Service Pack 1 for Vista generally available.In a blog post just minutes ago, Windows Vista product manager Nick White acknowledged having encountered driver compatibility problems with the initial deployment of SP1, though at this point those problems aren't exactly news.
"We spent the last couple of months looking closely at reports of driver problems on pre-release builds and, to be safe, we held the public availability until March," White wrote.
Microsoft and Aspect Software today initiated a global strategic alliance focused on better enhancing communications between contact centers and the broader enterprise. Under the agreement, Chelmsford, Mass.-based Aspect will integrate its contact center software into Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, a unified communications platform that supports instant messaging, voice over IP and Web conferencing for the enterprise.
What wasn't good enough for Steve Jobs seems just fine for Microsoft, as it takes this opportunity to embed a version of Adobe's streaming video technology into its future mobile Web browsers, right alongside Adobe's rival Silverlight.
More and more, Microsoft is making a very visible effort to play nice, or at least nicer, by making room for its rivals alongside its own technology. This morning, it let Adobe hail the latest move rather than horde the megaphone, announcing that Adobe is licensing its Flash Lite mobile graphics platform to Microsoft for use, apparently, in a future mobile Web browser.
Tim O'Brien must have one of the more difficult jobs at Microsoft. As senior director of Microsoft Platforms, he is tasked with getting different parts of Microsoft to dance to the same tune. "Part of my role in the company is to help groups understand what the paths are," O'Brien said during an interview at Mix '08 earlier this month. "If the groups are heading down random paths, at the risk of oversimplification, we try to get on a common trajectory."
The U.S. Supreme Court denied a request by Microsoft on Monday to halt an antitrust suit that Novell filed against the company
for anticompetitive behavior it said harmed its WordPerfect and Quattro Pro business in the 1990s.
The Supreme Court denied a writ of certiorari request by Microsoft for a case Novell filed in a U.S. District Court in Maryland
nearly 10 years after the Waltham, Mass., company sold the programs in question to Corel. A writ of certiorari asks the Supreme
Court to review and rule on a decision by a lower court and is typically filed by a losing party in a case.
Microsoft is blaming inventory problems on a recent drop-off of Xbox 360 console sales, but with even Sony's lackluster PlayStation 3 outselling the Xbox 360 now, its unclear where the problem really lies. But this much is obvious, regardless of blame: The Xbox 360 is bringing up the rear in console sales so far in 2008, a condition that could relegate Microsoft's video game business to also-ran status.
For the second month in a row, Xbox 360 sales trailed those of its competitors, the Nintendo Wii and the Sony PS3. In February, Nintendo sold 432,000 Wiis, compared to 281,000 PS3s and 255,000 Xbox 360s.