Next month, Microsoft will combine its partner subsidy programs into one comprehensive offer called the Big Easy, which is designed to reward partners on a sliding scale for upselling, cross-selling and selling licensing.
"If you go out to the Microsoft Incentives site right now, there are probably 20 plus promotions out there, of which there are four partner subsidy promotions," says Christopher Large, group manager for U.S. Sales Programs in the U.S. Partner Group. Large is currently running a series of six live Web seminars to introduce partners to the Big Easy program.
A little like a senior who goes to high-school commencement but leaves with an empty diploma, Microsoft's latest version of its flagship database will be featured at its big coming out party next month ? but the software itself will still be months away.
Microsoft disclosed on Friday that SQL Server 2008 will still be celebrated at the company's big launch gala on February 27, along with Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008. However, it won't actually be finished until the third quarter of the year.
US carrier AT&T has finally given its BlackJack handsets a long-anticipated operating system upgrade, boosting it to WM6 just as 6.1 appears around the corner.Rumors regarding the release of this upgrade to the popular handset have abounded, since both AT&T and Samsung have kept their release dates vague.
The upgrade is available as a free desktop download directly from Samsung. Also included with the upgrade is Video Share calling software, a function native to the BlackJack II. Video Share is a live one-way video feed that requires a 3G connection and two phones that mutually support streaming video.
Daum Communications, Microsoft and Celrun Co. said Tuesday they
were setting up a joint venture to offer Internet protocol television services
in South Korea. The joint venture will be established in February, the three companies said in a press release.
Details, including their respective stakes in the new entity, had yet to be
decided, they said. Financial terms weren't disclosed. Daum, South Korea's second-largest Web portal and search engine company, will develop the IPTV content, while Microsoft will offer the latest version of its Internet television software platform, Microsoft Mediaroom, the release said.
The go-go days of Microsoft's double-digit growth may not be over after all. Microsoft reported Thursday that it brought in $16.37 billion in revenues and $6.48 billion in operating income, yielding diluted earnings per share of $0.50, in its second fiscal quarter of 2008, ending Dec. 31.
That comes on the heels of its best first fiscal quarter in years, which it reported in October.
"Revenue of over $16 billion this quarter exceeds our previous record by $2 billion," Chris Liddell, chief financial officer, said in a company statement.
Microsoft CEO Bill Gates gave a glimpse of his future as a philanthropist in a speech in Switzerland on Thursday, calling
for a new kind of "creative capitalism" from businesses to help improve the lives of the world's poorest people.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Gates challenged companies worldwide to work with governments
and nonprofits to find ways to be charitable and solve the problems of the poorest people without sacrificing their own business
needs.
"We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve the wealthier people serve poorer people as well," he
said, speaking via a webcast from Switzerland.
Microsoft and Citrix, already close partners in the realm of server-based application delivery, have banded together even more tightly in the virtualization space, hoping to take on industry leader VMware.
At its "Virtualization Deployment Summit" in Redmond, the two software giants outlined their vision for enhancing interoperability across their respective server and desktop lines of virtualization products.
Microsoft this week said it intends to redouble its commitment to education through its Partners in Learning program. Over the next five years, the company will "triple the impact" of the initiative through three of the programs under the Partners in Learning umbrella: Innovative Teachers, Innovative Students, and Innovative Schools.
The idea of Partners in Learning is to bolster STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education programs and enhance technology in schools by providing funding for tools and training programs for students and teachers.
Microsoft is now resurrecting an ancient battle by asking the US Supreme Court to quash a lawsuit filed by Novell back in 2004, alleging that Microsoft maliciously ruined WordPerfect's chances in the office productivity market.
In its suit against Microsoft, Novell claims that, between 1994 and 1996, Microsoft maliciously withheld technical information about Windows 95 so as to give Microsoft Office an advantage over its rivals and to effectively squash WordPerfect and other competitors in the marketplace.
Dell will sell special crimson-red versions of its XPS line of computers to raise money for AIDS treatment programs in Africa,
the company confirmed Tuesday.
Dell is working with Microsoft on the project, which is expected to be announced later this week during the World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland, wrote Lionel Menchaca, digital media manager at Dell.
Sales of the computers will benefit, a project started by U2 singer Bono and Bobby Shriver, chairman of the Africa-focused charity Debt AIDS Trade Africa.