Analysts expect 2008 to be a better year for Microsoft than 2007 if the company can overcome the generally poor market reaction to the introduction of Windows Vista.
The upcoming launch of Windows Server 2008 and the release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 could help improve overall market perceptions of the operating system in 2008, the analysts said.
"Right now the buzz around the upcoming Windows Server 2008 is very positive and there appears to be huge demand for the product, which has resulted in some rather impressive deployments of the beta. I'm expecting strong numbers from that offering," Rob Enderle, an analyst at the Enderle Group, told eWEEK.
It's the start of a new era for the company that once argued that giving away the keys to its protocols would somehow reveal the secret of Windows itself: Microsoft has made its first obligatory agreement with a key open source provider.
Complying with its European Union obligations to make Windows interoperability information completely available to companies and organizations that it might otherwise consider to be competitors, Microsoft yesterday executed an historically important agreement with Samba, a major provider of open source interop tools for network administrators.
Every good general knows that even the biggest army is useless if you can't get it on the battlefield.
Microsoft and Adobe will both experience a version of this dilemma in 2008, as they wrangle for market and mind share in the
burgeoning RIA space, according to close observers of the companies.
"They both have their own power positions," said Forrester Research analyst Jeffrey Hammond, citing Flash's installed base,
which has been pegged in the 90 percent range.
In the same week that Microsoft made a half-billion-dollar deal with Viacom, AOL has announced it's closed a merger deal in the advertising space. Could greater intrusiveness into consumer behavior, and higher ad prices, ultimately follow?
Long ago, it seems AOL was known as an Internet service provider, while Microsoft was considered a software vendor. But AOL's announcement this week of its completed buyout of Trigo, together with Microsoft's $500 million-plus pact with Viacom, signify ever intensifying rivalry between the two budding advertising and entertainment empires.
Developers of open-source Samba software will find their work a little easier thanks to an agreement with Microsoft, signed Thursday, that will give them access to previously secret data on how the Windows operating system
works.
Microsoft was compelled to make this information available following a March 24, 2004, European Commission antitrust ruling
against the company. In July 2006, the EU fined Microsoft 280.5 million ($338.6 million at that time) for failing to provide
documentation on Windows protocols to its rivals. Microsoft lost an appeal of that decision in September, setting the stage for the deal.
Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo have agreed to pay a total of $31.5 million to resolve claims that they promoted illegal gambling,
the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday.
Microsoft will pay $21 million, Google will pay $3 million, and Yahoo will pay $7.5 million, the DOJ said in a news release.
The three companies neither contest nor admit that they promoted illegal online gambling by running advertisements for gambling
Web sites between 1997 and this year.
Microsoft plans to release the first beta of the next version of Internet Explorer in the first half of 2008 and said Wednesday
that IE 8 has passed a key Web standards test that ensures the browser won't "break" the Web.
IE8 has passed the "Acid2 Browser Test" from the Web Standards Project, which shows whether a browser renders a Web site in a certain way. If the browser renders the site correctly, it means the
browser supports certain accepted Web standards.
Microsoft posted a video about the browser passing the test on its Channel 9 Web site.
Microsoft and cable giant Viacom announced Wednesday they've inked a deal aimed at providing content to Microsoft's Web sites, as well as making Microsoft into Viacom's preferred Web site display ad service provider, and letting the software company sell unsold display advertising for Viacom Web properties.
"Microsofts Atlas division will become the ad server for Viacoms U.S. Web sites and Microsoft will have the exclusive right to sell remnant display advertising inventory on Viacoms U.S. Web sites," a statement by the two companies said.
Microsoft announced Monday that it has released to manufacturing the long-awaited update to its Dynamics-branded customer relationship management software.
Previously codenamed "Titan," the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM actually has two names in its final form. For on-premise, customer-hosted, as well as partner-hosted deployments, the product has been dubbed Dynamics CRM 4.0. The company will also be offering the package on-demand in a Microsoft-hosted environment that it has named Dynamics CRM Live.
Microsoft announced Tuesday that it would post the release candidate of Windows XP Service Pack 3 to its download site this
evening at approximately 6 p.m. Eastern time.
The move marks the first opportunity for all users of the six-year-old operating system to try out its final upgrade. Previously,
several thousand users were given access to test builds of SP3 only by Microsoft's invitation.
According to a company spokeswoman, the version that debuts Tuesday, dubbed a "release candidate" to note progress from earlier
betas, will be available from the Microsoft Download Center. She was unable to say when the service pack would post to Windows
Update so users can download and install it with the company's update service, however.