Microsoft used its TechEd IT Forum conference here to announce the general availability of its new Forefront Server Security Management Console, a centralized, Web-based management solution for onsite or remote administration of its messaging and collaboration security solutions.
"Customers can use the console to centrally manage and configure servers remotely, automatically download and distribute signature and engine updates, generate comprehensive reports and receive outbreak alerts from across their environment," Steve Brown, Microsoft's director of security and access product management, said at a press briefing Nov. 13.
A real estate project planned in Redmond will have many of the features of a small town -- including a post office, spa, bookstore and a dozen restaurants.
But this isn't the latest planned residential community. It will be the next big addition to the Microsoft campus, in the middle of a complex slated to house the company's Entertainment and Devices Division.
The company Monday detailed plans to develop the campus for the Xbox video-game unit and other groups in the division, confirming news initially reported last week. However, despite a reference to a bar in official planning documents, Microsoft executives said they're still uncertain about that particular feature.
Bill Gates focused largely on future innovations to come out of Microsoft as he presided over his last annual shareholders meeting as full-time chairman, leaving his colleagues to address questions about the threat from Google's Android, piracy in China and the affects of the European Commission's antitrust ruling.
Gates is in the process of shifting his time away from running the software giant and toward contributing more time to his charitable foundation. Next year, he'll serve only part-time as chairman of Microsoft. Gates and other executives addressed a crowd of about 500 people at the meeting, held in downtown Seattle on Tuesday.
With social media becoming increasingly popular on the Web, Microsoft is looking to ensure that it does not fall behind its rivals. A job posting appeared on the company's Web site Friday -- and has since apparently disappeared -- looking for a program manager for a photo and video sharing website. The service would be part of the Live family and work across several services including Spaces, SkyDrive, Messenger, and Hotmail.
"This feature team is building a next-generation photo and video sharing service that will compete with Flickr, Smugmug and other photo web solutions today," the job posting read. "This is a 'v1' opportunity." Microsoft had attempted to compete in the space before with Soapbox, however it never seemed to take off and only received cursory attention from the Redmond company.
Microsoft on Monday announced its plan to acquire Musiwave SA, a unit of Openwave Systems, through an exclusivity agreement it has reached with the Paris-based provider of mobile entertainment services.
Through the acquisition, Microsoft hopes to leverage Musiwave's relationships with digital content providers in the mobile space to enhance its own Connected Entertainment applications, including Windows Mobile and Zune.
Financial terms of the proposed acquisition were not disclosed. Openwave acquired Musiwave in September 2005 for $121 million.
Microsoft promised to deliver Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 in the fourth quarter of 2007. It looks like the company is going to make good on its word, with the first SP looking like it will hit this week.
Microsoft posted to its Download Center over the weekend a standalone, downloadable version of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Help, as well as the Exchange 2007 SP1 Management Shell Help.
The most eagerly awaited new feature that will be part of Exchange Server 2007 SP1 is standby continuous replication, which enables administrators to replicate an Exchange Server to another location for disaster-recovery purposes. (Thanks to Winbeta.org for that SearchWinIT link.)
Microsoft will roll out on November 12 some time later in November a third Community Technology Preview test build of SQL Server 2008, the next-to-last CTP before finalizing the product in time for shipment in the second calendar quarter of next year.
CTP 3 of SQL Server 2008 adds compatibility with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, as well as some new features, including a Resource Governor, Backup Compression and Transparent Data Encryption, company officials said on November 12. There are also new business-intelligence features introduced in CTP 3, including Design Alerts, block computation and an enhanced Report Designer with new visualizations.
Microsoft finally gave its upcoming Windows Server virtualization technology an official name this week, and also announced its packaging plans for the technology.
The announcement came Monday at the company's TechEd IT Forum conference in Barcelona, Spain.
Formerly codenamed "Viridian," the virtualization technology will henceforth be dubbed Hyper-V, according to company statements. Although it's set to ship 180 days after Windows Server 2008, it will still be included by default in mainstream editions of the server once it's available.
Microsoft finance chief Chris Liddell has endorsed some of the biggest bets in the company's history -- putting billions toward acquisitions, investments, construction and stock buybacks.
Q&A: Liddell on finances, Facebook. But he also prodded Microsoft's senior executives to clamp down on the company's hiring rate after a record-breaking jump in employment.
That might seem like a contradiction, but it sheds light on Liddell's approach as the company's chief financial officer.
The breakdown for the various editions of Windows Server 2008 was revealed this morning by Microsoft, and the big news there is the almost total lack of change: Retail server software editions for the next Windows Server will fall right in line with the current Windows Server 2003 R2 editions, including the number of client access licenses provided in the basic package.
The Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter editions will continue to retail for $999, $3,999, and $2,999 respectively, just as their 2003 R2 counterparts do today. Licensing terms will also apparently remain identical, with 5 CALs minimum for the Standard edition and 25 CALs for Enterprise.