Microsoft will release Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 together on Feb. 27, 2008 in what will be the company's single largest launch ever.
"There is a feeding frenzy out there and we are committed to bringing this innovation to you, our partners and our customers. This will be the single largest product launch ever in the company's history," Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, said at the annual worldwide partner conference here July 10.
The commitment to a final ship date for Windows Server 2008 ends months of speculation about when the product will actually be available to customers. Microsoft has until now only said it would release the code to manufacturing by the end of 2007, leading many to correctly predict that would be in early 2008.
Microsoft, which trails Sony and Nintendo Co. in game-console sales in Japan, said Thursday that it will offer its new Xbox 360 model at a cheaper price in that country than in the U.S. to help gain market share.
The black Xbox 360 Elite will sell for about $390 in Japan, less than the $479.99 price in the U.S., the company said in a statement. The machine, with a 120-gigabyte hard disk drive, goes on sale Oct. 11 in Japan.
"The decision on the pricing was based on the situation in the Japanese market," said Jun Yoshihara, Microsoft's Tokyo-based spokesman.
Microsoft is issuing six patches on Patch Tuesday on June 10, one of which addresses a critical .Net Framework vulnerability that has the potential to affect a wide array of applications on all of Microsoft's actively supported platforms.
Users won't know until the morning of June 10 when Microsoft delivers its July set of patches exactly what particular chunk or chunks of code the .Net patch covers, but Microsoft has said that the vulnerability could lead to remote code execution, which is considered to be the worst vulnerability, given that it leaves systems vulnerable to hijacking.
Microsoft said Monday that it had released a improved version of its Robotics Studio platform, adding support for Windows Embedded CE 6.0 and Windows Mobile, as well as programming improvements. The Redmond company introduced its robotics platform in December of last year, while also announcing that it would support RoboCup 2007, a project that aims to build a team of humanoid robots that would be able to defeat the world champion soccer team by 2050.
As advertised, the company did participate this year, simulating soccer matches between humans and robots, as well as also creating a sumo simulation that was released to the public today.
Microsoft moved one step nearer to its full-force entry into the online advertising market Friday, when a federally mandated waiting period expired.
In May, Microsoft agreed to buy online advertiser aQuantive for $6 billion. Federal Trade Commission regulations call for a waiting period to examine any possible antitrust implication, and the deadline passed Friday without comment.
aQuantive, a digital marketing services company, is heavily involved in creating and tracking Internet advertising campaigns. Microsoft cast its gaze toward the Seattle-based company after losing out on several other advertising companies, most notably DoubleClick, which arch-rival Google agreed to buy for $3.1 billion in April. The same month, Microsoft's other search competition, Yahoo, bought advertising company Right Media.
In a report to be published today, Forrester Research sees a series of customer hurricanes coming Microsoft's way. If they strike, they could wash away many Software Assurance contracts. Software Assurance is the discounted upgrade option available with Open, Open Value and Select volume licensing contracts.
Forrester surveyed IT procurement professionals from companies with 3,000 or more employees. Eighty-six percent said that their Software Assurance contract would expire in 2007. If these 46 IT professionals are indicative, Microsoft has a lot of money on the line, and for some time ahead as the contracts typically are two-to-three years long.
A pair of Taiwanese companies signed a technology agreement to develop 3G (third-generation telecommunications) and 3.5G smartphones around the Windows Mobile OS, adding to the growing pool of companies developing mobile phones around the Microsoft software.
E-ten Information Systems and Arima Communications will combine their technical expertise to deliver at least four new Windows Mobile-based smartphones to global markets by the end of this year, they said in statements to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Its official: We are now in the under-promise and over-deliver era at Microsoft.
Just when Microsoft had customers, partners and competitors all believing that it was going to delay the first service pack for Vista not releasing a first beta of it until just before year-end the company is set to deliver Beta 1 of Vista SP1 in mid-July.
Word is Microsoft is gearing up to drop Vista SP1 some time the week of July 16. And despite what Microsoft seemingly led Google, the U.S. Department of Justice and other company watchers to believe, the final version of Vista SP1 is sounding like November 2007.
Microsoft is preparing to field a private beta of a new version of Windows Live OneCare, dubbed Windows Live OneCare 2.0
Windows Live OneCare is Microsofts all-in-one antivirus, antispyware, firewall, backup, maintenance subscription service that Microsoft launched in 2006. In January 2007, Microsoft released OneCare 1.5. Users have enountered various problems with that release, including e-mail deletion problems. Microsoft issued in March a patch for OneCare 1.5 to remedy some of those issues.
Microsoft cleared the air July 5 on its obligations to GNU General Public License Version 3 support, declaring it will not provide support or updates for GPLv3 under the deal it penned in November with Novell to administer certificates for the Linux distribution.
Microsoft also said July 5 that its agreement with Novell, as well as those with Linux rivals Xandros and Linspire, were unaffected by the release June 29 of GPLv3 by the Free Software Foundation.
For its part, Novell said it will support customers with a regular SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscription, regardless of the terms of the certificates provided by Microsoft.