We began our discussion by focusing on perhaps the most obvious strategy shift in the server division: the move back toward a less burdened kernel and command-line-driven operation, with the provision of the new Server Core option.
Although Server Core runs within a window, it's essentially a promoted version of the CMD.EXE command-line shell in Windows Server 2003. New utilities have been written for Server Core, in the classic style of the best MS-DOS 6 executables. As we learned last week at WinHEC, there's considerable support for making PowerShell the official WS2K8 command prompt, including for Server Core.
As part of its plan to promote identity management across multiple platforms, Microsoft is funding several new projects to
develop open-source versions of its digital-identity technology for information cards.
The company also Wednesday released another specification for building a Web-based architecture to support centralized digital
identity, called the Identity Metasystem, under its OSP program. OSP, launched last September,
gives developer access to Web services protocols Microsoft has developed over the years without the need for a license or
fear of legal action from the vendor.
If Microsoft is muscling in on enterprise telephony vendors' turf, most of those companies right now are just trying to get along.
Microsoft was set to announce on Tuesday at Interop that 12 of the biggest names in business communications, including Cisco Systems Inc., Avaya Inc., and Alcatel-Lucent SA, have pledged support for an Office Communications Server 2007 interoperability specification. That means the companies' office phone systems and gateways will be able to work with OCS 2007 through their native signaling systems, said Zig Serafin, general manager of Microsoft's unified communications business. Many will achieve this by the end of the year, he added.
A new Microsoft-funded study has found that open-source developers do not believe that licenses such as the upcoming GNU General Public License 3.0 should enforce software patents or prevent deals like the Microsoft-Novell patent agreement.
The study by Harvard Business School professor Alan MacCormack, in collaboration with Keystone Strategy, is titled "A Developers Bill of Rights: What Open Source Developers Want in a Software License."
"While many of the developers surveyed cited displeasure with the patent element of the Novell-Microsoft deal, the use of digital rights management to restrict the use of modified open-source software, or the enforcement of software patents, they did not believe it was the place of the GPLv3 or other licenses to prevent such deals or resolve such issues," MacCormack told eWEEK in an interview.
T-Mobile said Tuesday it had launched the Wing, the successor to its MDA smartphone and the first handset in the United States to ship with Windows Mobile 6 installed.The carrier was also the first to offer an upgrade for Windows Mobile 5 users with a T-Mobile Dash, and it said phones with the new OS installed would appear next month.
The Wing offers many improvements over the MDA, most noticeably a slimmer form factor. In additional, the phone also includes a new keyboard design and longer battery life, along with a 2.0-megapixel camera.
Microsoft said Tuesday it plans to expand its operations in Fargo, N.D., adding a third building there to house an additional 575 workers.
The software maker said it is just the first step of a planned expansion that will one day allow Microsoft to have as many as 3,800 workers at that facility. It currently has nearly 1,300 workers in Fargo, including 956 full-time employees and 337 contractors and temporary workers.
Microsoft kicked off its Fargo operations with its purchase of Great Plains Software, completed in 2001, though it now houses workers in other divisions as well.
Yesterday, Microsoft announced the availability of its Microsoft Office Isolated Conversion Environment, a feature it hopes will help put the kibosh on an increasingly common exploit vector ?- the innocent-looking Office document with a malicious payload.
Microsoft also alerted users to the File Block functionality that's already built into Office 2007. File Block, like MOICE, can help minimize the danger posed by malicious Office files, Microsoft officials say.
MOICE uses Office 2007's built-in tools to convert Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2003 binary documents into the Office 2007 Open XML format.
Microsoft said Monday that it had signed an agreement with the Vietnamese government that would require its government offices ensure they are running genuine copies of the Redmond company's software. The country has one of the highest rates of piracy, according to recent studies. The partnership came the same day as another with the state-run Vietindebank banking chain.Microsoft has put a lot of focus on Vietnam in recent months, with Bill Gates recently visiting the country to address the piracy issue with government leaders. His visit resulted in the signing of an anti-piracy agreement with Vietnam's Finance Ministry..
Microsoft is expanding its repertoire of document formats.
The company on Monday is expected to announce that it is sponsoring an open-source project to create a converter between Ecma Open XML--a set of file formats closely tied to Microsoft Office--and a Chinese national standard called Unified Office Format.
Also on Monday, the company is expected to make available beta versions of previously announced translators between PowerPoint and Excel and corresponding applications that support the OpenDocument Format, or ODF.
The network access control landscape is about to change on news today that Microsoft NAP and standards organization Trusted Computing Group's Trusted Network Connect are now interoperable.
The market for NAC is a competitive one, with the majority of solutions being compatible with one of three overriding frameworks: Cisco NAC, NAP or TNC. But now that NAP is considered an implementation of TNC, the NAC industry could be going from a three-horse race to a two-horse one between Cisco and TNC.
"The feedback we're always getting is that NAC is too confusing and why are there three architectures and not just one," Steve Hanna co-chair of the TNC working group for TCG and a distinguished engineer with Juniper Networks, told internetnews.com.