Redmond is readying its 1.2 release, while broadening the channel for its CRM offering.
There's been little news regarding Microsoft's first customer-relationship-management foray since the company launched the product in January. Until now.
Redmond is prepping a minor upgrade, dubbed 1.2, of its MS CRM package to debut in the fourth quarter of this year. The 1.2 release is slated to include improvements to set-up; an enhanced Microsoft Outlook development environment; compatibility with Windows Server 2003, Exchange Server 2003, Small Business Server 2003 and the forthcoming Microsoft Office System 2003; and broader reporting capabilities via Crystal Enterprise 9, among other features.
Microsoft today offered a few new glimpses into its tools roadmap and enhanced its industry partner program to further grow its ecosystem around its tools. Speaking at the VSLive! New York 2003 conference, Eric Rudder, senior vice president of Server and Tools at Microsoft, gave glimpses of future versions of Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework, including the next version of the technology, code-named Whidbey, and the subsequent version code-named Orcas.
Orcas will support things like managed interfaces based on managed code, enhanced user interface features, an improved data model and other new capabilities tied to the Longhorn operating system, which is expected in 2005.
Longhorn, the next version of Microsoft Windows, will be so different from its predecessors that users may not like it right away, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates says.
"It (Longhorn) should drive a whole range of upgrades, but that could be sort of delayed," Gates said. Because of differences with the previous versions of Windows, it could be a year or two after its release before computer users really pick up Longhorn, he said.
Microsoft's MSN service, which gets millions of people to the Internet over phone lines, made another move to adjust to the growing appetite for speedier connections. MSN introduced a Web site yesterday at which consumers can choose among offers from eight companies that provide broadband Internet access. The site's debut follows MSN's decision to stop offering its own high-speed Internet access, referring that business to partners instead.
In return for directing customers to the high-speed providers, MSN will receive an undisclosed referral fee, the company said. In addition, people who sign up for high-speed access through the site will, as part of the process, get a chance to buy a subscription to MSN 8, the current version of the subscription service.
Rumors regarding the development of a smart phone based on software from Microsoft by Taiwan's Chi Mei Communication Systems have been confirmed with the device's regulatory approval by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The FCC published details of the telephone on its Web site Wednesday after the handset received clearance from the FCC to be used in the U.S. Regulatory approval from the FCC is required for all cellular telephones before they can be used in the U.S. and this is usually one of the final stages a product goes through before commercial launch.
Microsoft's Xbox Live online gaming service has just acquired a customer that knows something about strategy and tactics--the US Department of Defense. The US Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) have paid $200,000 to outfit 14 bases around the continent with 17 Xbox Live gaming centers, as a way of giving young airmen in the region something to do in their downtime, according to the official US military publication Stars and Stripes. When off duty, they will be able to hone their military skills with such multiplayer games as Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell.
Researchers at Microsoft are working on technology that makes it easier to navigate Usenet news groups and could eventually help clear clutter in e-mail inboxes, a Microsoft researcher said Tuesday.
A Microsoft concept called the Community .Net Server takes a new approach to displaying Usenet groups and message threads, making it easier for users to pick a relevant group, cutting out spam and displaying the most active threads first. The concept is intended for Usenet groups, but can be extended to e-mail, Microsoft Research Sociologist Marc Smith said in a presentation at Microsoft's Mountain View, Calif., campus.
Microsoft confirmed Tuesday that it has laid off a small number of workers from the division that creates games for the Xbox and PCs. A company representative said 34 positions were eliminated in Microsoft Game Studios--about 3 percent of the division's work force of 1,229 employees. The representative characterized the layoffs as part of routine reorganization.
"As a matter of business we continually evaluate our development strategies and investments to ensure we are achieving our most important objectives," the representative said. "As the Xbox business transitions from an aggressive start-up to a mature business, our games portfolio strategy is focused on creating the most ambitious platform-driving games. As part of this effort, development operations are being streamlined to be more efficient and better position the business for long-term success and profitability."
Taking another step in the major effort to enable 64-bit computing across its product lines, Microsoft will bring support for 64-bit CPUs to the next version of Visual Studio .NET, code-named "Whidbey."
Whidbey is the overhaul of Visual Studio .NET that is intended to support the next version of SQL Server, itself code-named "Yukon" and scheduled for release sometime in 2004. Yukon is billed as an especially significant release of SQL Server for developers because the .NET Common Language Runtime will be built directly into the database engine.
Windows Server 2003 is selling much more rapidly than Windows 2000 Server did at this stage in the product lifecycle, according to Microsoft officials. "We're now at three times the run rate of Windows Server 2000," said Eric Rudder, senior vice president for servers and tools, at a financial analysts day presentation last week.
Microsoft has declined to provide figures. But the comparison implies that the number of Windows Server 2003 shipments in the three months since its April 24 launch are much higher than the number of shipments of Windows 2000 Server in the three months following its Feb. 17, 2000 launch.