Microsoft has grown its market share in almost all of its businesses over the past year, CEO Steve Ballmer said Thursday, while acknowledging that Linux had also grown its market share over that period.
Speaking to financial analysts, media and investors at its Financial Analyst Meeting here, Ballmer addressed the competitive situation facing the company. "The issue is whether software is a business of innovation and value or will it be commoditized? Microsoft has a chance to create great value and is investing in that," he said.
Microsoft has ambitious plans for its Windows Server business during its 2004 fiscal year, including the launch this fall of one version of Windows Small Business Server 2003 for less than $1,000 and enhancements for Windows Server 2003.
The company confirmed it would ship two versions of Windows Small Business Server 2003: one entry-level version with basic file, print, e-mail, portal and remote-access service; and a more full-featured version with SQL and the company's firewall solution included.
On the high end of the spectrum, Microsoft is also working on enhancements to its Windows Server for large customers and a next-generation "Longhorn" server expected in 2006.
Microsoft has made substantial progress complying with an antitrust settlement it reached with the Bush administration and has agreed to reduce prices it charges competitors that want to use its proprietary technology, government lawyers told the trial judge Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly cautioned the software maker during a court hearing that she will continue to monitor its behavior under the agreement but acknowledged that Microsoft "most certainly has been responsive in many areas, and progress has been made." She set another court hearing for October.
Microsoft has decided to rename two real-time collaboration software products and make them a part of its Office System family of applications. Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2003 is the new name for PlaceWare Conference Center, a product that enables businesses to conduct real-time, interactive presentations, and meetings over the Internet, the Redmond, Wash., software company said in a statement Thursday. Microsoft announced that it was acquiring PlaceWare and its products in January.
Live Meeting will be the first fully hosted collaboration service for the Microsoft Office System, which includes a host of other products, ranging from the 2003 editions of Office and Exchange Server to Office Live Meeting 2003 and Office Live Communications Server 2003, the second of Microsoft's products to be renamed Thursday.
Microsoft Office System 2003 will crush forthcoming Linux desktop offerings from Sun Microsystems and Red Hat by serving as an XML-enabled front end to back-end systems and integrating collaboration features, one key executive predicts.
Jeff Raikes, group vice president of Microsoft's Productivity and Business Services, said the integration of collaboration, communications and XML support into the Office 2003 suite will offer a far greater business value than what the open-source competition can deliver.
Sources at Microsoft said the company plans to launch Office System 2003 in late September.
While the technology industry experienced a boom in the late 1990s that is unlikely to be repeated again during his lifetime, there are a number of exciting challenges ahead, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates said Thursday. Addressing a group of financial analysts and media at the Microsoft campus here, Gates said he is excited about and focused on six big things going forward.
"Management capability; integrated storage; our new Windows File System [WinFS], which will draw on the file system and database expertise including rich search; a workflow that allows business processes to be drawn up in an easy way; business intelligence that builds in the XML platform; model-based programming; and speech-language and the natural-based interface are all things I'm excited about," he said.
Microsoft will be moving more deeply into the model-based programming space, said company chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates. Gates, who was the opening speaker at the Microsoft Financial Analysts Meeting here Thursday, listed model-driven development as one of the company's software advances and said that the use of modeling will become available in interim products leading up to the release of the company's Longhorn operating system in 2005.
Gates described modeling as using "very high-level specs that describe how software is to be pulled together. We see that as literally part of the source code." Indeed Gates said modeling is to become an integral part of "how to create that code."
If you haven't already seen the Microsoft 2003 Financial Analyst Meeting webcast, be sure to take a look - and no - it is not all about $$$! Two speeches that I saw by Jim Allchin and Bill Gates have interesting demos of what's to come from the Redmond hill tops. They show off new MSN email and Outlook 11 connector feature, the prototype of the new desktop, "Athens", and a lot more.
Jim Allchin's speech has more interesting demos, Bill Gates' speech is more long term outlook for things to come. As for the rest of the videos, I haven't seen them yet. I will update this page, if I find more interesting videos from this webcast.
Last but not least, you can catch all the info from the today's Microsoft Financial webcast in many of the news stores posted today.
Microsoft said on Thursday that its newest version of server software for managing networks of computers chalked up three times as many sales as the previous version in the 90 days since it was released in April. Windows Server 2003 is the "fastest-selling Windows Server release," said Bob Kelly, General Manager Microsoft's Windows Server product management group. The world's largest software maker is competing aggressively against Linux, software that can be copied and modified freely, in the market for corporate server software.
Microsoft will increase its investment in research and development by 8 percent to $6.8 billion in its 2004 fiscal year as it works on its Longhorn version of Windows, collaboration services and .NET services across all product lines, said company Chairman Bill Gates.
At the company's annual financial analyst conference here, Gates said the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, will incorporate a new Windows File System and managed set of APIs that will enable Windows developers to get to key Windows services more deeply and efficiently.
The first technical beta of Longhorn will be delivered at the Professional Developer's Conference in October, and a broad beta test version will be available next year, other Microsoft executives said Thursday.