AMD this week updated its two-month-old line of Opteron 64-bit server processors to offer chips designed for four-processor servers and eight-processor servers. The delivery means AMD has several technical building blocks in place to reach higher into enterprise requirements. The 800 series of AMD Opterons joins the original 200 series of Opterons that first launched in late April. Intel this week launched its third generation of Itanium processors, code-named "Madison."
Intel this week delivered its third-generation 64-bit processor, the "Madison" release of the Itanium 2 processor. Major server vendors including Dell, HP and IBM are poised with systems built on the higher performance chip.
Madison, which carries the same official "Itanium 2" product name as the last official release, code-named "McKinley," brings higher clockspeeds and much larger caches to the Itanium 2 line. The Madison chips come in three versions. There's a 1.5-GHz version with 6 MB of cache for $4,226 each in 1,000-unit quantities. A 1.4-GHz version with 4 MB of cache costs $2,247, and a 1.3-GHz version with 3 MB of cache costs $1,338.
In partnership with Microsoft, Intel will give a customer preview of its 32-bit execution layer for 64-bit Itanium 2 processors in the beta of Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2003. The inability of the Itanium Family processors to run 32-bit applications without a large performance penalty has been a major shortcoming of Intel's 64-bit Itanium line that has negatively affected industry adoption. Applications written for Itanium's new EPIC instruction set have been slow to materialize, and, even when applications are present, budgetary restraints due to economic conditions have kept users from splurging on purchases of a completely new architecture from processors to servers to operating systems to applications.
Fans of Microsoft's SideWinder joysticks and gamepads will be saddened to hear that the software giant is halting development of these PC-based products to focus on the Xbox and peripherals for that system. While I appreciate Microsoft's support for the Xbox, sort of, part of me feels compelled to mention that the PC gamer market is approximately 100 times as large as that for the Xbox, so I'm a little curious why the company would make such a bone-headed move. It seems to me that what the company should have done is port all of its Xbox controllers to the PC, so that people could get used to them and then feel more at home with Microsoft's gaming console. Microsoft says it is dropping the products because they aren't selling as well, but that has more to do with the low-quality of its recent hardware releases than anything else. Back when Microsoft actually cared about the products, the company released innovative joysticks with force feedback features and a game pad you moved in 3D space to guide on-screen characters. Today's Sidewinder peripherals are cheap plastic junk by comparison. Where's the competitive Microsoft we've come to know and love?
Oracle postponed a hearing on its lawsuit against PeopleSoft, the company said Tuesday, a day after federal antitrust regulators requested additional information to review the database maker's hostile takeover bid for its competitor.
Oracle, which initially filed the lawsuit to prevent PeopleSoft's acquisition of J.D. Edwards under its amended terms and to remove its "poison pill," said the parties agreed to meet with the court on July 25 to consider how to proceed, in light of the new developments with the U.S. Department of Justice. The Delaware Chancery Court hearing was originally set for July 16--a day before the deadline for J.D. Edwards investors to tender their shares to PeopleSoft.
One of the biggest issues facing Microsoft's enterprise customers today is patch management, primarily because the company's many products all have their own tools and methods for providing software updates. The problem is exacerbated by the bewildering number of product revisions, language versions, and other product differentiators, many of which require the software giant to issue multiple patches for the same vulnerabilities. And finally, because many of its tools use different patch infrastructures, customers often see different results when they use products such as Windows Update (WU), Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA), Software Update Services (SUS), and Systems Management Server with the SUS Feature Pack. To fix these issues, the company is overhauling its patch management infrastructure and will unleash a new generation of patch management tools for its customers as soon as early 2004.
Microsoft Corp. is getting a new open-source and Linux strategist as the end-of-financial-year staff shuffle continues. Peter Houston, who as the senior director of Microsoft's Windows Server Strategies has had to defend and explain the company's response to the competitive threat posed by Linux and open source for the past 18 months, is now moving to Microsoft's Enterprise Management Division where he will work on the upcoming Systems Center product.
Houston will be replaced by long-time Microsoft employee Martin Taylor, who will continue to drive Microsoft's server strategy and orchestrate broader strategies across the other business groups.
Microsoft finally placed a definitive stake in the lucrative identity management market Wednesday by unveiling a revamped version of its Meta Directory product, dubbed Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003.
In conjunction with its new offering, Microsoft also introduced "Identity and Access Management Solution Accelerator," a new set of prescriptive guidelines created with Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP to help customers build and test identity management infrastructures. Partnerships with Oblix and OpenNetworks Technologies will help extend Microsoft's reach to cross-platform levels as well.
A release candidate of Microsoft's long-awaited Systems Management Server 2003 is on track for a September ship date, Microsoft said Tuesday. Microsoft in September shipped the beta-test version of SMS 2003, developed under the code name Topaz, to about 10,000 customers.
The release candidiate announced this week offers improved mobile support for laptops and roaming users, tighter integration with Windows 2000/2003 Active Directory and new metering and Web-based reporting tools, Microsoft said.
Microsoft has announced general availability of an update to the latest trial version of its Office software. The software giant last week issued a "technical refresh" for the second beta version of Office 2003, the company's high-profile revamp of the market-leading package of productivity applications. The refresh initially was available only to a select group of 10,000 "technical" testers. The company on Monday made it available to all 600,000 beta testers.
As previously reported, the update is available only as a download from Microsoft's Office update site, even though most beta testers received their initial software on CDs. The download for the refresh can be as large as 400MB for testers trying out all the applications included in Microsoft's newly rebranded Office System.