Microsoft announced a trio of European government contract wins on Tuesday, the latest salvo in the growing turf battle between the software giant and vendors of the upstart Linux software. The U.S. software giant would not disclose financial terms of the deals, which it said it won after competing head-to-head for the business with various Linux vendors.
Microsoft said it would deploy its signature Windows server and desktop software on thousands of computers for the city governments in Frankfurt, the Latvian capital of Riga and Turku in Finland.
Three few weeks after sending shockwaves through the anti-virus industry with the announcement that it had bought an anti-virus vendor, Microsoft and three security partners made nice in public with an extension of Microsoft's Virus Information Alliance (VIA).
Computer Associates, Sybari and Symantec on Tuesday all formally joined the VIA, which Microsoft originally launched May 21 with Network Associates and Trend Micro. The stated purpose of the alliance is to create a centralized resource for Microsoft Windows and Outlook customers to get information on worm, virus, trojan and other malware threats.
The U.S. Department of Justice has requested additional information from Oracle on its unsolicited bid to buy PeopleSoft, Oracle said Monday night. Earlier today, an Oracle spokesman had said in a statement that the company, given the scope and complexity of the proposed $6.3 billion deal, expected a request for additional information following an initial two-week review of the proposed deal under the usual Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust act. All deals that could pose antitrust concerns must pass muster under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act.
Microsoft has confirmed that it plans to ship a "lite" version of Windows Small Business Server 2003 this fall. The software giant plans to formally announce Tuesday a release candidate of Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2003, code-named Bobcat, as well as the availability of two versions, including a Standard edition that contains Windows 2003 and Exchange 2003 only. CRN first reported plans for this lite version of SBS that would not contain SQL Server and Internet Security & Acceleration (ISA) Server in January.
Microsoft made its first concrete move into iSCSI Monday as it announced the availability of its iSCSI software driver for Windows XP and 2000, and Windows Server 2003. iSCSI--Internet Small Computer System Interface--is the recently ratified protocol for transporting block-level storage traffic over IP-based networks, and has been hailed as a less-expensive alternative to Fibre Channel, the standard that ties together most high-end storage area networks. The free driver can be downloaded from Microsoft's Web site.
With the introduction of Microsoft's Small Business Server 2003, the company has demonstrated that its focus on the small-business market hasn't waned. Solution providers will find that the product is evolutionary in nature as opposed to revolutionary. Microsoft has focused on enhancing features already present in Small Business Server 2000, as opposed to attempting to re-invent the market. That will be welcome news to those familiar with the previous generation of Small Business Server, which was found to be an excellent solution for businesses with fewer than 50 seats.
The biggest change solution providers will find is that SBS is now based upon the latest generation of Microsoft's server products, including Windows Server 2003, Exchange Server 2003, Outlook 2003 and SharePoint Services. Other key elements have been re-engineered for better integration and management, including ISA Server and SQL Server 2000.
Microsoft's long-awaited Exchange 2003 is finished. Three years in the making, the enhanced e-mail client and server was released to manufacturing Monday and is expected to be available to licensed enterprise customers by the end of the summer, one Microsoft spokesman said.
Microsoft also plans to formally announce this week a per-user licensing option for Exchange 2003 similar to the one introduced for Windows Server 2003, said Missy Stern, a product manager for Exchange at Microsoft.
Microsoft may have unwittingly started a revolt against its Internet Explorer (IE) browser by discontinuing it as a standalone product and blurring the future of the current version, IE 6. Earlier this month, Microsoft admitted it would not release any new versions of IE as a standalone browser. Instead, the software giant said that the next version of IE will be an integrated part of the Windows operating system.
The move has led to unrest among companies that rely on their customers to access services over the Internet and led some analysts to conclude that IE's virtual monopoly and status as the de-facto browser standard is about to come to an end.
Japanese chips-to-computers giant NEC said Monday that it has developed a small fuel cell that will dramatically improve the battery life of notebooks and that the company aims to test on the market within two years that. The fuel cell would enable notebooks to operate for 40 consecutive hours, or around 10 times the life of regular lithium-ion batteries, a company representative said.
The company is locked in fierce competition with domestic rivals such as Toshiba, as well as United States and South Korean rivals that are rushing to bring fuel-cell technology for notebooks to the mass market.
When faced with a struggling product line, rebrand and upgrade. Microsoft has gotten fat with that strategy, and the company tried again last week with its mobile platforms. IT professionals may not take rebranding--basically renaming products--very seriously. However, IT shops should take note of the strong native Bluetooth support built into Microsoft's upgraded handheld platform, now called Windows Mobile for Pocket PC.
In the wake of Microsoft's announcement, Hewlett-Packard and other Pocket PC vendors promised to build Bluetooth support into their handhelds based on the upgraded platform. That platform also features improved 802.11 capabilities such as auto-detection of wireless networks.