Microsoft late Wednesday night shipped the first public beta of its Active Directory "light" and will release the final code of the application-specific directory by the end of the month, according to company officials.
Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) is designed to be a stand-alone version of the directory dedicated to a single application and maintained separate from a corporation's core Active Directory. ADAM is based on the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and is an alternative to the standard full install of Active Directory, which is known as a network operating system (NOS) directory because of its tie-in with the Windows server operating system.
As part of their $750 million peace treaty, AOL Time Warner Inc. and Microsoft Corp. promised to try to make their popular Internet instant-messaging programs work together. Don't hold your breath, however. AOL and its instant-messaging rivals have made similar pledges before.
AOL has said for years that it is reluctant to open its network to rivals because doing so might compromise its users' privacy and security. Competitors have said AOL mainly wants to preserve its dominance in instant messaging.
AOL's instant-messaging programs, including a service it owns called ICQ, had 59.2 million users in April, according to comScore Media Metrix, which measures Internet usage. MSN had 23.6 million and Yahoo! had 19.1 million.
The Federal Communications Commission tried to push AOL into interoperability by requiring, as a condition of its merger with Time Warner, that AOL make its network accessible to its competitors' services before it could offer video instant messaging, as MSN and Yahoo! now do. Now AOL is asking the FCC to rip up that requirement, saying it no longer has a dominant market share in messaging.
In his latest thinking about where he wants his company to go, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has produced a document that is partly a sweeping business analysis and partly an exhortatory call to arms. In many respects, it was the mark of a vintage sales pro, urging his troops to concentrate their energies on the challenge presented by the open-source software movement. But against the backdrop of what Ballmer described as still uncertain IT demand, this was more than the usual rah-rah pitch.
With Linux no longer inhabiting the computing fringes, Ballmer finds himself forced to more vigorously pitch to customers the advantages of Windows and Microsoft's other software. It was a departure from the tenor of his annual memo to the troops last year, when Ballmer focused on everything but Linux and open source.
Microsoft has revealed details of its wireless service for personal devices as it tests the network prior to the availability of products due in the fall. As expected, the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant on Thursday announced a wireless service, called MSN Direct, and pricing for its Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT) initiative. The service is running and is being tested in eight U.S. cities, with the goal being to have the service available in 100 cities.
SPOT products are household and personal items--such as refrigerators or portable stereos--that can receive and display information from the Internet beamed over a nationwide FM radio network. With SPOT, for example, your alarm clock could have informed you about Martha Stewart's legal problems after you pushed snooze.
Paul Flessner, senior vice president of Microsoft's Server Platform Division, this week sat down with CRN Editor In Chief Michael Vizard and Industry Editor Barbara Darrow to discuss developments at the software vendor's Tech Ed 2003 conference here as well as competitive challenges from IBM, Linux and Oracle.
CRN: IBM WebSphere has good brand recognition. How can you combat that? Microsoft is still a year away from the full release of Jupiter, its planned e-business integration suite.
FLESSNER: I can only win what I ship. I tell it like it is, but then nobody believes me until they see our integration. The fact is that IBM doesn't expend a lot of engineering energy--at least in R&D--to make those things integrate. They have a big services organization where they make a lot of money integrating that stuff. The reality is, we don't have a big services organization and don't want to make money integrating it. We want to make money on software.
In the memo, Ballmer also highlighted the "Longhorn Wave of Innovation." The next major client release of Windows, Longhorn, is due in 2005, according to a road map presented by Paul Flessner, senior vice president of Microsoft's Server Platform Division, at TechEd this week.
"In addition to the Longhorn client, there will be a Longhorn version of Office, Longhorn server enhancements, Longhorn development tools and a Longhorn version of MSN," Ballmer wrote. "We will do the work and take the time required to get it right, because it truly is the next quantum leap in computing, which will put us years ahead of any other product on the market." Partners will be critical in building and supporting a broad array of applications, he said.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer identified Linux and open-source software as key competitive challenges to the company in a memo sent to all employees Wednesday.
"In this environment of lean (information technology) budgets and concerns about Microsoft's attention to customers, noncommercial software such as Linux and OpenOffice is seen as an interesting, 'good enough' or 'free' alternative," Ballmer wrote in his annual letter summarizing Microsoft's market position and its goals for the coming year.
"Noncommercial software products in general, and Linux in particular, present a competitive challenge for us and for our entire industry, and they require our concentrated focus and attention," Ballmer wrote.
Microsoft hopes to make project management a substantial part of office routines with a new version of software announced Wednesday. Microsoft Office Project 2003 can be used with other applications in the upcoming version of the company's market-leading Office productivity package, making it easier for office workers and managers to keep track of large-scale projects, said Giovanni Mezgec, group product manager at Microsoft.
The new application is Microsoft's entry into the developing market for project management software, which managers use to herd assignments involving multiple stages and co-workers. Typical tasks for such software include reminding workers when a certain piece is due and compiling time-line and budget estimates based on the complexity of the effort.
Purveyors and consumers of Web content and software, already unsettled by the pact between archrivals Microsoft and AOL Time Warner, may be in store for an even more radical upset: the end of Microsoft's standalone Internet Explorer browser. Brian Countryman, IE program manager, said in a May 7 Web chat posted to Microsoft's Web site that the software maker is phasing out standalone versions of its Web browser.
Since then, Microsoft has struggled to reconcile Countryman's remarks with promises that current users of the standalone version of IE will be provided with upgrades. Countryman did not return calls. A Microsoft representative pressed for clarification of Countryman's comments acknowledged that the company did not, in fact, know what it was going to do.
Microsoft said it will release an updated version of its MSN Internet service on Wednesday, the latest salvo in its ongoing campaign to unseat America Online. The latest update to MSN 8 focuses on beefing up software to block unsolicited bulk e-mail and adds new parental controls. A sneak peek of the software made its rounds on the Net in April under the guise "MSN 8.5."
The new MSN 8 comes a week after Microsoft said it would pay $750 million to AOL's corporate parent AOL Time Warner to settle an antitrust lawsuit filed on behalf of Netscape Communications. Netscape, a subsidiary of AOL Time Warner, alleged that Microsoft unfairly used its monopoly power in operating systems to stifle Netscape's own Web browser.