If you had any doubts that Microsoft won the browser wars, we present Exhibit A, Microsoft's new $750 million settlement with Netscape parent company AOL Time Warner. Put simply, Microsoft will pay cash-strapped AOL $750 million to drop its antitrust lawsuit against the software giant, while promising to provide AOL with early access to upcoming Windows versions. What Microsoft gets in return is staggering. First, AOL will use Internet Explorer (IE), not its own Netscape/Mozilla technology, as the royalty-free basis for its online software for at least seven more years. Second, AOL and Microsoft will work to (finally) integrate their currently incompatible instant messaging products, though no timetable was set. Third, AOL will license Microsoft's Windows Digital Media formats and Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology for securely delivering audio and video technology over the Internet through the AOL online service. If you're wondering where this leaves employees of the former Netscape, you're not alone: Until recently, AOL had been talking up using Netscape technology in a variety of client software types. These plans now appear to be as dead as Netscape's market share.
Microsoft plans to announce price cuts for its Office productivity software on Wednesday, a day after it eased controversial licensing plans for Office and other products. The price cuts are for the full retail versions of Office XP "suites," which package common applications such as a word processor and spreadsheet program, and for individual applications.
The Office XP Professional package is now priced at $499, compared with $599 previously. Office XP Standard will carry a price tag of $399, down from $479. Standalone versions of Office applications--Word 2002, Excel 2002, PowerPoint 2002 and Access 2002--will sell for $229, compared with $339. The new prices go into effect Wednesday in the United States and Canada.
How do you get 800,000 people to sing in harmony? Microsoft executive Orlando Ayala may have an answer--but we won't know for sure for another 18 months. Ayala, former head of Microsoft's worldwide sales organization, is settling into his new responsibilities as chief of Microsoft's Small and Midmarket Solutions and Partner Group.
One task is to boost sales of Microsoft products from all seven divisions to small and medium-size businesses with 1,000 or fewer employees. To succeed he must rely on and improve relationships with about 800,000 dealers and consultants worldwide. While Microsoft has had great success selling to larger corporations, the company has struggled to achieve even a fraction of the penetration into the overall small and medium-size business market.
Microsoft kicks off its 'Jupiter' e-business server ramp-up by issuing Beta 1 CDs of its 'Voyager' code to attendees of its Dallas confab. Attendees of Microsoft's annual TechEd conference here found Beta 1 disks containing Microsoft's next version of its integration server in their goodie bags.
Bearing the name "BizTalk Server 2004," the CD includes the code for the first phase of Microsoft's vaunted "Jupiter" e-business suite. According to the CD packaging, Microsoft plans to include BizTalk Server 2004 as part of its recently coined "Windows Server System" brand.
Microsoft has sold its stake in Telewest Communications for $5 million in cash, less than three years after buying the shares for $2.6 billion in stock. IDT, a telephone company that has been purchasing distressed rivals, bought the stake, Microsoft said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Microsoft, Telewest's No. 2 investor, owned 22 percent of the outstanding stock as of March.
Microsoft has written down about $7 billion of the value of its investments since 2001 and trimmed its cable holdings. The Redmond software maker purchased the Telewest shares in July 2000 as part of a bid to help sell software that runs on cable systems and television set-top boxes. Those programs found few customers.
Microsoft is designing its ever-present Windows operating system to streamline and lower the cost of building and distributing the software. The next major client version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, will be designed as a series of components that Microsoft can easily combine and tailor for different markets and computing hardware, according to company executives. That's a break from the company's long-held strategy of building several similar, yet distinct, operating systems positioned for specific purposes and geographic areas.
The change will simplify the process, and hence cut the costs associated with building Windows PCs or issuing software patches, according to Mark Myers, OEM manufacturing program manager at Microsoft.
Longhorn is expected to debut in 2005, and will be the successor to Windows XP. It is expected to include better graphics, a redesigned storage system and a new look and feel.
With Windows Server 2003 just a month out of the gates, Microsoft Corp. is already looking at ways to deliver add-on technologies and wrestling with the issue of how to price these technologies. "There is some deep thinking and strong consideration going on inside the server team about how to best stage future releases and what the core elements of our strategy should be," said Jay Jamison, director of product planning for the Windows Server division, in Redmond, Wash.
According to Jamison, one of the ways Microsoft intends to deliver some of that functionality is through an "out-of-band" mechanism, where new technologies and tools are delivered between major server releases.
Finally, here are a few short videos showing some of the features of the Tier 2 UI.
- The first is a simple conceptual idea of what can be done with the Desktop Composition Engine: Windows Media (451 kb)
- Here's an example of using video textures: Windows Media (448 kb)
- And here's my favorite demo: Windows Media (767 kb)
Other video formats.
In a strategy shift, Microsoft now aims to roll out reporting services for the current SQL Server 2000 database release. The original game plan had been to make the services, code-named Rosetta, available for Yukon, the next-generation SQL Server. That product is slated to go to beta this month and ship next year. (More on Yukon.). Yukon's timeframe has slipped partly due to Microsoft's continued security push, company executives have said.
Microsoft will now offer the services, which aim to bolster the database's ability to report on analytics, this year for SQL Server 2000, sources confirmed. The news will be announced Monday morning in Dallas at Tech Ed 2003 during a keynote by Paul Flessner, senior vice president of Microsoft's Server Platform Division.
With $60 million in annual revenue and the top three U.S. carmakers as customers, MESCO had no shortage of suitors when it decided to replace its 25-year-old enterprise resource planning system from Data Ware Inc. It chose Microsoft's ERP system. The software had to go because Data Ware would no longer support the legacy system, said Chris Long, director of business development and information technology for MESCO, which stands for Manufacturers Equipment & Supply Co.
Business software makers big and small would like MESCO as a customer. The Flint, Mich.-based distributor of industrial supplies is the kind of mid-size business that software vendors are targeting to boost sales in a down economy that has large companies skittish.