Microsoft hopes its initiative for simplifying the management of datacenters will play with Unix and Linux as well as with Windows. The software maker plans to open up its nascent architecture for datacenters, called SDM (system definition model), so that servers running operating systems other than Windows can be part of a datacenter that employs the Microsoft technology.
Microsoft has only just started its initiative for simplifying the management of datacenters, following similar initiatives from IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett-Packard. The company unveiled SDM as part of its Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) in March. Earlier this month, at its Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in New Orleans, Microsoft added yet another acronym to the list: DDC, for dynamic data center.
In the latest act of their Wagnerian cycle of malfunction and recrimination, Norse browser company Opera and Microsoft are feuding over a glitch that prevents what Opera estimates to be approximately 30 percent of its users from accessing Microsoft's MSN portal.
Microsoft denied categorically that it was intentionally shutting out Opera users. And Opera executives who have examined the problem have acknowledged that although the vast majority of affected Web surfers use Opera, the MSN problem in some cases can also stymie users of Microsoft's own Internet Explorer browser.
IT departments are having a hard time determining how much they should invest in new technologies to help their information workers do their jobs effectively, Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates said Wednesday in a keynote address to more than 100 business leaders from around the world at the seventh annual Microsoft CEO Summit.
In a talk titled "The Agile Business: Balancing Strategy and Execution," Gates told the CEOs gathered at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., campus that it is a "very big challenge for IT departments to step up to these new things.
Amazon.com is expected to announce a deal with Microsoft on Thursday to use the latest version of the software giant's digital media technology to stream music samples from its Web site. Amazon will use Microsoft's Windows Media Services 9 (WM9), with encoding services provided by digital media services provider LoudEye. The deal will also affect sample streams at Borders.com, CDNow.com and VirginMega.com, which outsource their e-commerce sites through Amazon.
Amazon already offers samples in Windows Media and RealNetworks formats for CDs it sells over its site. But Microsoft touted the deal as a step forward in the quality of experience for online shoppers. Microsoft claims WM9 solves the problem of "buffering" delays related to older streaming media technology.
Microsoft is roping off yet another free service and asking for subscription fees, its latest attempt to encourage people to sign up for its MSN 8 Internet service. This week the company is e-mailing users of MSN Calendar, an online calendar service, telling them they must subscribe to MSN 8 by June 24 or lose access to the service.
"We regret to inform you that MSN Calendar will no longer be available as a free service as of June 25, 2003," says the e-mail, which also promises an improved calendar for MSN 8 users that will feature more printing and offline access capabilities.
Microsoft's MSN unit is expanding the reach of its MSN Messenger instant messaging client, through an expanded deal with European wireless carrier Orange SA.
The agreement will see Paris-based Orange making MSN Messenger available via a Short Messaging Service interface to its 35 million subscribers across the continent. Users in the U.K., the Netherlands, and Denmark currently have access to the service, with France and Belgium to receive the service by the end of the year. Previously, Orange had been using the service on a trial basis in Switzerland.
New research on the database market from Gartner on Wednesday quantifies in yet another area the case for arguing that 2002 was the worst year yet for IT. But the research also supports another trend -- no matter how bad things got, Microsoft kept growing and churning out profits.
IBM's revenue dropped by nearly 1 percent to $2.4 billion, still good for the overall market share lead at 36.2 percent. Oracle had a horrible year, with a 20 percent drop in revenues to less than $2.2 billion. That saw the onetime database king fall to second place in revenues to IBM with 33.9 percent share.
Microsoft, on the other hand, enjoyed growing revenue and market share. The company's SQL Server database had revenue growth of nearly 17 percent to almost $1.2 billion from $1 billion in 2001. Microsoft's market share rose from 14.3 percent of the overall market in 2001 to 18 percent in 2002.
HP hoisted its Superdome-Itanium-Windows combination to the top of the premier OLTP scalability benchmark on Tuesday, about a month after originally gaining the top spot and little more than a week after IBM displaced the combo with a system based on its own AIX/RISC/DB2 stack.
By matching HP's Superdome result on May 9, IBM showed that Unix/RISC will not go down easy now that Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition and Itanium 2 processors can scale in SMP configurations. By responding quickly on Tuesday, HP, Microsoft and Intel are showing that the Wintel partners are willing to fight for TPC-C bragging rights.
Oracle and Sun have stayed out of this benchmark battle so far, choosing instead to criticize the current legitimacy of a benchmark that both vendors used extensively in the past. [losers......]
Hoping to expand its use beyond the desks of technical users and into corporate offices, Microsoft Corp. is adding features to Visio that aim to turn it into a business intelligence tool, and said a beta of the product will be available midyear.
IT professionals are familiar with Visio and use the software for such tasks as network diagramming and Web site mapping. Microsoft Office Visio 2003, due out in the third quarter, has a host of new features that connect the application to enterprise applications and help companies analyze their business processes, Microsoft said.
"One way to think about it is as a business intelligence tool," said Jason Bunge, product manager for Visio at Microsoft. "Our objective is to broaden that understanding and become more relevant in the enterprise."
Microsoft said Monday that electronics retailer Circuit City Stores will use an embedded version of Windows XP to power a new generation of cash registers. The retailer will also use server software from Microsoft in each of its 600 stores. Circuit City said it tested the new cash register system during last year's holiday season and decided to use it throughout its retail outlets.