Microsoft Business Solutions Tuesday said the latest version of its software to serve supply chain management, e-commerce and customer relationship management companies is ready for the public.
The Fargo, N.D. business unit of the Redmond, Wash. software concern released an improved Business Solutions-Great Plains 7.5, which organizations use to manage chores such as accounting, payroll and online transactions. Great Plains 7.5 includes enhanced supply chain management and manufacturing features that help businesses deliver better customer service, as well as distribution and order management improvements.
It's a 'Platform.' It's the anchor for a 'System' of servers. Here's the theory behind Windows Server 2003. It's no mean feat to write an operating system . or even to rev one. Just ask Microsoft. It took 5,000 developers three years of work to reach this week's Windows Server 2003 launch. And, as eWeek Labs noted, Windows Server 2003 isn't even a "major" update; it's a relatively small step forward for Windows in reliability, scalability and availability.
Unisys plans to celebrate the unveiling of Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 operating system this Thursday with a coming-out party for its latest server. According to company executives, the Unisys ES7000/560 is a three-in-one model aimed at running as much of a data center as possible from a single box. It will be the first server configured to run applications on 64-bit Itanium 2 processors, 32-bit Xeon MP processors and PCI blade servers all at the same time, said Mark Feverston, vice president of enterprise server marketing at the company, based here.
Microprocessor maker Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday recruited technology heavyweights such as IBM and Microsoft in its bid to grab a piece of the lucrative server computer market from rival Intel. During a New York launch for its new, more powerful Opteron chip, Sunnyvale, California-based AMD said that the support of such major players would help it get others on board.
"There's not a computer maker in the world that we haven't talked to and who is not actively looking at Opteron," Chief Executive Hector Ruiz said in an interview with Reuters.
"Having said that, the public announcement that IBM will make products -- and IBM is a market maker -- will have an impact," Ruiz said.
Late yesterday, Microsoft released its free set of resource kit tools for Windows Server 2003. The "Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit" tools include utilities that administrators, developers, and power users can use to manage Active Directory (AD), Group Policy, TCP/IP networks, the registry, security, scalability, and many other aspects of the Windows 2003 OS. The resource kit tools run on Windows XP and any member of the Windows 2003 family of products.
The Windows 2003 resource kit download includes more than 125 tools. You can download the Windows 2003 resource kit tools now from the Microsoft Web site.
A preview version of Microsoft Virtual Server, Redmond's rebranded version of the Connectix product it purchased last February, has slipped out onto newsgroups and Internet sites. Never publicly released, Connectix began beta testing Virtual Server late last year.
Microsoft Virtual Server enables enterprises with large server clusters to reduce the amount of physical machines by running multiple virtual servers on each. Microsoft plans to also position Virtual Server as a migration path for businesses still running Windows NT4 servers, which can be consolidated onto a newer machine running Windows Server 2003.
Microsoft will launch a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign on Thursday to promote Windows Server 2003 to cash-strapped IT managers. The Redmond, Wash.-based software company said ads touting the thrice-delayed operating system will appear in print, television, outdoor and Internet promotions. The cost of the campaign, developed by McCann Erickson, will comprise a "significant portion" of Microsoft's overall $200 million to $250 million budget for enterprise software marketing, according to spokesman Tom Pilla. The campaign is expected to run through September, he said.
In the past year, Microsoft appears to have done just what it asked a court not to make it do: fragment Windows. In April 2002, the software maker's chairman, Bill Gates, testified that too many versions of Windows would be bad for consumers and for competition. But since then, Microsoft has essentially doubled--to about two dozen--the number of "current" versions of the operating system software.
The goal behind the proliferation, analysts say, is in fact to create competition of sorts, within Microsoft's own monopoly market. They say the variations indicate the company understands that consumers and businesses crave choice. More versions could also boost sales and fill niches left vacant by the lack of external alternatives.
Microsoft said on Monday it has agreed to cut the cost and ease some restrictions it placed on competitors seeking to view the inner workings of the Windows program under last year's antitrust settlement with the government. Following complaints from some rivals, Microsoft said it would make it cheaper and easier for other software companies to access key pieces of computer code that their server software needs to function properly with the Windows operating system.
The changes could be helpful to companies such as Sun Microsystems Inc. SUNW.O that are battling Microsoft in the market for software that runs servers, the powerful machines that manage computer networks.
The demise of the dude hasn't hurt Dell. Despite the retirement of its hip pitchman, Dell recaptured the top spot from Hewlett-Packard as the world's largest computer maker, according to numbers released by two research firms.
Dell accounted for 17.3% of global PC shipments during the first quarter of 2003, market research firm IDC said, compared with HP's 15.8%. The next three in the top five--IBM, Fujitsu, and Toshiba-- were far behind, with just 5.4%, 4.8%, and 3.7% market share, respectively.
Dell, which has swapped the top spot with HP for the last five quarters, benefited from timing. "Besides the fact that Dell's on a roll," said Roger Kay, director of IDC's Client Computing group, "the first quarter is a more commercially-oriented quarter. Dell tends to be a more commercially oriented company."