SQL Server consolidated its No. 1 position in the 2002 worldwide OLAP market, where Microsoft's presence continues to drive down the value of the average sale. But even so, Redmond is not enjoying the kind of market dominance it has achieved in other markets, according to preliminary estimates for 2002 from the U.K.-based OLAP Report.
Microsoft entered the OLAP market in early 1999 with the release of SQL Server 7.0, which rocked the market for on-line analytic processing, also known as multi-dimensional databases. Because Microsoft chose to bundle OLAP services for free with the SQL Server relational database, Microsoft effectively undercut the market for OLAP products, which had previously sold for tens of thousands of dollars each.
As big a phenomenon as instant messaging has become, it is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to realtime communication, according to the Microsoft executive charged with that company's RTC effort.
Part of Microsoft's vision is the construction of an "information agent" that would theoretically route communications to a given user based on that user's profile and settings. If a product manager is on the phone, for example, the system might note it, convert the message to text and blast it out to the product manager via instant messaging.
Windows Server 2003 has been released to manufacturing and is ready to be launched to a community that is going to be hard pressed to pay for it. These days, IT budgets are under intense pressure from corporate chief financial officers. Microsoft, of course, realizes this. That's why the company has been attempting to make the case that Windows Server 2003 will not only improve efficiency but, because of the integrated product stack that comes with it, will also reduce costs.
Redmond's latest consumer IM client is out. Will a beta of MSN Messenger Connect corporate IM solution soon follow? Microsoft made available for download late Monday the latest version of its MSN Messenger instant-messaging (IM) product, MSN Messenger 5.0. The Redmond software vendor posted versions for Windows XP, Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me), Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000.
Redmond also has a Windows Messenger corporate IM product that is built into Windows XP, and also is the front-end client for "Greenwich." The latest version of Windows Messenger, release 5.0, is currently in beta.
A Microsoft executive Wednesday detailed the software giant's vision of PCs and Internet-based phones working hand in hand as part of an overarching strategy to power real-time communications in the workplace. Speaking at the AIIM Expo in New York, Gurdeep Singh Pall, general manager of Microsoft's real-time communications group, highlighted PC-to-phone integration as the holy grail of the company's strategy. The software giant is building software that will fold phone calling into the interactive PC environment.
Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and others will perform a live Webcast of a concert featuring high-definition video and six-channel sound. The U.S.-based technology companies, working with domestic service providers NTT East and J-Stream, will broadcast a live concert of popular Japanese musician Jo Hisaishi on Apr. 16 to a preselected audience of 700 through a Web site, according to Microsoft.
A Microsoft representative told CNETAsia that the concert will demonstrate the use of a broadband PC as a high-quality, audio-video entertainment device. It also aims to show that its server technology can be viable for streaming video into next-generation "filmless" digital movie theaters.
Microsoft will release a 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP for Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD's) forthcoming Opteron and Athlon64 processors, Microsoft announced Wednesday. Microsoft announced support for AMD processors last year, but the omission of support for AMD in the release-to-manufacture version of Windows Server 2003 unveiled last week led observers to wonder if Microsoft would follow through on its plans. Beta releases of the operating systems are expected in the middle of 2003, Microsoft said in a press release.
Pentium 4-based PCs will get a performance boost next week when Intel begins shipping its 875 chip set, formerly known by the code name Canterwood. The new chip set revs up the highest speed of the front-side bus used with Pentium 4 chips from 533MHz to 800MHz. Intel has scheduled a press conference to be held in Taipei, Taiwan on April 15 to announce the new chip set. Chip sets are a key component in PCs, where they are used to connect the processor to the main memory and to provide an interface with other PC components, including the graphics card and hard disk drives.
With the release of Windows Server 2003 and Visual Studio .NET 2003 on April 24, Microsoft will bring two of the final pieces of its .NET vision into play. Office 2003, slated for release later this year, and the release of 'Yukon,' a forthcoming version of SQL Server, will complete the stack of XML-geared software, which also includes Microsoft's previously released Windows XP.
Windows Server 2003 and Visual Studio .NET 2003 (previously known as 'Everett') are tightly integrated as part of Microsoft's plan to create a cohesive ecosystem on which businesses can build their Web services. Windows Server 2003 fully leverages the .NET Framework, the platform infrastructure that defines Microsoft's Web services push. Meanwhile, Visual Studio .NET 2003 is an incremental advancement to the company's integrated development environment (IDE), a developer tool suite which at its core contains the vision of enabling development teams to share in large-scale projects across the entire development life cycle, even when mixing components of various languages and using a variety of deployment architectures, from the Internet to Windows to mobile devices.
Microsoft Tuesday continued to tip its hand about features it will include in forthcoming products at the National Association of Broadcasters convention (NAB2003). To make way for what it has long believed will be a lucrative Internet Protocol-based interactive television market, the Redmond, Wash. software concern said the pending release of its touted embedded operating system will host its latest Windows Media digital video software and Internet Explorer 6.0 with support for richer television Web browsing.