To play a bigger role in the development of computers - as well as software - Microsoft has formed a major new division to produce specialized versions of Windows and build prototypes of computers of the future. Called the Extended Platforms Division, the group has 900 employees assembled from the Windows, research and business-productivity divisions. It also includes industrial designers and evangelists who will pitch the concept computers to manufacturers.
New styles of computers developed separately by team members have already sparked sales and consumer interest - and helped Microsoft sell more premium, higher-priced versions of its Windows operating system.
Don't be blind-sided by the butterfly. Hood-winked by Halo. Or stunned by SPOT watches. Microsoft is spending its hordes of cash in lots of divergent places these days, in search of the next big thing. But one of the company's least understood and most underestimated bets is on the small/mid-size business (SMB) market.
Unlike Xbox consoles or Media 2 Go personal video-recorders, SMB is a horizontal bet. Nearly every one of the software juggernaut's seven profit and loss centers (except for home/entertainment) is working on SMB products and sales strategies.
Microsoft has realigned a pair of business units to reflect an expansion of its plans to manage every piece of a customer's hardware from the PC to servers and storage systems, the company said Tuesday. Microsoft has decided to rebrand its Management Business group as the Enterprise Management division, said David Hamilton, director of the newly formed group at Microsoft. Along with the renaming, this move will place three management products formerly shepherded by the Windows group under the charge of Bob Muglia, a senior vice president at the company and head of its storage unit.
Microsoft is working on software that will add basic support for eight more languages to its Windows XP Tablet PC Edition operating system, it said Wednesday. The Multilingual User Interface & Recognizer Pack, due out in July, will allow users to switch the language of the user interface to Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish or Swedish, Microsoft said in a statement released at the CeBIT technology trade show here. The user interface includes help files and dialog boxes in the operating system.
The update pack, of which Microsoft released a beta version Wednesday, will also include handwriting recognition for Spanish, enabling users to translate notes written in Spanish into text. Handwriting recognition for the other newly supported languages won't be out for a while. A Dutch version, for example, won't be available until 2005, a Microsoft spokesman said.
Last weekend, SCO Group, which now owns much of the intellectual property for the UNIX operating system, sued International Business Machines (IBM) for over $1 billion, charging the industry giant with misappropriating SCO's technologies and building them into Linux. The suit, which has far-reaching ramifications for the open source software solution, charges IBM with "misappropriation of trade secrets, unfair competition, breach of contract and tortious interference" with SCO's business. SCO says it will revoke IBM's UNIX license to ship IBM AIX if the company doesn't stop its anticompetitive practices within 100 days.
U.S. federal investigators have widened the probe of AOL Time Warner Inc. and two of its former key executives to include alleged "aiding and abetting" of schemes by other firms to artificially inflate reported revenue, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday. The newspaper, citing sources familiar with the matter, said that at the heart of the investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission was an examination of alleged schemes in which AOL and other companies exchanged cash through sham transactions.
The Washington Post said, quoting the sources, that the expansion of the probe raises the potential exposure of AOL and the individuals involved because they could be found culpable not only for the firm's own accounting irregularities but also for the financial misconduct of others.
Microsoft's top executives are reviewing proposals to address the pricing gap that Dell Computer enjoys on Windows and Office over Intel's 384 premier systems builders, according to Microsoft General Manager,SMB Channel Strategy Group, Kevin Wueste.
"We have definitely heard the message, and we are looking to see if there are things we can do to create a better situation," said Wueste in an interview here at CMP's Solution Provider Xchange."It is a hard one. We are very sensitive to this. I am spending hours a day on this."
A European Commission spokeswoman declined to comment on Wednesday on whether EU experts had reached a decision against software giant Microsoft in an antitrust case, adding a conclusion was still months away. "We are making progress on the Microsoft case, but we do not yet have any announcements, any statements to make," Amelia Torres, spokeswoman for EU Competition Commissioner Mario Monti told a daily news briefing.
"I am asking you to be a bit more patient and wait until the Commission has come to a conclusion on this case, which probably will take still months," she told reporters.
Microsoft has realigned its enterprise management group in what analysts see as an important step to extending further into big companies. The software maker has shifted responsibility for its Systems Management Server (SMS) software from the group responsible for its Windows operating system to a recently formed storage products unit.
The change is significant, say analysts. By separating the division from the Windows group, Microsoft is taking steps to ensure its three systems management software products fit better with businesses running other operating systems alongside Windows.
Microsoft Tuesday said it has begun offering Webcam functionality on its MSN Messenger instant messaging software, heating up the battle of features against America Online and Yahoo. The new application allows MSN Messenger 5.0 users to stream live videos to other contacts using the software and a Webcam. Logitech will host the video streams on its servers, and will allow 56kbps modems a resolution of three to five frames per second (fps) and broadband as high as 15fps. The new Webcam functionality is available for download from MSN's Web site.