Bowing to complaints, Microsoft is updating its reviled Licensing 6.0 program to include an option that makes software more affordable to small businesses. Dubbed Open Value, the new licensing option will go live on March 1, replacing the current Open Business option. The primary benefit of the new plan is that it allows small businesses to spread payments for software licenses out over three years.
Unlike most Licensing 6.0 options, Open Value allows for as few as five licenses, or "seats" in Microsoft lingo. There is no fixed ceiling, or upper limit of licenses that one must purchase, making it an attractive option for growing and even mid-sized companies. Furthermore, the plan costs only about one-third of Open Business over the first year, which will probably be compelling to cash-strapped operations.
Fresh off its spring developer conference, Intel Corp. is slashing the prices on its Pentium 4 desktop processors and Xeon server and workstation chips by as much as 21 percent. The price cuts come after the Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker last week at the Intel Developers Forum rolled out an aggressive Xeon road map that included increased processor speed, greater on-die cache sizes and accelerated releases. Intel reduced prices on its 2.66GHz and 2.6GHz Xeon processors by 16 percent each-from $337 to $284, and $326 to $273, respectively. The prices are based on 1,000-unit shipments.
The release to manufacture date for the seven flavors of Microsoft's latest server operating system means gold code should be just weeks away. Microsoft has set March 12 as the release to manufacture date for the six new versions of its server operating system, paving the way for a U.K. shipping date of April 29. The U.S. launch date is set for April 24.
Microsoft's revamp of its server operating system range, which lost the .Net moniker recently after several previous name changes, will form a concerted effort to muscle in on the Unix market. Microsoft is also hoping that 2003 will be the version that will persuade companies still using Windows NT4 to finally upgrade. Support for Windows NT 4 was supposed to be cancelled early this year, but pressure from customers forced Microsoft to reset the date to January 2005.
Microsoft has filed a counterclaim in Sun Microsystems' private antitrust lawsuit against the software giant, with Microsoft claiming that Sun broke a contract that allowed Microsoft to distribute its own version of Java. The 51-page counterclaim, filed Friday with Judge Frederick Motz in the U.S. District Court in Maryland , says that after a Sun lawsuit settled in January 2001 the two companies had an agreement for Microsoft to distribute its version of the Java Virtual Machine through 2008. Microsoft doesn't ask for a specific dollar amount in its counterclaim, suggesting instead that be determined at trial.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates recently sat down with The Seattle Times to talk about the company and its future.
Q: Can you discuss the bigger role Microsoft is playing in designing computer hardware?
A: We've always had a very close partnership with the hardware companies. I would say we've got more resources involved in building prototypes now than ever before, because some of the new frontiers, whether it's how the PC exists in the living room or in the office, the hardware and software advances go kind of hand in hand.
Through its fervent adoption of XML, Microsoft is edging closer to crystallizing its long-held dream of building bridges that foster seamless transport of data between its suite of desktop applications and back-end applications. With the delivery by mid-2003 of its much anticipated and newly named Office 2003 desktop suit, the second beta of which is due in March, the company will have established a vital piece of software that could significantly increase XML adoption across the industry.
"Most vendors are becoming much more XML-friendly and consequently it [XML] is changing the nature of applications vendors business," said John Jerome, an analyst with The Yankee Group in Boston . "If Microsoft continues to lace its Office applications with XML, most users will have a more seamless flow of information between the heavy-duty, back-office financial applications and desktop applications like Word and Excel."
They're stats to die for: 90-plus percent market share, 80 percent profit margins, a stock price that skyrocketed so high over the years that it created thousands of millionaires in the Seattle area alone. But those figures also lay out Microsoft Corp.'s biggest challenge for the future: Just what is a monopolist to do next?
As growth slows for Microsoft's main products, the Redmond software company has been aggressively expanding into new realms, investing billions in everything from selling video-game consoles to loaning small businesses money to buy its software.
Microsoft went on the offensive Friday in the antitrust case brought against it by Sun Microsystems, accusing its bitter rival of violating California law through "unfair competition." In a court filing, the software giant asked a judge for attorney's fees and damages to cover what it characterized as Sun's unlawful violation of a settlement inked in an earlier lawsuit over the Java programming language.
"If (in the ongoing antitrust case) the court is looking at the complex and broad set of issues and products as well as the relationship between Sun and Microsoft over the course of the last several years, there are things that have to be brought to its attention," a Microsoft spokesman said, "such as our charges that Sun has breached its contract and has demonstrated bad faith in its relationship and may have violated California business and professional codes."
Microsoft is not about to take IBM's midmarket onslaught lying down. While most of the marketing around the upcoming Windows 2003 Server has centered on enterprise enhancements, Microsoft is lining up hundreds of "referenceable" midmarket success stories, and financing a good percentage of them. "They want to expedite upgrades [to Windows Server 2003] and show it to be the platform for the midmarket," said one solution provider familiar with the plan.
In the first Microsoft Rapid Deployment Program to be offered to the midmarket, partners were asked to find accounts needing upgrades from NetWare, Windows NT 4 or 2000, Microsoft confirmed. The customer, partner and Microsoft split implementation costs equally. The partner must agree to bill the customer at $100 per hour for the entire project, and the customer pays for all software. Rapid Deployment Programs have been used in enterprise accounts since the Windows 2000 launch.
Microsoft is on schedule to launch its Open Value licensing program for small and midsize businesses on March 1 and is mulling other Licensing 6.0 concessions, said sources familiar with the vendor's plans. Open Value, the successor to the existing Open Business program, is a new Licensing 6.0 option that, for the first time, enables small and midsize customers to buy enterpriselike, companywide software agreements and spread out their annuity payments over a three-year period.
The Open Value plan enables companies with as few as five seats to buy in and has no fixed ceiling, thereby offering some midsize customers one last chance to sign up for license agreements. Many midsize companies that did not sign up for Upgrade Advantage/Software Assurance by the July 31, 2002, Licensing 6.0 and Software Assurance deadline and lost their rights to discounts may now be eligible for Open Value, the sources said.