Moving to reassert the former Compaq's role as the leading vendor of eight-way, industry-standard servers, Hewlett Packard Co. this week shipped its long-awaited industry standard eight-processor servers based on the new F8 chipsets. HP/Compaq has gone nearly a year without an eight-way chipset to support the Xeon MP processors that Intel shipped last March. In that time, IBM moved in with its modular eServer xSeries 440 systems that support between two and 16 of the Xeon MP processors.
Intel will release its Prescott desktop chip later this year and follow it in 2004 with a successor code-named Tejas and a slew of other products designed to make the desktop more compelling. Although analysts and many PC makers often bemoan the lack of profits to be found in desktops, the machines still make up the majority of PCs sold. To that end, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker is developing new chips, technologies, PC prototypes and software to make desktops easier to own. Often this technology ends up in notebooks, but it typically starts on the desktop.
The group of programmers working to run Linux on Microsoft's Xbox video game console is seeking the software giant's seal of approval. In an open letter sent to Microsoft, the organizers of the Xbox Linux Project requested that the software giant "sign" its Xbox version of the open-source operating sytem. Microsoft's electronic signature would allow the software to run on an unmodified Xbox. Currently, an Xbox must be outfitted with a "mod chip"--a gray-market add-on that overrides security features in the console--to run Linux or any other unapproved software. Microsoft has pursued a variety of legal and technical means to thwart mod chips, on the grounds that the devices aid software piracy.
A Microsoft representative said that the security features and specialized operating system used in the Xbox were necessary to protect against software piracy. "It's designed the way it is to protect the (intellectual property) of our game developers and our partners," the representative said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals said Wednesday that it will hear Microsoft's appeal of the controversial Sun Microsystems Java ruling on April 3. Microsoft had filed its formal appeal of the ruling on Feb. 13. By scheduling the appeal hearing for the spring, the court is agreeing to expedite the matter. Both Microsoft and Sun sought a quick decision on Microsoft's appeal of a lower court's Jan. 21 injunction order, which forces Microsoft to carry Sun's Java Runtime Engine (JRE) with Windows XP.
Earlier this month, the appeals court had granted Microsoft a stay on the January injunction order until the appeal is decided. At the same time, Microsoft stripped out support for its Java Virtual Machine from Windows XP and vowed to eliminate support altogether if its appeal is upheld.
Microsoft has acquired the Virtual Machine assets of Connectix Corp., a privately held company in San Mateo, Calif., that has been involved in Virtual Machine (VM) technology since its inception in 1988. One of the motivations behind the move, at least from the perspective of Microsoft's server group, is to offer a solution that will allow Microsoft customers running an NT 4 line of business applications to continue to run these as a virtual machine alongside the upcoming Windows Server 2003 product family.
Bill Veghte, Microsoft's corporate vice president, told eWEEK that while there were things he could do on the tool side with imaging, "the piece that I really needed was the ability to run all the NT4 business applications out there as a virtual machine. "The only way I know how to guarantee compatibility for those NT 4 applications is to build off of Connectix, which uses COM interfaces. They also use our Win32 APIs pretty aggressively and they use our driver subsystems, so it was a very good fit," Veghte said.
The company has modified the requirements of its certification programs for the MCSE and MCSA on Windows Server 2003 and provided an upgrade path for people certified on Windows 2000.
The Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator credential will still require four exams, consisting of three core tests and one elective. The core exams consist of two tests on networking and one on client systems. The networking exams, which are both new, are 70-290, Managing and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Environment; and 70-291, Implementing, Managing and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure. Candidates must take one of two currently available client OS tests: 70-270, Installing, Configuring and Administering Windows XP Professional; and 70-210, Installing, Configuring and Administering Windows 2000 Professional.
Microsoft Corp.'s Microsoft CRM raises the bar for customer relationship management in the small and midsize markets. Unfortunately, it was a low bar to begin with. It might not matter, though. To the IT community, Microsoft CRM is perhaps the most important business solution released to date. Microsoft has blurred the lines between technologist and strategist, something that has needed to happen since the inception of computing.
It's fairly easy to see scenarios in which business professionals implement MS CRM alongside IT staffs. Although the business users might not want to concern themselves with Active Directory or how SQL Server tables replicate (technologies that MS CRM relies on extensively), Microsoft CRM is easy enough for those users to create workflows and see how the technology affects their business strategies.
Visual Studio .NET (VS.NET) provides a very intuitive Web development environment for Visual Basic developers. VB developers have been trained for years to drag and drop their visual interface on the design surface and then double-click on an element when they want to write code that controls it. I think one of the crowning achievements of VS.NET is the way that it has taken the Windows software design and message loop paradigm and mapped them to a stateless environment like the Web. Once you begin writing production applications, you quickly find that the mapping isn't perfect, but VS.NET's ability to bring Windows programmers into Web development quickly is nothing short of remarkable.
There's a war being waged for that spot next to your TV, the area where most of us have a VCR or a DVD player. It's a place where companies like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo hope to one day make a home. Microsoft is leading this charge from back room to living room with an online service that already boasts more than a quarter-million Xbox players. Xbox Live offers gamers the ability to play their favorite games against a world of friends and strangers online, in real time. Xbox Live launched in November, but it wasn't until the beginning of this year that Microsoft saw the fruits of their online labor, nearly doubling their best sales predictions for the Live kit.
Integration is key to CRM success, which is why customer relationship management hasn't been widely successful. Microsoft Corp. overcomes some of those integration hurdles with its Microsoft CRM, which eWeek Labs has been testing for the past couple of weeks. Microsoft CRM leverages Exchange 2000 as its mail server and Active Directory as its directory server, making it extremely easy to manage users and rights. The disadvantage (or advantage, if you're Microsoft) is that users will be required to use the entire Microsoft stack for Microsoft CRM to work.