Exchange "Titanium" will be marketed as Exchange Server 2003 when it is released later this year, Microsoft announced today. The second beta of long-awaited upgrade to the company's best-selling messaging and personal information management server product, Exchange Server 2003 Beta 2, is also now available to the public via free download or CD order, the company says. Exchange Server 2003 Beta 2 is already being deploying internally at Microsoft, and at dozens of the company's closest partners.
Exchange Server 2003 includes a number of features that Microsoft says will improve information worker productivity. A new cached mode synchronizes users' data in the background, ensuring that the local copy of their mailboxes are always up to date.
Microsoft announced Monday new versions of its Windows Powered Smartphone and Pocket PC software that are compatible with the CDMA and broadband CDMA cell phone networks widely used in North America. The releases are expected to jumpstart the software giant's cell phone efforts in the US, starting later this year. Hitachi and Samsung have pledged to support the CDMA-based Smartphone in new cell phones and mobile computers which will be unveiled later this week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Previously, Microsoft's designs were available only in Europe.
Microsoft will step up its fight with Nokia on Monday with plans to unveil software that powers cell phones based on Code Division Multiple Access technology. The Redmond, Wash., software giant has been competing in the cell phone operating system market with what amounts to one hand tied behind its back; the company's cell phone operating system worked with only one major cell phone standard, GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), which is more popular in Europe. Nokia, on the other hand, is a backer of Symbian, an operating system capable of making cell phones that use both major cell phone standards, GSM and CDMA.
One year after embarking on an ambitious plan to improve the security of its products, Microsoft Corp. is moving into the second phase of its Trustworthy Computing initiative and crafting several new projects to help secure applications all the way from the development process through customer deployment. Among the efforts is a set of guidelines the company's Security Business Unit is developing for Windows 2000. Known as Prescriptive Architectural Guidance, the document will lay out instructions for ways IT managers can lock down Windows 2000 machines.
Microsoft Corp. is seeking to make XML-based Web services easier to develop with the delivery of several new tools and, ultimately, a new XML-based language optimized to handle data rather than objects. The Redmond, Wash., company last month delivered three tools to help users develop around XML. Perhaps holding more promise for developers, however, particularly those in the Microsoft world, is a vision for a new XML "language" that company insiders are calling X# (pronounced X sharp), a .Net language based on the company's C#.
Microsoft will take a big step into online retailing Tuesday when for the first time it will sell a program both as a download and in shrink-wrapped boxes in stores. The new, $19.95 Plus Digital Media Edition for Windows XP will also mark the first time Microsoft has required "product activation" in a downloadable program. Activation, first introduced to most consumers in Windows XP itself, is an anti-piracy system that ties a purchased copy of a program to a single machine.
The Plus pack is an add-on intended to enhance Windows XP's multimedia capabilities. For example, a "photo story" tool creates dynamic slide shows, zooming in and out and panning left and right on each photo. The program then squeezes the files to a size practical for online posting. A sound-recording tool can transfer music from vinyl records and cassette tapes into Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format. There's also a "Sync & Go" function that synchronizes Web content with Pocket PC handheld organizers, including material from CBS MarketWatch, MSNBC.com and Warner Music Group.
Microsoft's push into mobile computing fills a gap this week when it releases its Smartphone and Pocket PC software for CDMA-compliant handheld devices. Code Division Multiple Access opens an important market for Microsoft, which to date has focused on GSM and GPRS mobile services. In the United States, for example, both Sprint and Verizon offer voice and data services over CDMA networks. "Verizon is the largest mobile operator in North America, and until now, we have not had software that would run on their network," Microsoft product manager Ed Suwanjindar says.
Rick Rashid senior vice president at Microsoft, heads up Microsoft's research group, which is charged with researching many of the innovative technologies transferred to key Microsoft products. Rashid met with InfoWorld Test Center Director Steve Gillmor, Lead Analyst Jon Udell, and Test Center Technical Director Tom Yager to discuss his group's projects, particularly in the areas of wireless, natural language, and search technologies.
InfoWorld: Would you agree that there is more of a connection now between Microsoft Research technologies and the architecture and products coming from Microsoft?
Rashid: I think that's accurate. We started Microsoft Research back in September of 1991 and didn't even have 100 researchers until 1996. We're about 700 now, in five different research labs, and so we're capable of doing a lot more in terms of working with more product teams, generating more technologies, and covering more areas. The deployable technologies are reaching a stage where they're catching up with the things that we've been doing in research over the last [few] years. For example, a lot of the technologies that we're doing for the next versions of Office, next versions of Windows are things that we've been building within the research group for some time: building expertise, building the teams, and building the relations to the product.
Microsoft backers claim that the injunction would backfire on the entire channel and industry. "I am absolutely astounded by this ruling and dumbfounded as to how a court can find that one company is responsible for the marketing and distribution of another company's product," said Michael Cocanower, president of ITSynergy, Phoenix. "I have never had a client object to the lack of Java in Microsoft's operating systems, nor have I ever run into a situation in our software development practice where it was an issue. At best, this causes inconvenience for Microsoft and confusion in the marketplace. At worst, it makes the platform unstable and causes additional support headaches for companies like us."
Another Microsoft solution provider said a reversal would set Sun,and the entire Java community, back even further. "It will obviously help on a global scale for browser compatibility, but that's all," said Nicholas Tullett, president and senior consultant at Profix Systems Consultants, Toronto. "Sun made their bed when they forced Microsoft to remove the Microsoft extensions to Java, which is basically the reverse of what they are forcing Microsoft to do now."
Six months into the company's "Switch" campaign, the company is admitting that there is no evidence that the campaign has stimulated Macintosh sales at all. The only substantive proof, of course, will come during Steve Jobs' MacWorld keynote address next week, but the Apple marketing machine has been curious silent about the effects of the Switch campaign for a long time now. The only real statistic the company has offered came from Apple CFO Fred Anderson, who noted in October that 40 percent of the customers who bought "something" from the company's retail stores were not previous Mac owners. However, in the same time period, Mac sales have stagnated or fallen, depending on the market, and its market share has fallen. During the crucial Thanksgiving long weekend, typically a high water mark for retail sales, Apple only discussed foot traffic in its store, and not actual sales like other companies, which might be telling. In any event, MacWorld will be even more fateful than usual for the company, especially if its efforts in 2002 turn out to have been in vain.