Microsoft issued a roadmap on its Web site this week of the software and technologies it plans to deliver for the enterprise in 2003. The roadmap offered no surprises; Microsoft is preparing a broad range of mostly incremental offerings.
The roadmap's most important elements are a group of April releases: Windows .NET Server 2003, Visual Studio .NET 2003 and SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition (64-bit). Microsoft promises one first quarter delivery -- MSN Messenger Connect for Enterprises. The rest of the products come in mid-2003 or later: Office 11, Exchange Server Titanium, SharePoint Team Services, XDocs, Greenwich, Jupiter and .NET Speech technologies.
Born April, 1987. Died Dec. 10, 2002. Cause of death: neglect. Place of death: Armonk, New York. Next of kin: none. Attending funeral: nobody. Official announcement appeared on IBM Website.
I suppose this poor fellow has been dead for a long time, but perhaps nobody remembered to pick up the corpse (yes, I said the same about CP/M 10 years ago). While CP/M died from the ravages of progress, OS/2 died from neglect and lack of will. And yes, backing away from OS/2 was a pragmatic move, since IBM could not compete with Microsoft or its tactics. But how amazing to see a company that large cowed into submission by a bunch of whippersnappers in Washington who already had taken IBM to the cleaners when they convinced the Goliath to let them own PC-DOS at the outset. The death of OS/2 must be humiliating for IBM.
Microsoft Corp., which is seeing slowing sales of its Office word processing and e-mail software, said it is considering a lower-priced version of the program designed for consumers. Microsoft said it will release a new version of Office, which costs $240 to $580, in the middle of next year. The company is mulling over the pricing of the next update and may sell a version with fewer features to attract cost-conscious consumers, said David Jaffe, an Office lead product manager.
Microsoft gets about a third of its sales from Office. Revenue from Office grew less than 1 percent in the fiscal year ended June 30, as customers balked at spending several hundred dollars for a new version of the software when many already have an older one, analysts said. The program also faces renewed competition from cheaper products such as Sun Microsystems Inc.'s StarOffice and the freely distributed OpenOffice
On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that it will soon release Plus! Digital Media Edition (Plus! DME), an add-on pack for Windows XP that significantly enhances the digital photo, music and movie experiences on the company's best selling operating system. Plus! DME will be the first Microsoft retail product offered for download via the Web; it will cost $20 when it becomes available on January 7, 2003, alongside the final versions of Windows Media Player 9 Series (WMP9) and Windows Movie Maker 2 (WMM2). However, customers that preorder the Plus! DME package today will save $5, bringing the cost of Plus! DME down to just $15.
Could Microsoft be working behind the scenes on another new programming language? A company official dropped hints at last week's XML 2002 conference in Baltimore that Microsoft is considering the potential for a language that would be optimized to handle data. One source close to the company said that Microsoft has held internal discussions to kick around ideas for XML-specific language, referred to internally as "X#."
Microsoft introduced its most recent new language, Visual C# a couple of years ago. C# got its start as the skunk-works COOL effort that Microsoft positioned as a head-to-head competitor with Java. Microsoft is spending considerable time and money on developing new apps from scratch in C#, as well as on convincing customers and partners to do the same.
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Microsoft publicized Monday its roster of product deliverables for 2003, with the long-delayed Windows.NET Server 2003 prominent at the top of the list. The Redmond-based software giant, which intends to steer a sizable number of NT 4.0 server users to the new platform, plans to release four versions of the .NET Windows Server upgrade in April. That server upgrade, originally code-named 'Whistler," was first expected in late 2001 and then a number of times in 2002. However, Microsoft recently shipped Release Candidate 2 of Windows.NET Server, and officials say they are confident about the revised 2003 delivery date.
Several vulnerabilities have been found in the MySQL database system, a light database package commonly used in Linux environments but which runs also on HP-Unix, Mac OS. E-matters, a German company, released a security advisory after discovering the flaws. They have rated the vulnerabilities as "Medium to Critical" in severity. The security flaws discovered by the company range from Denial of Service (DoS) problems to more serious issues. "...one of the flaws can be used to bypass the MySQL password check or to execute arbitrary code," the advisory said.
On Monday, Microsoft delivered an update to its Visual Studio .NET software development tool that lets programmers more easily build advanced, secure Web services. Dubbed Web Services Enhancements 1.0 (WSE) for Microsoft .NET, the tool integrates with Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework, supporting technologies such as WS-Security, WS-Routing, and WS-Attachments. The final release of this tool follows its April 2002 technical preview.
Microsoft says that WSE will be updated over time to support emerging Web services capabilities. WSE is available now from Microsoft as a free download.
After facing down the financially troubled year 2002 in fine form, software giant Microsoft is looking ahead to 2003, a year in which the company will unleash an unprecedented collection of desktop and server software and services. In 2003, Microsoft will enter what it calls the .NET release phase, which follows the XP release cycle and precedes the Yukon phase. During this phase, the company will release Windows .NET Server 2003 and a host of other products that are based on its long-awaited .NET technologies.
Notable software releases from Microsoft in 2003 will include Visual Studio .NET 2003 (code-named "Everett"); "Office 11," the next generation of Microsoft Office; Exchange 2003 Server (code-named "Titanium"); "Jupiter," its consolidated e-Business server; SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition (64-bit); various XML-based Web services that the company isn't detailing at this time; SharePoint Team Services 2.0, which will ship alongside Office 11; "XDocs," an integrated Office 11 component for interacting with server-side data via XML, etc...