Microsoft traditionally has steered clear of telecommunications regulators and legislators, but the software giant is raising its profile in Washington in a bid to spur rapid deployment of more affordable high-speed networks. The Redmond, Wash., company views faster, cheaper pipes, particularly emerging wireless broadband networks, as a conduit for selling more software applications and services.
The subject of a highly contentious and protracted debate in Washington, broadband deployment policy pits the Regional Bell Operating Companies against most other telecom service providers, including long distance companies, competing local exchange carriers and cable companies. For more than two years, the Bells have waged a vigorous campaign to roll back regulations requiring them to lease rivals' access to the "last mile" of the network at regulated rates.
Sony on Tuesday will announce a new line of desktop and portable computers for the 2002 holiday season. And in an industry first, six of its new laptop designs will include integrated recordable DVD drives. Beating Apple Computer to the punch by several months, Sony will introduce the DVD-RW/CD-RW capable laptops to the market later this month, the company says. Apple's long awaited recordable DVD notebooks aren't expected to be announced until January at the earliest, though the systems probably won't ship to customers until months later.
Excelon Corp. on Monday announced greater XML and Microsoft Corp. .Net support in new versions of its XML database engine and integrated development environment. Excelon, of Burlington, Mass., announced the availability of its Extensible Information Server (XIS) Version 3.12. XIS 3.12 adds support for Microsoft Corp.'s .Net interoperability, including interoperability between the .Net and Java 2 Enterprise Edition platform, said Coco Jaenicke, XML evangelist at Excelon. XIS 3.12 also includes support for XQuery-the XML query language-including XQuery use cases for better access to metadata in XML business documents.
In late July, researchers found several flaws in the OpenSSL tool kit, which is commonly used for secure transmissions on Apache servers. About six weeks later, someone released a worm called Slapper that exploited the vulnerability and not only installed a back door on each infected server but also turned machines using OpenSSL into a waiting army of zombies by dropping in a DDoS (distributed-denial-of-service) tool kit as well.
The infected machines can communicate with one another via a private, peer-to-peer network. Security experts predicted that it was only a matter of time before someone used the thousands of compromised servers to launch a devastating DDoS attack.
Twenty percent of Net surfers are now using Microsoft's Windows XP operating system, according to market researcher WebSideStory. The research company said Windows XP is the second most popular OS among Internet users, behind Microsoft's Windows 98 with a 37 percent share. Windows XP's share is up from 2 percent in the first week of November 2001, and Windows 98's is down from 50 percent at that time.
The software has apparently picked up in popularity. Geoff Johnston, a vice president of WebSideStory's StatMarket, said that it's "only a matter of months before it overtakes Windows 98 as the most widely used OS on the Web." Microsoft already dominates the Internet landscape when it comes to browsers, with its Internet Explorer controlling well over 90 percent of the market.
Microsoft has an unusual Oktoberfest for Mac users: a big discount on Office when purchased with a new computer. Beginning Tuesday, buyers of new Macs can pick up the full version of Office v. X for $199, or about $200 less than the full purchase price. The promotion ends Jan. 7, 2003. As good as that deal appears, Office is cheaper for Windows users, particularly those getting the product on new PCs. New PC buyers pay as little as $100 for Office. Mac users not buying a new computer also are stuck with paying full price, as much as $299 for the Office v. X upgrade or $499 for the full version.
"That's not that big a deal," IDC analyst Roger Kay said. "That's a bundled incentive to buy a Mac, which is not the same thing as pricing Office at $200. It's not really a price decrease, but it does hint at this issue where parity says Office ought to be" in price.
Microsoft Corp. thinks it's found a killer app for its Tablet PC: as a home for a new breed of electronic magazines. The software giant is prepping an end-to-end electronic publishing solution, known as ePeriodicals, which it will introduce at its Tablet PC launch in New York City on Nov. 7, according to sources. The technology is being developed by Microsoft's eMerging Technologies unit, which is part of the company's Productivity and Business Services Group headed by Group Vice President Jeff Raikes. ePeriodicals comes out of the advanced reading team, the unit that has championed Microsoft's ClearType online-font technology and the eBook Reader products.
To try to spur migration along, developers of administrative tools for Exchange will gather at next week's Microsoft Exchange Conference, in Anaheim, Calif., to roll out software that will not only assist customers in the complex migration to Exchange 2000 but also manage the system once it is installed.
DYS Analytics Inc., best known for developing messaging management software for IBM's Lotus division's Notes and Domino, will unveil Email Control for Exchange at the MEC. The product automates administrative tasks such as tracking, measuring, trending, reporting and analysis of Exchange networks, according to officials at DYS, in Wellesley, Mass.
As Microsoft Corp. prepares to release the first beta for Office 11, the next version of its pervasive Office productivity suite, Jeff Raikes, its group vice president of productivity and business services, sat down with eWEEK Senior Editor Peter Galli at the company's Mountain View, Calif., campus to talk about the changes users can expect to see.
eWEEK: You have identified the business intelligence arena as an area of huge opportunity for Office. Can you be more specific about your plans in that regard?
Raikes: The challenge today with business intelligence is that it frequently ends up being the domain of a few people inside the organization. My view in part is that there's a big opportunity to make business intelligence more accessible, and one of the key ways to do that is to make it much more connected into the Office tools people are already using. So, if I can go from a SharePoint Portal site to look at a scorecard that leads me into an Excel solution that connects to Data Analyzer and then am able to e-mail this off to my sales team, then I've really opened up business intelligence to something that's more accessible. Our goal is not to cannibalize the business of companies in business intelligence today; our goal is to help business intelligence become more accessible. The way to do that is to get the Office tools connected to the systems that represent that information.
Microsoft will slip out an interim desktop version of its Windows operating system before 2004 under pressure from some customers who signed up for its new enterprise licensing plan, several analysts predict. Microsoft's current roadmap calls for the next release of Windows for the desktop to appear in the second half of 2004, officials say. That release is code-named Longhorn, and Microsoft has promised to pack a number of new technologies into the operating system that coincide with its Web-based .NET initiative.
Other factors could pressure Microsoft to release a desktop Windows upgrade in the next year or two before Longhorn reaches customers. Enderle noted that Microsoft typically readies a release of Windows to coincide with updates to its Office software. Microsoft plans to release Office 11 next year. "New versions of Office don't move particularly well unless there is a new operating system," Enderle said. Additionally, OEMs typically pressure Microsoft to release new software either for the holiday shopping season or for the back-to-school rush, according to Bittman.