A dozen years ago, Jeffrey S. Raikes struck digital gold. He fused together Microsoft word-processing and spreadsheet programs to create Office, a software phenomenon that has racked up more than $60 billion in sales. In the 1990s, Office became Microsoft's other, quieter monopoly, joining the Windows operating system. Following that success, Raikes went on to oversee the company's vast sales operation. Ultimately, he emerged as one of the top executives atMicrosoft, sitting just a notch below Chairman William H. Gates III and CEO Steven A. Ballmer.
But he's not sitting still. These days Raikes is tackling a crucial assignment, one that's key to growth at Microsoft: He is back at Office, remaking his own creation. The goal is to light a fire under Office, whose growth had slowed to an anemic 1% in the year ended June 30. Raikes intends to increase that growth by a factor of nine, doubling the size of Office to $20 billion in annual sales by 2010.
Microsoft has been forced to make it possible to hide these programs as part of a deal it brokered with the US Department of Justice during a long-running dispute over fair competition. By making it possible to hide the programs, the Justice Department is hoping that Microsoft rivals, such as Real Networks, will prosper because they will be able to use their programs as defaults instead of those of Microsoft.
The relationship between Apple Computer and Microsoft nose-dived again over the weekend when Apple responded to the recent release of Microsoft's Windows Media 9 Series with a scathing attack. Calling Windows Media 9 Series an "anti-standards" release, Apple noted that its own QuickTime 6 technology features compatibility with the already somewhat antiquated MPEG-4 video format, an industry standard of sorts. The Windows Media 9 Series video format, however, far surpasses the quality and speed of MPEG-4, and Apple was likely responding to Microsoft's comparison of Windows Media Video (WMV) 9 to MPEG-4 at the Windows Media 9 Series launch last week, a comparison which doesn't exactly cast Apple's product in the most positive light. Unfortunately for Apple, its anti-Microsoft attack arrived on the same day as a revealing study which shows that Apple is in danger of forever losing the education market to Windows-based PCs.
Microsoft on Monday issued the first update, or service pack, for the Windows XP operating system. But the update, available as a free download from Microsoft's Web site, may not appear on some new PCs until next year. The release of a first service pack is typically a watershed event for a new version of Windows, signaling that the initial shakedown is over and that the operating system is ready for primetime. Many businesses waited to upgrade to Windows 2000, for example, until Microsoft released the first update in July 2000, about five months after the operating system launched.
However, PC makers plan to be slow to add the Windows XP Service Pack 1 to new systems. PC makers say they are in no hurry to support the service pack because the OS was launched with few major bugs, an automatic update feature keeps users current with new fixes, and many businesses still favor Windows 2000 over XP.
Microsoft is working to make European antitrust regulators aware of steps it has taken to address competition concerns and is confident a European Commission probe will result in a satisfactory resolution. "We remain confident that the case will be made to the satisfaction of both parties," said Umberto Paolucci, Microsoft's vice president for Europe. "We will take the appropriate measures to ensure that the European commission understands what we did and the measures that we will take," Paolucci said.
Server makers Unisys and NEC are expected to provide the first public demonstrations of "Madison," Intel's third-generation Itanium processor, at Intel's Developer Forum on Monday. Demonstrations of new processors under carefully controlled circumstances, while a far cry from actual sales, are an important milestone in bringing a new product to market. That importance is elevated for the Itanium line, an unproven and ambitious product family with complex features needed for top-of-the-line servers often using dozens of processors.
Microsoft is clearing the fog around its move into 64-bit computing. At the Windows .Net Server DevCon conference here this week, Microsoft devoted much of its time to a new 64-bit Windows release and accompanying applications, which are due to reach customers early next year. Historically associated with Unix operating systems, 64-bit systems are designed to run high-performance applications for use in scientific research, Web hosting, and databases.
Microsoft is a relatively new entrant into the space. The Redmond, Wash., company released its first major 64-bit operating system, Windows Advanced Server Limited Edition, last year to work with Intel's Itanium processors. That release so far has been adopted only by some high-end customers, according to Bob O'Brien, Microsoft group product manager for the Windows .Net Server division.
Microsoft, with its Windows server platform set to gain dramatic improvements in security, storage, and reliability, wants developers to build server applications that will last for decades, said Jim Allchin, group vice president of the company's platforms group, in a speech at the Microsoft DevCon conference here Friday. The executive touted the company's planned next-generation release of Windows, codenamed "Longhorn," which will not appear until the 2004 timeframe. Microsoft wants developers to push the limits of the Windows server platform, he stressed.
"You're really designing systems that will live not five years but 10, 15, 20 years," based on a Windows architecture that will be modular and componentized, Allchin told the audience.
Microsoft's upcoming release of its SharePoint Web collaboration platform Version 2.0 will focus on customization and be part of the Windows .Net Server 2003 operating system, according to Microsoft officials. To be built on top of the Microsoft .Net Framework programming model and shipping in mid-2003, SharePoint Team Services 2.0 will first be released as a separate add-on and then be included with the operating system itself, company officials said at the Microsoft DevCon conference here on Friday. A technical beta release is due this fall while a broader marketing beta is planned for next winter.
Microsoft is marching on with its mission of displacing Unix databases with its own SQL Server platform, and is readying both a 64-bit database and a next-generation database, dubbed Yukon, that focuses on data warehousing and minimizing down time.
Yukon is due for beta release in early 2003 while a 64-bit version of SQL Server, called SQL Server 2000 64-bit, is expected to be generally available early in 2003. The company will continue its quest to displace Oracle and other Unix databases. "We're always looking to do that, but really, with 64-bit, it's the last nail in the coffin for needing to choose a Unix system," said Sheryl Tullis, product manager for SQL Server, in an interview at the Microsoft DevCon conference here this week.