Leveraging Windows .NET Datacenter Server beta code and Intel's new Xeon MP chips, IBM used the Transaction Processing Performance Council's OLTP benchmark to demonstrate impressive performance on its funky new eight-processor servers. The benchmark, published last week, was the first test showing the performance of Intel's new Xeon MP chips on a system with more than four processors.
The x440 also held its own against eight-processor midrange RISC systems from IBM and Bull, both running IBM's AIX operating system. The eServer x440 reached 92,398 transactions per minute on the TPC-C benchmark (tpmC), which is third behind the 105,025 tpmC result achieved with both IBM's eServer pSeries 660 and the Bull Escala PL800R. The Unix benchmarks were published last September.
Microsoft, one of the early InfiniBand backers, has reversed an earlier plan to build support for the high-speed networking technology into its next server version of Windows. Microsoft believes most customers will prefer to extend existing Ethernet networking and therefore has dropped InfiniBand software that had been planned for its next server operating system, Windows .Net Server, due at the end of the year.
Microsoft, though still a member of the InfiniBand Trade Association's steering committee, is more guarded. With today's curtailed computer equipment spending, customers "are gravitating toward evolutionary technologies," Microsoft said. "Gigabit Ethernet technologies, while not as (high-performance) today as InfiniBand, are now able to address the demands a higher range of server capabilities with no additional software or management expense." Microsoft's strength lies in lower-end servers where InfiniBand support is no longer taken for granted.
Microsoft is about to complete the biggest change in five years in the way that it sells its software to businesses with a system of locked-in upgrades and fixed payments that promises steadier revenue but has also rankled some smaller customers. By Wednesday, the world's No. 1 software maker will have fully implemented the change in the way business customers pay for the right to use the latest versions of its software.
Under the new scheme, software buyers must decide whether to pay regular installments for the right to upgrade to the latest software at any time, or opt out of the plan and pay full price for a full-version software license later. The change, closely watched by Microsoft's large customers, partners, investors and competitors, will mainly affect businesses that buy software in bulk, not consumers buying Microsoft products off the shelf or with a new computer.
The software giant on Tuesday announced a new version of its Windows CE .Net operating system, adding broader support for its .Net services from within Windows CE, a slimmed down version of Windows used to power devices ranging from handheld computers to gas pumps.
The new Windows CE .Net version 4.1 also adds support for IPv6, the latest version of the Internet protocol as well as built-in support for speech recognition. In addition, devices running the new operating system will also be able to view documents in various PC formats, including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Adobe Acrobat, as well as GIF, BMP and JPG graphics formats.
The operating system also performs better in several areas, Microsoft said. Web browsing is up to 15 percent faster than the prior version of CE .Net, while Windows Media Player performance has improved 20 percent.
Responding to complaints that his company's .NET strategy is in disarray, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates said yesterday that it would take at least four or five years to realize the promise of this new technology. Gates made the comments during a presentation to over 300 research university faculty at the company's Redmond campus yesterday. The researchers were in town for Microsoft's third annual Microsoft Research (MSR) Faculty Summit.
".Net is not an overnight thing," he said. "A lot of work needs to be done to put standards such as reliable messaging and transaction support in place. We have a commitment to XML to allow for information exchange."
He's hardly as well-known as Bill Gates but Eric Rudder will have more influence over the future of Microsoft's bet-the-company .Net software strategy than his more famous boss. Rudder, Microsoft's 35-year-old senior vice president of developer and platform evangelism, is in charge of enlisting software developers to the cause--and keeping them happy. That's a big job because, simply put, without a large corps of developers behind it, .Net will remain a pipe dream.
It also means Rudder and his team need to convince software developers to support .Net by buying Microsoft's Visual Studio.Net software development tools as well as the company's family of e-business software for building and running their applications. So far, this remains a work in progress. Gates last week gave Microsoft mixed grades. While he called the release of Visual Studio.Net in February a major milestone, he acknowledged that the technology had been slow to catch on.
About 325 university researchers gathered at Microsoft's Redmond headquarters yesterday to hear about innovations under way there and to discuss work they're doing with Microsoft's software. Speakers at the third annual Research Faculty Summit showed off color-coded calendars that adjust to display well on PCs or cell phones, instant video-conferencing connections, software that guesses which music you'd like to hear next, and technology that scans and sorts digital images automatically.
To help improve the company's reputation in security and privacy, Gates said Microsoft is forming a board of university professors to provide advice on those topics. The panel, with about 15 members, will review Microsoft's practices and make sure the company is aware of the latest security techniques, Gates said.
Oracle's fabled sales culture has broken down. Customers are angry, and Larry Ellison knows it. Here's how he's trying to shape the future of the world's second-largest software maker. Tales of hyperaggressive salespeople are nothing new to Oracle. The company is legendary for a sales culture that combines the fervor of tent revival preachers and the determination of combat Marines. Once the envy of the industry, it's a major reason Oracle became the world's second-largest software company, and its founder, Larry Ellison, one of the world's richest men.
Episodes like the North Dakota one suggest that Oracle's sales team either doesn't grasp the gravity of the company's situation or is simply unable to adapt its brute-force tactics to the new reality. State officials in places like South Dakota and Wisconsin have joined North Dakota in denouncing Oracle, complaining about everything from heavy-handed sales pitches to gouging on price. Many corporate clients have their own beefs; some say Oracle salespeople have lied about product capabilities. And in its most public debacle, Oracle has been dragged into a California political scandal in which the company is alleged to have stuck the state with as much as $41 million worth of software and services it will never use. There's no evidence yet that the company did anything wrong, and the scandal appears to be more about state politics than about Oracle; still, the headlines only reinforce the image of a sales force that routinely runs roughshod over customers.
Microsoft is enrolling a team of academic researchers to boost its security efforts and develop new technologies based on its .Net technology. The company Monday announced the formation of the Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board, which will bring together academics from 12 to 15 colleges and universities to study and contribute to Microsoft's recent effort to improve the security and reliability of its products. Microsoft calls that effort the Trustworthy Computing Initiative.
Universities taking part in the advisory board include Cornell University in Ithaca, New York; the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Maryland in College Park. The final lineup of the board is not complete, although members are expected to represent academic institutions from around the world, Microsoft said.
Microsoft still has a long way to go to meet its .Net aspirations, but the company has vision for the strategy nevertheless. John Rymer, an analyst at Giga Information Group Inc., in Cambridge, Mass., said Microsoft still has many issues to confront.
Still, some analysts and customers agreed that Microsoft is on the right track. Giga's Rymer is impressed that Microsoft is using Web services technology in every aspect of its business. "What I also saw was very Microsoft," he said. "A lot of applications they showed us were not about building transactional systems or big distributed environments. It was all about simplification. They used XML to make the environment very, very simple." DeBona said Microsoft's moves to date are positive developments that will improve acceptance of .Net in environments where only Java is currently allowed. "If these plans work as promised, it should be a very bright future for .Net," he said.