In an e-mail sent to the company's more than 50,000 employees, Microsoft executives Will Poole, Brad Smith and Rick Devenuti warned that peer-to-peer (P2P) networks used for sharing files raise "significant legal, public policy, and security concerns." In their e-mail to employees, the three Microsoft executives warned of the fine line the company walks with regard to peer-to-peer networks.
Microsoft also is concerned some peer-to-peer networks create potential security problems for the company. "Running such programs on company PCs or through company servers substantially increases the risk that our network could be hacked, that viruses could be introduced into our network, and that internal corporate documents could inadvertently be shared with others outside the company," the executives wrote. To support their point, they referred to two CNET News.com stories regarding separate security problems raised by Kazaa.
Wrapping up his company's annual investor conference, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates waxed philosophical and discussed a range of topics with a host of dinner guests gathered round his table. Gates reiterated that he is in the business for the long haul. "I expect to do this for a long time," he said. "We change configurations and we do that to get into a stable configuration for the next decade or so," Gates said, referring to the changes in Windows and the .Net initiative to deliver XML Web services.
Gates rounded out the second day of discussions regarding Microsoft's technological and financial situation by entertaining a dinner crowd of hangers on. He said he hopes for a favorable ruling in the antitrust case pending in federal court against the software giant. Barring a favorable ruling, Gates said Microsoft is prepared to push on to the Supreme Court.
"The things we don't like are permanent," he said of the issues separating Microsoft's views and those of the non-settling states in the case. "It's either a favorable ruling or it's like, oh, my source code is gone," Gates said to the delight of his audience. When asked about Linux and the Mono project to clone the .Net Framework, Gates said: "they can do quite a bit, but never what we do." He said Microsoft could innovate much faster.
At a time when financial scandals have left CEOs in the hot seat, Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer on Thursday went on the good corporate citizen offensive and attempted to downplay the company's enterprise agenda. Ballmer and other key executives at a Financial Analysts' day here promised a "more open, respectful" approach as Microsoft pursues a wide-ranging diversification strategy for the 2003 financial year. The plan to grow revenue by up to $1 billion and extend its dominance across a range of businesses, from the enterprise to small business and consumers, was received by analysts with guarded optimism. Microsoft CFO John Connors set the stage on the financial front, describing the $1.2 billion the company expects to invest in the business as a sign of Microsoft's belief that the coming 2003 financial year will see it break away from the competition.
The long-term outlook for the high-tech industry is good, and Microsoft Corp. will be at the forefront of it, according to Chief Software Architect and Chairman Bill Gates. SQL Server 2000 has been leading the way, as has Windows XP, which has now sold 46 million licenses, Gates told about 300 financial analysts, investors and journalists.
Microsoft saw some "remarkable successes in 2002" despite tough economic times, he said, adding that "Web services are gaining broad appeal . and WS-I [the Web services interoperability organization] now has more than 100 members and Microsoft's Visual Studio .Net is now deploying all kinds of Web services applications."
In fiscal 2003, Microsoft will release Windows .Net Server, for which the company released Windows .Net Server Release Candidate 1 Wednesday, Windows Media 9 series, Windows XP Media Center edition, MSN 8, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows CE for Smart Displays and an update of Visual Studio .Net, Xbox Live, and new Xbox games.
The next major revision of Windows, code-named Longhorn, won't ship until 2005 at the earliest. Various Microsoft executives have said as much, certainly, and this week Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates even specifically mentioned the date during the company's annual financial analysts meeting. But the Longhorn release schedule is tied to so many other products and technologies now, that a timeframe of 2005 (or beyond) is virtually guaranteed. Here's why: Gates said this week that Longhorn would be tied to future releases of Office, Exchange Server, and, of course, the SQL Server "Yukon" technologies, which will be used for the Longhorn file system. And my understanding is that the Longhorn's server versions--the follow-ups to the Windows .NET Server family releases that will happen in Q1 2003--will be released in lock-step with the Longhorn desktop versions. Given all this information, how quickly would Microsoft release updates to Office, Exchange and Windows Server? I'm thinking two years would be the minimum, and indeed, Office 11 will ship mid-2003, meaning that Office 12--the one that will be released along with Longhorn--won't happen until at least mid-2005. And consider Windows Server: Windows 2000 Server shipped to customers in February 2000, with its successor, a minor update called Win.NET Server, hitting around the same time in 2003. So how could the next one hit any sooner than mid-2005? It can't. So Longhorn is definitely on track for mid-2005 or later. And that, people, means that we can expect at least one or two interim Windows XP releases in the meantime, as I've been saying for a while now. And though Microsoft won't talk about these releases because it's busy pushing XP SP1, XP Tablet PC Edition, and XP Media Center Edition right now, I can assure you that mentions of future XP versions will start appearing later this year. It's unavoidable.
Microsoft said on Thursday it would stick with the high-tech industry's practice of not listing employee stock options as expenses, bucking pressure from politicians and investors. Steve Ballmer, chief executive at the world's largest software maker, told reporters and analysts that Microsoft had no plans to change its current accounting rules, but also noted that "it makes economic sense to expense options." "If the statutes change, then of course we'll comply," he said at the company's annual briefing for financial analysts at its Redmond, Washington headquarters.
Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates spent his day Thursday trying to help the financial community understand the themes behind Microsoft's dozens of planned product releases over the next few years. The "wave" model he came up with may be equally helpful for IT decision makers trying to make sense of how Microsoft's roadmaps fit with their own organizations' plans. Gates, speaking at Microsoft's annual Financial Analysts Meeting, detailed three "waves" which carry most of the enterprise software coming from Microsoft over the next few years.
- Now wave - Windows .NET Server, which just entered the Release Candidate 1 stage; Windows Media 9 Series; Windows XP Media Center Edition; Windows XP Tablet PC Edition; Windows CE for Smart Displays; and an update of Visual Studio .NET.
- Yukon wave - next version of SQL Server
- Longhorn wave - next major release of Windows
Microsoft executives unveiled plans Thursday for upcoming versions of the company's software development tools. Microsoft plans to deliver this fall a minor update to its Visual Studio.Net suite of development tools, said Eric Rudder, senior vice president of Microsoft's developer and platform evangelism. New features include better security and performance and tight integration with the forthcoming Windows .Net Server operating system for businesses. The update, code-named "Everett," will also provide support for writing software for mobile devices, such as cell phones.
Visual Studio.Net, originally released in February, is a revamped package of tools that includes Visual Studio, C++, C# and other tools for writing software. It serves as Microsoft's chief weapon in the battle for software developers, who have a choice between Microsoft's .Net Web services plan and rival software sold by Sun Microsystems, BEA Systems, Oracle, IBM and other Java backers. Web services is an emerging method of writing software that allows businesses to interact via the Internet.
A bizarre rumor about Microsoft making sweeping changing to its Product Activation technology in Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) is completely untrue, the company told me today. The rumor, which was started by a small technology enthusiast Web site, had Microsoft changing the product keys for all of its customers using volume licensing. This rumors has since spread across the Internet and been embellished in various ways, including a version I came across Thursday morning claiming that Microsoft was making the change so it could charge licensees yet again for SP1. Not so, says Microsoft.
As I first reported back in May, the Windows Product Activation feature in XP SP1 will get two minor modifications, neither of which will affect any legitimate users. First, Microsoft discovered that the majority of pirated XP copies out there are tied to single volume license product key. So Microsoft alerted the company about the problem, changed their key, and disabled it for use after SP1. So anyone using this pirated key will be unable to upgrade to SP1 or any future updates via Windows Update. Also, Microsoft is adding a three-day grace period for people that use the same product key to install XP on two different systems; in the past, there was no grace period and the user had to immediately activation via phone in order to use XP on the second system. This will give users some breathing room if disaster strikes and you have to install XP on a new system.
Joining several colleges from Windows & .NET Magazine at a late June Reviewer's Workshop for Windows .NET Server near Microsoft's Redmond headquarters, I received an almost mind-numbingly technical overview to the vast array of new features in the company's next server operating system. One thing is clear: Windows Server has grown up dramatically since the early NT days, and it now scales up to the most scalable and advanced hardware on the planet.
It wasn't always that way. Early versions of NT Server met with much market resistance, mostly because of the system's poor performance and low-end aspirations. So it wasn't until the release of Windows 2000 Server in February 2000 that Microsoft had a credible enterprise solution. "Windows NT 4 was all about small teams of people," said Cliff Reeves, Microsoft's Vice President of Product Management for Windows .NET Server. "Windows 2000 was focused on being a robust OS suitable for the data center. Windows .NET Server improves on Windows 2000 and NT and introduces developer and application server capabilities. It's the tip of the iceberg for what's coming in the future on the server."