Release Candidate 1 of Windows .NET Server is finished and Microsoft will distribute the code to anyone who wants to test it, the company said Wednesday. Shipping RC1, which is feature complete, is a major milestone in Microsoft's process for delivering a finished operating system. At least one more release candidate is planned before the operating system is Released to Manufacturing (RTM). RTM is projected for late this year with general availability of the server operating system family a few months later in early 2003.
"The point here is that we've actually delivered a product that is very reliable, very stable, that could in many of our customer scenarios could be used in a production environment," says Bob O'Brien, group product manager for Windows .NET Server.
The .Net plan includes new releases of the company's Windows operating system, called Windows .Net Server. It also embraces other server software, along with development tools and a framework to make programs more Internet-aware. One new technology supported by .Net is Web services, which promises to make the linking of internal computer systems, and of systems residing in multiple companies, far easier than with current methods. Although developers and analysts have given .Net high marks for its technical design, some Microsoft customers have called the company's marketing plan confusing. Microsoft largely rebranded existing products under the .Net label but added little new technology. Gates on Wednesday acknowledged that shortcoming.
Microsoft has withdrawn a synchronization utility designed to allow users of its Entourage X software for Apple desktops to synchronize with Palm OS-based PDAs (personal digital assistants). In a brief message on its download Web site, Microsoft said the software is "temporarily unavailable as we investigate some technical issues that have been reported to us by customers." The company said it is working on the problem but gave no estimate of when the application might be available again.
"I wanted to post a quick note out here to let you all know, we are aware of the issue with the Palm synch conduit that was posted where in some cases all available memory is filled on the Palm device," wrote Sampson. "We have currently removed the conduit from MacTopia and are currently working on the issue."
Despite the fact that a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) condition of the AOL Time Warner merger required the company to open up interoperability between its AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) product and competition, AOL revealed this week that it has no plans to do so, and likely never did. Instead, the company says it will now focus on alternative ways of achieving interoperability, and the company cited its recent deal with Apple Computer, which will be the first company to ship an AIM-compatible chat client outside of AOL.
AOL's agreement with the FTC stipulated that the company would open up the AIM network to MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and other competitors, allowing users of these widely-trafficked but incompatible networks to exchange text messages, files, and other data. The agreement came after AOL's competitors, including Microsoft, complained to the FTC, stating that the AOL Time Warner merger should not be approved until AOL opened up AIM. Previous to that, Microsoft worked to open up MSN Messenger users to AIM, but was shut out several times by AOL.
Things just aren't moving fast enough for the folks at Microsoft. In this case, what they're looking to speed up are the connections between people using all sorts of Microsoft products and the Internet. Chairman Bill Gates has even publicly lamented the sorry state of high-speed Net links in the U.S. "Clearly, if you can get [broadband prices] down to $20, $25 a month [in the next 18 months], something then will happen.... But, you know, in the U.S. it's not clear that will happen," he said in April at the Government Leaders' Conference in Seattle.
Now, after talking up and praying for speedy adoption of broadband seemingly for ages and getting no response, Microsoft is trying a more direct approach. It's offering its MSN.com content to providers of high-speed Internet access to spice up their offerings. The Colossus of Redmond is also building out Xbox Live, an online gaming network with supercool graphics and interactivity, to lure gamers into going broadband. Finally, it's striking more deals with Internet service providers, perhaps in an attempt to help them financially -- essentially subsidizing broadband access for consumers. All told, Microsoft could spend upwards of $3 billion on all these projects in the next two years, according to some estimates.
The state of California has officially canceled a sprawling six-year deal that united scores of its contracts with software maker Oracle under one mega-contract, state officials said Tuesday. The $95 million contract, signed in 2001, became the subject of a politically charged, two-month hearing by the state's Joint Legislative Audit Committee after a state audit report released in April estimated the contract would cost California $41 million--rather than save the state $100 million over six to 10 years, as Oracle contended.
During the course of the hearing, four high-ranking officials resigned over allegations of negligence and misconduct in dealing with Oracle and its reseller Logicon. The disclosure that an aide to California Gov. Gray Davis had accepted a $25,000 campaign contribution from Oracle just days after the state signed the contract was a political embarrassment to Davis, who is running for re-election. Davis returned the contribution to Oracle shortly after that fact came to light.
Microsoft on Wednesday will take a significant step toward expanding the appeal of its .Net software plan by announcing a link to Apache, one of the most important open-source software projects. The software giant plans to extend .Net to the popular Apache Web server, which could give Microsoft access to a far larger audience of software developers. Apache is used by more than half of all Internet sites, according to an ongoing survey by research firm Netcraft. Microsoft, which on Wednesday is to hold a day-long session at its Redmond, Wash., headquarters to outline its plans for .Net, is increasing its efforts to link .Net to popular, non-Microsoft software packages.
Public bantering between HP and Dell has emerged as a consequence of HP acquiring Compaq. Hewlett-Packard, for instance, on Tuesday stopped selling its printing and digital imaging products to Dell Computer, as the two companies jockey for position in a move one analyst likened to "marital jealousy" played out through largely symbolic, though still irksome, behavior. Such jealousy has been setting off a series of maneuvers from each side that, while seemingly minor at the time, might add up to something much larger as the new rivalry plays out. As can be the case in such squabbles, however, HP's move could wind up forcing it to pay a much higher price than might now be imagined, suggested another analyst.
OASIS, a group working on standards for Web services, formed a new committee to develop the WS-Security specification. WS-Security, version 1.0 of which was written by IBM, Microsoft and VeriSign, consists of extensions to the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) designed to make Web services applications confidential and secure. The specification is one of many Web services security specs under development, including several at OASIS. Still other Web services security efforts are ongoing elsewhere.
To no one's surprise, Microsoft is getting into the CRM space. Many may find it amusing that Microsoft is even thinking of offering customer relationship management software, since "customer relationship" and "Microsoft" rarely evoke positive responses when included in the same sentence. Microsoft's rapid inroads into the CRM space have been systematic and scary (at least to its potential competitors). Microsoft is moving so quickly that there may be few survivors in the coming years.
Look at the history. Microsoft's CRM play probably started with the innocuous addition of Pivot Table to Excel. The addition of Pivot Table gave users the ability to add meager business intelligence to Excel, which was commonly used for basic contacts and inventory. Then, in the mid-1990s, Microsoft struck a deal with SAP. The thinking was that Microsoft needed an enterprise entry point and that SAP needed to move into the midmarket. By the late 1990s, Microsoft was growing its own CRM system. The people doing the work had better plans and decided to spin off completely. That company became Onyx Software, a competitor to Microsoft's CRM that, unfortunately, has a product completely based on Microsoft technology.