WinInsider

Gates, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and other executives will periodically issue newsletters on the company's views about the role of technology and public policy, according to the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant. The first volume of the newsletter, about Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative, went out Wednesday and was penned by Gates. The four-page e-mail gives an overview of the initiative and provides tips on how companies can make their computing environments more secure. Security, of course, has been a primary objective for the company for the past 18 months. Six months ago, Gates declared security as Microsoft's highest priority. Different divisions in the company will be rated on how well they integrate security features into their products, several sources have said. In an effort to avoid spamming, the first version of the newsletter was sent to existing newsletter subscribers. To receive subsequent editions, readers will have to register.

Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates on Thursday said the company's high-profile campaign to improve the security of its software had cost at least $100 million this year, but said the expense was paying off in better products. In the early months of this year, Microsoft interrupted the development work of more than 8,500 engineers and sent many on special training to improve the security of its Windows operating system. That "stand-down" took nearly two months and cost at least $100 million, Gates said on Thursday.

"We've undertaken similar code reviews and security training for Microsoft Office and Visual Studio .NET, and will be doing so for other products as well," he said in the e-mail, in which he touted the progress that has been made since January when he proclaimed security as Microsoft's top priority.

Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday sales grew 10 percent in the fourth quarter, lifted by demand for its Windows XP operating system and software for businesses while losses on cable investments cut into earnings. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft also pared back its full-year profit and sales outlook slightly, and said that growth was more likely to come later in the fiscal year. The world's largest software maker pegged per-share profit for fiscal 2003 at $1.85 to $1.91, a slight reduction from $1.89 to $1.92 projected three months ago.

"We're very enthused about fiscal 2003," said Microsoft's Chief Financial Officer John Connors told Reuters. "We exited the latest fiscal year in a stronger position than we entered."

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer won't be doing one of his infamous cheerleading dance routines Thursday when he and other executives serve up the software leader's year-end results. Microsoft is performing better than most of its competition through a continuing tech slump that's hit Siebel Systems, SAP and others. But the company's business outlook for its fiscal-first quarter and its new fiscal year won't have anyone doing back flips, analysts say. Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft is expected to report earnings of 42 cents a share, according to a consensus of 24 analysts polled by Thomson Financial/First Call. The company earned 43 cents a share in the same period last year.

Hewlett-Packard racked up some records on standard business benchmarks using its new servers built on the Itanium 2 processor, the Limited Edition of Windows Advanced Server and beta code of 64-bit SQL Server. Industry standard benchmarks did not appear for Intel's first 64-bit processor, the Itanium. HP helped Intel develop the Itanium Architecture and was the first vendor to announce available systems based on the Itanium 2. A configuration anchored by a 4-way HP rx5670 server running Limited Edition and 64-bit SQL, achieved 78,454 transactions per minute (tpmC) on the benchmark at a cost of $5.12 per tpmC. The result was 42 percent better than the previous best 4-way result, achieved on a 32-bit Windows-SQL system. The Limited Edition is a fully supported operating system that can be purchased only from OEMs selling complete 64-bit systems, such as HP. The operating system was built using Windows .NET Server code.

In the wake of Intel's launch of its second-generation 64-bit processors, Unisys this week unveiled its plans for its next generation of Wintel mainframes. Unisys is packaging a new line of its big boxes to make it attractive in more cost-conscious markets. The new servers will roll out over the next few months. Right around the Windows 2000 launch, Unisys began shipping its 32-processor ES7000 servers, which remain the largest servers on the market running Intel processors. The ES7000 was closely associated with Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. The 32-processor support built into Datacenter was engineered expressly to accommodate the Unisys servers.

William Neukom, Microsoft Corp.'s lead lawyer who led the software giant's defense against federal antitrust charges, on Wednesday said he will rejoin his former law firm as a partner. Neukom, 60, had announced his departure from Microsoft in November, shortly after the company reached a tentative settlement with the government in the landmark antitrust trial. Neukom first worked with Microsoft around 1979 while a partner with Shidler, McBroom, Gates & Lucas. Microsoft co-founder and Chairman Bill Gates' father led the law firm at the time and introduced Neukom to his son's fledgling software company, which went on to become the world's largest. Neukom, known for his bow ties, formally joined Microsoft as Vice President and General Counsel in 1985 and created its legal department, a group that grew to 600 employees from an initial team of five.

America Online Inc. boosted its revenue figures through unconventional deals from 2000 to 2002, before and after its acquisition of Time Warner Inc., the Washington Post reported on Thursday. A chart printed in conjunction with the Post article shows a total of $270.1 million in unconventional deals.

The newspaper said it reviewed hundreds of pages of confidential AOL documents and interviewed current and former company officials and their business partners to produce the report. In October 2000, the Post said, just a week before AOL President Robert Pittman publicly denied that AOL was feeling an industry-wide slowdown in advertising, shares of Yahoo! Inc. YHOO.O tumbled 21 percent after that company, a key AOL competitor, said that strong ad growth could not be sustained. What's more, AOL's shares lost 17 percent the day before Pittman spoke, apparently on similar worries, the Post said.

Summer is usually a slow time for computer sales, but for software makers and PC makers alike, it's often the busiest time of the year, as upcoming new products are massaged into sellable form. This has never been more true than this year for Microsoft, which is prepping a number of important upgrades and pre-releases for its core products, all of which will ship soon. On deck for July are Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) and Windows .NET Server Release Candidate 1 (RC1). Then, in August, Microsoft will ship the important Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) release, which will form the foundation of two new Windows versions, XP Media Center Edition and XP Tablet PC Edition, both of which will ship late this year with new hardware.

A group of private sector organizations and government agencies will release Wednesday a new benchmark testing tool designed to let users and administrators more easily configure security settings on their Microsoft Windows 2000 systems.

The benchmark, which has been agreed upon by the Center for Internet Security, the SANS Institute, the U.S. General Services Administration, the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, the U.S. National Security Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is designed to give companies and users a clear standard for achieving a baseline level of security in their Windows 2000 systems, said Clint Kreitner, president and chief executive officer of Center for Internet Security, located in Bethesda, Maryland.