Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Navision, in conjunction with its 2001 purchase of Great Plains Software, will give it the opportunity to dominate the market for enterprise resource planning (ERP) software in the small to lower-end midsize segments--that is, companies with annual revenue up to $200 million.
Microsoft's business solutions division will likely benefit in the following ways: It will extend its business offerings globally; it will strengthen weak discrete manufacturing capabilities; and it will facilitate scalability into larger midmarket enterprises. Moreover, Navision's global success extends beyond smaller enterprises (less than $50 million annual revenue), which is Great Plains' main base. With an established distribution channel of more than 2,000 partners across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Microsoft can gain fast market penetration via a recognized brand.
The federal judge overseeing the Microsoft Corp. antitrust case said on Tuesday that she wants to see a version of the Windows operating system that has removable features. Over the objections of Microsoft, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said she would allow nine states seeking stiff sanctions against the company to have a computer expert demonstrate a version of Windows he has developed that can be customized. Kollar-Kotelly scheduled the presentation for May 15.
Microsoft attorneys strongly objected, saying the states should have brought Bach into the case earlier when they were presenting their initial case. Kollar-Kotelly agreed in part. She said the states' attorneys hired Bach in February, but had made a "tactical decision" not to call him earlier in the case. But the judge said it was important to hear from someone who had actually "sat down and tried" to create a version of Windows that could be customized. "I'm going to allow Mr. Bach's testimony primarily for the reason that I think the information should be presented to the court," Kollar-Kotelly said. "I should have it."
Microsoft has been inching cautiously into the enterprise application market, starting at the low-end with CRM applications such as Great Plains and the acquisition of Navision. Tuesday, it debuted a new version of Project 2002, pitching it as the vendor's entry into the enterprise project-management market. Project is a long-time Microsoft product, but like its Office suite has traditionally been targeted at individual users or small workgroups.
According to Microsoft, Project 2002 has been extensively updated to enterprise needs, including a new implementation that runs on .Net Enterprise Server and features greatly enhanced collaboration and portfolio and resource-management tools.
Computers around the world would be more vulnerable to attack under antitrust sanctions sought by nine states against Microsoft Corp., a top executive of the software giant told federal court on Tuesday. Microsoft group Vice President Jim Allchin said the states' proposals would open up sensitive technical information to computer hackers trying to break into corporate and government networks or unleash destructive viruses on the Internet.
"Providing such information just makes it a little easier to compromise the security mechanisms in Windows, and the stakes for our customers are too high for Microsoft to take such a risk," Allchin said in written testimony to the court. The security exception "enables Microsoft to safeguard our customers' computer installations without denying competitors information they might want to use," Allchin said. Without it, Allchin said, it would also be easier for software pirates to illegally copy and resell its software.
As Oracle Corp. seeks to boost government contracts, the software company has carefully channeled its major campaign contributions to a select few California politicians wielding the most power over its livelihood. Just about every elected official who has received a major contribution from Oracle has some measure of control over Oracle government business, or held influence over the $95 million software contract that has embarrassed the company and Gov. Gray Davis.
Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who has received $50,000 from the company, is one of a handful of state attorneys general still pursuing Oracle's competitor, Microsoft, on antitrust charges. Because of the contributions from Oracle, Lockyer now faces questions from Republicans about whether he can fairly investigate the current contracting scandal.
Some lawmakers investigating the contract have wondered whether the senator was helping his son, Oracle salesman Richard Polanco Jr. in Los Angeles, or his friend and political protege Cortez.
The editorial titled "Business: Wasting time" about competitor attacks on Microsoft got it right, but it missed an important point. The competitors, and those state attorneys general functioning as career-advancing attack dogs, are putting our information-based economy at risk. So much of business depends on Windows interoperability support among applications sourced from different software suppliers that the economy cannot tolerate being adversely affected by messing around with how Windows functions.
The other day, with several clicks of my mouse in Internet Explorer, I was able to participate in a press simulcast by Microsoft competitor America On Line. And I have no idea, nor do I care, whose streaming software provided the connection. That is how seamless Microsoft has made the process.
Oracle is losing ground in the Unix- and Windows-based database markets, according to a survey due out this week. Obtained by a US newswire, the Gartner Dataquest survey provides cheer for IBM and Microsoft, but chronicles a loss of market share for Oracle. Oracle fell to second place with 32 per cent market share, a fall of 2.1 per cent. Microsoft saw a small rise and now controls 16.3 per cent. In the Windows-based space, worth $2.5bn according to the analyst, Microsoft's SQL server is well ahead at 39.9 per cent, representing a 4.5 per cent increase on last year, with Oracle again falling in this area.
Thanks NeoWin for this link.
Reports on Taiwanese wires say Intel will introduce two chipsets based on DDR 333 as early as this coming September. The chip giants will roll out the 845PE and the 845GE but show them off at next month's Taiwanese Computex show, according to a report in Digitimes. The chipsets will otherwise be quite similar to the 845G and the 845E, which are the next introductions in this quarter. If the reports are correct, it gives a further impetus to the DDR 333 push. Both Via and SIS, which also make chipsets, are already shipping chipsets which use DDR 333. Digitimes says that the Intel DDR 333 products will cost around $3 more than the DDR 266 products they have on board, although things, particularly in the chipset business, change very fast indeed.
Intel releases speed-bumped microprocessors on a fairly regular basis, but this week's introduction of new Pentium 4 processors represents a more significant performance gain than usual. Sure, the clock speeds are faster--the new chips run at 2.53, 2.26 and 2.4 GHz--but the big gains with this release are a new 533 MHz system bus and support for 1066 MHz Rambus RDRAM memory. These advances edge Intel's offerings beyond rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and distance the PC world dramatically from the Macintosh's aging Power PC designs, which are mired with top CPU speeds of 1 GHz, and lowly 133 Mhz system bus and memory speeds.
Tuesday morning at the NetWorld+Interop 2002 trade show, Microsoft announced that it had released Project 2002 to manufacturing. Microsoft Project 2002 has been extensively updated and restructured into a new product family. It will become publicly available in June, the company says.
The Microsoft Project 2002 product family includes Project 2002 Standard, Project 2002 Professional, and Project 2002 Server. All of the products include dynamic task scheduling; improved charts, calendars, and task sheets; a new Project Guide; an Office XP-style user interface with task panes and Smart Tags; better integration with other Office family products; and new resource pooling, leveling, and availability tools. Project Professional and Server add other unique features, such as Web-based Project views, timesheets and status information; email notifications; a Project document library; load balancing and clustering; and more.