According to Goldman, the marketing methodologies of both Sun and IBM are framed as an old-fashioned battle between good and evil. Microsoft currently lacks a firm alliance with any hardware vendor to sell its .NET products and services. Both Goldman and his Yankee Group colleague Rob Perry argued in a research note released early this year that "HP and Compaq [need to] merge and tighten their relationship with Microsoft, dumping J2EE [Java 2 Enterprise Edition Platform] middleware products.
"Compaq convinces HP that Bluestone is a black hole, and that to win in the market it must pick a side. The combined company uses Compaq's strong Microsoft relationship to become the primary server platform for .NET and Biztalk," the analysts wrote. While Goldman said such a scenario may be unlikely, a merged HP-Compaq joining forces with Microsoft would push the server and services markets into three distinct camps: Sun-Java, IBM-Linux, and the high-tech Darth Vader, HP-Compaq-.NET. According to Goldman, "HP-Compaq can offer Microsoft that honking big hardware it needs for [both companies] to win."
Microsoft has reshuffled its roadmaps once again, and begun briefing partners and customers to expect an interim upgrade to Windows XP, dubbed XP "SE", in the first quarter of next year. This buys more time for the Longhorn team to complete the complex task of implementing a native database file store. In January we exclusively confirmed that the native, SQL Server-derived database would go in Longhorn, with the Blackcomb release - originally earmarked for the transition - pushed out to 2004.
XP SE will be principally a consolidation release. Candidates for inclusion are the essential .NET client-side plumbing: the common language runtime (CLR), Internet Explorer 7.0 and DirectX 9.0, and a mature Bluetooth stack.
Microsoft Boots PlayStation 2 Out of CeBIT
This one is pretty funny: Microsoft officials complained to CeBIT show organizers this week that Sony was allowing showgoers to play PlayStation 2 games in its booth. Well, it turns out that CeBIT has specific rules about video games, since the show is designed for business resellers and purchasers only. So Sony was told to take down its PlayStation 2 displays, cart 'em up, and get on out of there. Pay no attention to that maniacal laughing you hear in the background.
Red Hat calls net loss of $139 million a year of success. So what is a bad year?
Like Apple Computer, Linux-maker Red Hat likes to put a positive spin on things. Witness its recently completed fiscal year 2002, which Red Hat referred to as "a successful year for [the company]." How successful was the year for Red Hat? Well, it reported a net loss of $139 million, a dramatic increase over its loss of $87 million the year before, and a figure that's higher than the company's actual sales for the year. Most alarmingly, sales of embedded products dropped dramatically as well (and yet we continue to read about the embedded market as the new frontier for Linux sales). Anyway, after announcing its successful yearly results, the company eliminated its network consulting group, cut staff, and announced a move of its corporate headquarters that will save $700 million in real estate costs. I'm coming around to the idea that the Linux phenomenon might be best expressed in the hundreds of tiny companies that support the technology, rather than large corporations like this that simply try to ape Microsoft.
Researchers at Microsoft Corp. are working on new types of passwords that will be easier for people to remember but harder for hackers to crack. The key -- images, which tend to make more of an impression on people than strings of text characters. Darko Kirovski, a cryptography and anti-piracy researcher at Microsoft, demonstrated a prototype password system at Microsoft offices in Mountain View, California, on Wednesday.
Shares of media behemoth AOL Time Warner fell for the second consecutive day Thursday as an analyst raised concerns over the growth prospects of the company's America Online division. Echoing concerns that have been in the market for several months, Lehman Brothers analyst Holly Becker trimmed estimates for the company's revenue and cash flow for the first quarter and the full year, citing expected declines for AOL's advertising revenue.
AOL Time Warner shares fell nearly 4 percent, or 93 cents, to $24.27 on the New York Stock Exchange, on top of about a 5 percent decline Wednesday. The shares were at their lowest level since Feb. 28. A company representative declined to comment.
Software giant Microsoft Corp. is considering offering Internet access in China, where major rival AOL is already moving ahead with an Internet service joint venture, a company executive said Thursday. That would make China the next theater in the battle the two U.S. rivals are waging to attract subscribers for Internet access.
In the United States, Microsoft is pushing ahead with a campaign to try to get Internet users to switch to its MSN Internet service provider from the industry leader AOL, offering $50 cash to new subscribers.
Sun is railing at Microsoft, but maybe it should be hiring coders rather than lawyers. In the 1980s, Sun beat the drum for networking and open standards, and those were important campaigns. Today, everybody is in favour of both, but it is still unclear why anybody should buy Sun servers running Sun's Solaris on Sun's Sparc chips with Sun's iPlanet software, or Sun's Unix workstations with Sun's Hotjava browser and Sun's Star Office suite.
One reaction on the Web was that, rather than making even more lawyers even richer, Sun would do better if it hired some decent programmers to write some useful code. What a quaint idea - beating up Microsoft is much more fun.
While Hewlett-Packard (HP) shareholders appear to have narrowly OK'd the company's record-breaking merger with Compaq Computer, Compaq shareholders had no qualms accepting the offer, and the approved the merger deal by a 9-to-1 margin. In sharp contrast to the heated battle within HP, there was no serious opposition to the merger within Compaq. "Both Compaq and HP have long, proud heritages and, believe me, we are proud of our heritage, but this was about creating the next generation industry leader," Compaq CEO Michael Capellas told shareholders Wednesday.
The federal judge hearing the Microsoft antitrust case said particularly damaging testimony against the company is hearsay, and refused to consider it in deciding whether nine states can impose harsh penalties on the company. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the written testimony from RealNetworks vice president David Richards could not be admitted because Richards did not have direct knowledge.
Despite protests from lawyers representing the states that the e-mails provide context of Microsoft's behavior, the judge threw them out. She said the states have not called those individuals, like Schuler, to confirm what Microsoft said.
"I don't see how this can be anything but hearsay," Kollar-Kotelly said.
Citigroup Inc., the world's largest banking group, said on Wednesday it will use Microsoft Corp.'s Web services for its sites in a pact that includes promoting its credit cards through Microsoft's MSN Internet media network. Microsoft's .NET technology, which ties different corporate networks together and allows sharing data and other services, will be used to make Citigroup customer transactions easier. Citi Cards, the largest U.S. provider of credit cards, will be the first unit to use Microsoft services. Microsoft said Citi Cards will be promoted on its MSN network and featured prominently in the networks e-commerce services.