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April 09, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft's really tough strategic challenge, and the straitjacket it created for itself

Open source has grabbed a big part of the server and app dev market. Apple has redefined the mobile device market and rendered Windows Mobile devices beyond passé. Firefox has blunted Internet Explorer's dominance, reversing the ActiveX hegemony for interactive Web apps, and removing one more barrier for widespread Macintosh usage. Vista is a dud -- "a piece of junk," one Gartner analyst called it yesterday in an interview.

This week, it got worse. Google is now challenging the Office cash cow and Microsoft's cautious steps into on-demand services through its new offering to let software vendors build Google-based apps. Salesforce.com has been remaking itself into a business app development and provisioning platform, and is likely to link up with Google next week on a joint offering.

Almost everywhere you turn, Microsoft is challenged. (Exceptions: Its SharePoint collaboration platform is well liked and the fastest-growing product in Microsoft's history, noted Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald, which could help preserve Office's fortunes against Google's incursions. Its Windows Server 2008 is a good OS that will serve businesses well. And its app dev tools dominate in the Microsoft-centric world of .Net.)

An enterprise strategy may have blinded Microsoft

Microsoft spent a small fortune to beef up its enterprise creds in its investments in business apps like Great Plains Software and the Dynamics CRM tools, in an attempt to get a way from its PC origins and the lack of serious that 1990s businesses treated Microsoft with as a result of those origins, notes Gartner's MacDonald. It succeeded, creating a $1 billion business.

But despite that effort, Microsoft is still No. 4 in that space, even though it gained the enterprise creds it wanted. But Microsoft may have fought the wrong battle, argues Gartner analyst Darryl Plummer. The world has moved beyond enterprise computing to global computing, where the needs of one user are as critical as the needs of millions.

That requires a strong customer focus -- ironically what Microsoft had in its PC-oriented days -- that "enterprise class" doesn't deliver. Enterprise apps are optimized for large groups, not also for individuals, Plummer says. That's why it's a new breed of provider -- Salesforce.com, Google, Amazon.com and Facebook -- that are emerging as the new opportunities for both markets and technology.

A lock-in strategy doomed to fail

The "enterprise" apps are in what fellow analyst Yvonne Genovese calls a "terminal state of decline," consolidating into four vendors: SAP, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft. These vendors are trying to own their customers through a strategy of owning the entire stack that enterprises use, such as by adding their databases and middleware under their apps. The goal, she says, is to make an enterprise dependent on that integrated stack, creating a moat around their customers (and locking their customers in it). The four companies have different tactical approaches but the same goal.

SOA's abstraction and standards-based integration approach are meant to counter that lock-in strategy, but the app vendors already have figured a way to make SOA useless for that purpose, Genovese notes: They don't use standardized business processes, even when they use standard SOA mechanisms, so their apps won't in fact interoperate with independent services. Unless of course they are designed to be part of the app vendor's "ecosystem," which exists to lock customers in and competitors out.

These vendors may get a five-year lock-in from their impose-our-stack strategy, argues analyst Richard Hunter, but customers will eventually escape to something else -- just as happened when AOL played the same game in the 1990s. That "something else" is likely to the likes of Google and Salesforce.com, he says. He and his Gartner colleagues all cite cloud computing as the vague but increasingly clear space that this new world will exist in.

What Microsoft just might be able to do

Microsoft could have taken its individual-facing expertise and created the kind of global computing technology that serves one as well as 1 million -- the essential mass-customization and scalability attributes that represent cloud computing -- rather than leave that space open to the Googles, Plummer says. But Microsoft didn't, instead trying to be a stodgy, ultimately brittle company like IBM, Oracle and SAP.

None of the Gartner analysts suggested the four major app vendors are destined for the dust heap, but a common thread was that they are in no-growth areas, while the future's new horizons are elsewhere.

Microsoft's challenge is to move into that new horizon, which its "enterprise class" detour may have made that much harder to do. Now that Microsoft is quintessential legacy technology, it can't be as experimental or agile.

"Google can go anywhere, and it does," says MacDonald. "It's strategy is to keep Microsoft off-balance, and away from Google's own core strengths." Microsoft is stuck: "How do you do something radical without spooking the installed base?"

Now's the time for Microsoft to find the answer to that.

(I've spent the week at Gartner's ITXpo conference, which is why you're seeing just Gartner voices in this story.)

Posted by Galen Gruman on April 9, 2008 04:00 AM

January 16, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft 'spyware' to jack into your brain waves

A recently published Microsoft patent application should send shivers down the spines of those already paranoid about companies' employee-monitorning capabilities -- and once the technology in question is developed, companies will gain access to those shivers to trigger a little heart-to-heart with the spine owners' managers.

According to a report in The Times, the patent, which was last month published by the U.S. Patent Office after an 18-month filing period, describes a monitoring system that would enable computers to wirelessly pick up on a user's heart rate, galvanic skin response, brain signals, body temperature, facial movements and expressions, blood pressure, and respiration rate.

Although the sense of this sentient system would seem to be to provide nefarious means for employers to spy on employees, the patent describes a more empathic rationale. Detecting frustration by mapping biorhythmic changes against profiles corresponding to employee's weight, age, and health, the system would gently nudge managers to conduct a quick, how-are-we-doing-today pop in -- certain to ensure further off-chart trajectories for the monitored biorhythms that alerted the system in the first place.

Not surprisingly, such a patent, which could be granted within a year, according to the U.S. Patent Office, pretty much shakes the notion of privacy to its very core. And civil liberties groups and privacy lawyers are experiencing elevated heart rates and noticeably troubled facial expressions over the patent.

According to The Times, one such expert on data protection law, Hugh Tomlinson at Matrix Chambers, said, "This system involves intrusions into every single aspect of the lives of the employees."

Fortunately, brain signals will likely not have to spike to keep such a system out of employers' hands, should it even come to fruition. Yet, as an analyst speaking to this editor yesterday pointed out, people are becoming much more identified with their technology, as the iPhone and iPod phenomena suggest. How much longer before, culturally, we become accepting of computing-human emotive kinship going two ways?

Posted by Jason Snyder on January 16, 2008 11:04 AM

October 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft's services: More marketing than meat

It’s official: Microsoft wants you to know it’s serious about this whole hosted software thing. Today they will articulate a long-overdue roadmap for "software plus services" -- a hybrid approach that embraces both old-school boxed software and the flavor-of-the-month hosted services model.

The announcement itself has the trappings of a big deal. In fact, it's more a case of rearranging the furniture and adding a light coat of paint. Specifically, all MS services will be divided into two distinct families: Live (for consumers and SMB) and Online (for enterprises and business that require high availability, scalability, security, etc.).

So we're mostly talking about a rebranding here. The services now designated as part of Online -- Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft Office SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Communications Online -- already exist elsewhere in the MS hierarchy. As before, they're available as conventional software on premises or as a software-as-a-service offering hosted either by Microsoft or a Microsoft partner.

The Live family announcement is made a bit more exciting because it includes a new product: Office Live Workspace, a personal storage and collaborative environment in the cloud. You can store anything for free, but document collaboration works only with Office documents. Preregistration starts today at the Office Live site.

The company also announced Exchange Labs, an R&D effort that will supply Exchange as a hosted service to universities and other large facilities that want to innovate around Exchange. And they're launching a new version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM (code name Titan) to a limited number of customers. In keeping with Microsoft's strategy, Titan can be run on premise or hosted. Significantly, the next-gen Dynamics CRM is multitenanted, an architectural approach that is essential for real, robust SaaS. Many other Microsoft service offerings don't support multitenancy.

For all the elements in this announcement, it's hard to generate much enthusiasm. Microsoft's big splash feels more like a little ripple -- a dutiful set of launches and marketing moves designed mostly to prove that MS "gets it." Plus, Microsoft's insistence on keeping one foot firmly planted in the boxed software world (remember, it's "software plus services") indicates their embrace of Web 2.0 is fairly tepid.

Still, if Microsoft was slow to grasp the importance of the Internet, they'd like to prove they aren't asleep at the switch when it comes to SaaS and Web 2.0. Office Live Workspace may be a key piece of the puzzle here, but Microsoft is undoubtedly late to the party. Google has been making hay with its hosted suite, and other competitors are springing up all over the place.

Don't forget, though, that Microsoft has a built in advantage: a massive installed base of MS Office. A wholesale move to hosted services would undercut that still lucrative business. Despite the Web 2.0 enthusiasts and cockeyed optimists who are penning obituaries for conventional, non-browser-based software, Office isn't in any danger of going away anytime soon. Software plus services is really a play to hold the line and maintain the status quo, even as it seems Microsoft is embracing the newest software models. Smart, very smart.

Posted by Steve Fox on October 1, 2007 12:01 AM

September 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft's secret desktop plan?

softgrid microsoft desktop-virtualization virtualization google google-apps zoho zimbra ibm lotus symphony IBM's announcement of Lotus Symphony yesterday gave me a wicked '80s flashback. In my mind's eye I saw the original Lotus Symphony office suite, flickering on an amber monochrome monitor, boring me to tears as a New Order dance track thumped in the background.

The new Symphony comes with a different soundtrack: the drumbeat of challengers marching on Microsoft Office. The Symphony suite unveiled by IBM yesterday as a free download is actually a gussied-up version of OpenOffice, the open source productivity suite –- kinda like Sun's StarOffice, now offered for free as part of Google Pack. Could it be a coincidence that on the same day Google CEO Eric Schmidt talked up the forthcoming presentation component of Google Docs?

So let's see: We have OpenOffice permutations advancing on the desktop plus Google Apps, Zoho, Zimbra, and several other contenders making a flank attack through the browser. ODF, OpenOffice's native document format, continues to gather steam, while earlier this month the ISO voted against fast-tracking approval of Microsoft's competing OOXML document format. Not to mention that the Office clones look and feel more like earlier versions of Office than Microsoft's 2007 version and its revamped UI.

Yet in Redmond the guns remain eerily silent, to the point where I'm beginning to wonder if Microsoft isn't up to something. Ask the company, and all you get is the usual defensive posturing. Yesterday I spoke with Jacob Jaffe, Director, Microsoft Office, who –- surprise! –- claimed the recent surge of competitive activity doesn't bother Microsoft at all. Not one bit! Customer satisfaction is booming. The company sold more than 71 million licenses in the last fiscal year, for heaven's sake.

You want SaaS (software-as-a-service), a la Google apps? Microsoft goes one better: software plus services. As an example, Jaffe noted you can call up help within an Office application and get helpful content from Microsoft via Office Online. Whoa! Nobody could have imagined that back in the Devo era.

In only one case did I get beyond the stonewalling: when I broached the subject of desktop virtualization. Lately it has occurred to me that Microsoft's lack of a serious SaaS play could be indicative of some secret desktop virtualization plan –- where Microsoft streams Office and Windows in their entirely to a desktop or terminal near you, no funky AJAX compromises required. Would Jaffe rule that out?

"I’ve got nothing specific to announce at this particular point in time," replied Jaffe. "But I do think it's important to reinforce that when we think about services, we think about it in the broadest context, not that services equals Web browser only.”

Sounds like Redmond-speak for "watch this space" to me. I know that Microsoft takes the "services wave" seriously, but as far as SaaS is concerned, the company has barely showed up to the party. But with its SoftGrid acquisition, Microsoft is leading the desktop virtualization field.

Next week Randy Kennedy (who also has something to say about Symphony today) will be exploring this angle in his in-depth comparative review of SoftGrid, Symantec SVS Pro, and Thinstall Application Virtualization Suite.

I like the '00s. They're a lot more exciting than the '80s.

Posted by Eric Knorr on September 19, 2007 09:24 AM

September 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)

The latest fraudulent Bill Gates interview

Though he might be upset that he's the subject of a recent fake interview, Bill Gates can at least take solace in the fact that he's among some elite company in that regard.

The Microsoft founder joins Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Alan Greenspan, Kofi Anan, and several others in being the "subject" of a fake interview written by ex-ABC News consultant Alexis Debat.

That's "fake" as in "utterly false." Not misleading, not out of context, not even an interview with the fake Bill Gates passed off as the real deal, but fake as in completely made up from top to bottom.

The magazine in question, Politique Internationale, has a solid reputation built off 29 years of top-notch reporting -- which makes this fake-interview scandal all the juicier. Politique Internationale has scrubbed all of Debat's articles from its Web site, but a cached copy can be found here (if you don't parlez-vous the Francais, you'll want to take that URL to Babelfish for a translation).

As for the content of the phony interview, it's fairly boilerplate stuff. Plugs for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the importance of vision and perserverence, and so on. There are detours into the world of politics that might have been noteworthy had they actually come from Bill Gates, and the "interview" closes with "Gates" comparing Microsoft and Google to David and Goliath. Curious as to which company is the giant and which is the plucky but determined underdog? Your French may be better than mine, but there's certainly wisdom to be found in Babelfish's profound Pidgin English translation: "B.G.: And Google, of course. That made odd be David vis-a-vis Goliath, for once!"

Of course, this isn't the first time somebody has made up an interview with Gates. Last year, respected Norwegian journalist Bjoern Benkow was accused of faking an encounter with Gates that became the basis of a magazine article.

Posted by Pete Babb on September 13, 2007 03:52 PM

September 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Indecision in Redmond as Web apps charge

Today's Capgemini announcement that it will support Google Apps, following on the heels of last week's Office 2.0 Conference, is another milestone in the relentless march from the desktop to the Web.

No, Google Apps isn't going to replace Office anytime soon, at least not among ordinary cubicle dwellers. Even when Web apps gain offline capability, as Google Apps rival Zoho Office already has, power Office users will turn up their collective noses.

Microsoft, Web applications, Office Yet the Enterprise 2.0 buzz is deafening. Why not incorporate the lightweight, collaborative advantages of Web 2.0 into enterprise desktop computing? Especially when by comparison SharePoint and Lotus Notes/Domino offer such clunky solutions. And especially when (so far, at least) Web-based productivity apps cost nothing or almost nothing, which may be the real reason so many enterprise customers were reportedly lurking at the Office 2.0 show.

I can only imagine the thrashing that must be going on in Redmond right now. Microsoft can't simply pretend the trend doesn't exist, which is why the company felt compelled to issue a non-announcement last week about a new installer that would automatically update Windows Live services along with Windows XP and Vista. But it has steadfastly refused to go the Web productivity app route (except for Live Writer, which is not a serious attempt at a Web-based word processor).

Yes, I understand Redmond's aversion to cannibalizing its Office cash cow, but the fact is that Redmond could own this new space if it wanted to. All it would need to do is push interoperability and integration between lightweight Web versions of Office applications and its desktop fatware. Advanced features would be absent from the lightweight versions, but the company could ensure any Office doc would load on the Web -- whatever new desktop service packs and upgrades might appear -- and online document management could be integrated with Windows for offline access.

Of course, Microsoft may already be laboring mightily to make something like this work. Knowing the complexity of the company's licensing schemes, maybe it's crunching the numbers right now – the free version, the not-so-free version, the doodads for a onetime fee, and so on. The recent report by The Burton Group, which claimed that swapping Microsoft Office for Google Apps would be "a career-limiting move," is right on target. On the other hand, if Microsoft fails to act decisively much longer, some Redmond careers might be shortened, too.

Posted by Eric Knorr on September 10, 2007 03:00 AM

June 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Privacy group accuses Google of smear campaign

Google questioned integrity of recent privacy report by suggesting "conflict of interest regarding Microsoft," non-profit says

Privacy group accuses Google of smear campaign Just one day after slamming Google with the worst privacy ranking among top Internet companies, London-based Privacy International (PI) has publicly accused the search behemoth of attempting to undermine the non-profit's report, saying Google suggested to the media that PI has a "conflict of interest regarding Microsoft."

Meanwhile, Google has lashed back at PI's report, released Saturday, saying in a statement that it the company "aggressively protects its users' privacy and stands behind its track record," according to reports.

"We are disappointed with Privacy International's report, which is based on numerous inaccuracies and misunderstandings about our services," said Nicole Wong, Google's deputy general counsel.

In " A Race to the Bottom: Privacy Ranking of Internet Service Companies," PI ranks the privacy practices of 23 of "the best and the worst performers both in Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 across the full spectrum of search, e-mail, e-commerce and social networking sites, including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Skype, Wikipedia, Yahoo, YouTube, and Google.

Overall, Google scored the absolute lowest, deemed "Hostile to Privacy" for its "track history of ignoring privacy concerns. Every corporate announcement involves some new practice involving surveillance."

Among the reasons for the low ranking, PI says that:

Google account holders that regularly use even a few of Google's services must accept that the company retains a large quantity of information about that user, often for an unstated or indefinite length of time, without clear limitation on subsequent use or disclosure, and without an opportunity to delete or withdraw personal data even if the user wishes to terminate the service.

Google maintains records of all search strings and the associated IP-addresses and time stamps for at least 18 to 24 months and does not provide users with an expungement option.

Google has access to additional personal information, including hobbies, employment, address, and phone number, contained within user profiles in Orkut.

Google collects all search results entered through Google Toolbar and identifies all Google Toolbar users with a unique cookie that allows Google to track the user's web movement.

Google fails to follow generally accepted privacy practices such as the OECD Privacy Guidelines and elements of EU data protection law.

Google logs search queries in a manner that makes them personally identifiable but fails to provide users with the ability to edit or otherwise expunge records of their previous searches.

"Sour grapes?"
After releasing the report yesterday, PI today published on its Web site an open letter from PI director Simon Davies to Google CEO Eric Schmidt. In it, Davies accuses the company of calling into question the integrity of the group's findings, saying that Google "representative or representatives" contacted journalists about the study before it was released and "made particular reference to one member of our 70-member international Advisory Board. This man is a current employee of Microsoft."

While Davies doesn't deny that, indeed, one of PI's advisory board members is a Microsoft employee, he stresses that the member "joined our Advisory Board well before he was headhunted by Microsoft" and that "he is a decent, skilled and honorable man who upon his appointment with Microsoft offered us his resignation. We refused to accept it, and he continues to serve on the Board in a private capacity."

Further, Davies vehemently defends the group's independence and integrity, noting that it has campaigned against many company's over privacy, including Microsoft: "[We] publicly supported the EU Commission investigation into Microsoft, that we nominated Microsoft for the US Big Brother Award in 2003, that we awarded Microsoft the "Worst Corporate Invader" award at the 1999 US Big Brother Awards, [and] that we publicly accused Microsoft of subverting its software security ... ."

PI points out that while Microsoft did earn a rating of "Serious Lapses" -- two ranks better than Google, Windows Live Space was deemed a "Substantial Threat." Meanwhile Google's Orkut was not tagged with the worst rating as Google was; rather, it also received "Substantial Threat" status.

"Can I be so bold as to suggest that your company's actions stem from sour grapes that you achieved the lowest ranking amongst the Internet giants?" Davies writes. "We have no specific axe to grind with Google. It is one of many companies demonstrating a poor privacy performance, and in assessing that performance we are acting solely with the intention of raising public awareness."

He goes on to write, "I believe an apology from you is in order, but if you cannot deliver this then I think you should reflect carefully on the actions of your representatives before embarking on what I believe amounts to a smear campaign."

Privacy International's report can be downloaded here [PDF].

Posted by Ted Samson on June 10, 2007 12:10 PM

June 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

NYT: Google seeks antitrust action against Microsoft

It's like deja vu all over again, with the New York Times reporting today that Google has filed a confidential antitrust complaint against Microsoft with the U.S. Department of Justice.

According to the Times, the complaint alleges that the Windows Vista search feature slows down Google's competing Google Desktop Search (GDS) program, discouraging consumers from using its search program. Windows Vista's search feature cannot be disabled, thereby forcing users to forego GDS, or put up with drastically reduced system performance as both search programs index the contents of the hard drive.

The article quotes Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith saying that lawyers and engineers at Microsoft had been working with "both state and federal officials" in recent days to find an accommodation to Google's complaints.

As the battle for consumer dominance shifts from operating systems to Web-based applications, Microsoft and Google have increasingly been pushed into competition with each other. As a result, the companies have increasingly tangled over issues ranging from Google's Book Search feature to competing enterprise search and personal productivity applications.

According to the Times article, Google complained to federal and state prosecutors, claiming that Microsoft was violating the 2002 antitrust settlement against the company, which prohibits Microsoft from designing operating systems that limit consumer choice. That suit, originally brought by Web browser company NetScape, alleged that Microsoft used its operating system monopoly to push NetScape out of the Web browser market by tying Windows and its competing Internet Explorer browser closely together. Microsoft was determined to be a monopoly, but an Appeals Court ruling allowed the company to narrowly escape being broken up. In return, Microsoft agreed to take a number of steps to avoid future anticompetitive behavior, including information sharing with competitors, opening parts of its proprietary source code, unbundling middleware, and loosening its grip on PC manufacturers.

According to sources in the article, including Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the Google complaint, which has not been made public, is eerily similar to NetScape's original compliant. "In concept, if not directly word for word, it is the Microsoft-Netscape situation," Blumenthal is quoted as saying in the Times article.

While the NetScape complaint raised red flags in a pro-competition Clinton Administration Justice Department, Google's alarms about antitrust are getting a very different reception by the Bush Administration this time around, the article notes. That may be due, in part, to high-powered Justice officials with ties to Microsoft, including Assistant Attorney General Thomas O. Barnett, formerly of Vice Chairman of the antitrust division at Covington & Burling, a firm that represented Microsoft in its antitrust case against the government and continues to represent the company.

According to the Times article, Barnett sent a memo to states prosecutors urging them to reject Google's complaint, reiterating arguments that Microsoft made in its defense. The memo "raised eyebrows" among States attorneys general, and may have had the exact opposite effect: many states are now looking closely at Google's complaint and considering action, and the Department of Justice is considering whether to take part in those actions, the Times article says.

Smith, of Microsoft, said he was unaware of the Barnett memo.

Stay tuned...

Posted by Paul Roberts on June 10, 2007 04:23 AM

April 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

MS isn't charging into charger biz

Attention people of Earth: Microsoft is not going into the fuel-cell charger business.

Rumors that Redmond was entering that market started flying Friday, though, after Medis Technologies issued a press release saying it was beginning commercial sales of its Fuel Cell 24/7 Power Pack, and that its first shipment was a set of Microsoft-branded chargers.

The result: Members of the media got a little excited, as they're wont to do, and began to speculate the Redmond was poised to start selling these chargers for its Zune digital music-player line. No one at Microsoft was available for comment on the matter over the weekebd.

Today, though, Microsoft issued a statement saying it only was purchasing a "small amount" of the chargers with the intent of distributing them for free at an upcoming event, according to reports.

So there you have it. Looks like Microsoft is sticking to its roots: operating systems. And business applications. And databases. And search. And video games consoles. And digital music players. But certainly not fuel-cell chargers.

Posted by Ted Samson on April 17, 2007 04:21 PM

March 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Deepfish beta runs dry

Demand for a beta version of Microsoft's new "Deepfish" Web browser for mobile phones appears to have far outstripped the company's limited supply. After unveiling the new software at O'Reilly's eTech conference late Wednesday, and offering a free demo version for download, the company was overwhelmed with requests, according to a post on the Deepfish download Web site. Judging by user feedback comments -- which many aspiring beta applications used to vent at Microsoft for its limited beta program -- the supply of beta versions of Deepfish lasted about 12 hours before being exhausted.

"Please remove the download link if you already know you won't let me download it. It just wasted my time." wrote a visitor to the Deepfish download site who used the name "Shamus"

"Disappointed! ... whats the point in offering a download link if you aren't really going to let me download it?" wondered another visitor using the handle "x-man."

According to Microsoft, Deepfish is different from most mobile browsers now in use because it allows formatting rich Web sites to display as they were intended, rather than forcing them into a single-column format that reformats existing pages by repositioning content to fit the limited screen size. Deepfish users can zoom in or out of a Web site on Deepfish, viewing the layout the way designers intended, the company said.

Deepfish runs on Windows Mobile Smart Phones or Pocket PCs that run Windows Mobile 5.0. So far, Microsoft is keeping mum about whether it will turn Deepfish into a product. In a company Q&A, LiveLabs director Gary Flake said that Deepfish is a prototype technology, and that Microsoft is not announcing specific plans for making the product more widely available.

Judging by comments, users were impressed with the browser's ability to preserve Web page formatting and with the ability to zoom in and out of pages, but also reported that Deepfish needs work - including the ability to save Web page cookies that are used to store login information for password protected Web sites.

Posted by Paul Roberts on March 30, 2007 10:16 AM

January 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

As Vista launches, Allchin exits

Though the plans were first announced in 2005, the day has finally come. Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft's Platform Products and Services Group, is retiring. His departure tomorrow leaves Kevin Johnson in charge of the division responsible for Microsoft's operating systems, at a time of significant transition for the company and its platform.

A graduate of the University of Florida with advanced degrees from Stanford and the Georgia Institute of Technology, Allchin joined Microsoft in 1990, following a stint at networking software vendor Banyan in the 1980s. During his tenure he was responsible for overseeing some of Microsoft's most significant enterprise successes, including Windows XP and the .Net platform.

Allchin's retirement takes effect one day following the official consumer launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft's next-generation client OS. To some, his departure may be seen as a prudent move. Even before it became widely available, Vista fell under heavy criticism from beta testers and developers for failing to deliver on early promises, following repeated shipping delays.

These are Johnson's problems now, and plans are already underway to address many perceived shortcomings in Microsoft's OS releases. A major service pack for Vista is rumored to be in the works for release later this year. And still in the works is Longhorn Server, the much-anticipated upgrade to Microsoft's server OS.

Allchin commented on his time at Microsoft in an e-mail sent to press this afternoon:

Microsoft is an absolutely amazing company - full of such incredible people. In fact, when I came to Microsoft one of the things that struck me the most was just how many smart people there were. I had been around smart people at school and work before, but never so many of them. Not only were they smart though, they had incredible passion for technology, for learning, for improving, and most of all for changing the world using technology to improve people's lives.
What's truly amazing to me is that we are just at the beginning for what technology will be able to do. The next 50 years are going to be much more exciting than the last 50 (and that's saying a lot!) when you consider the potential impact technology advances will have on people and businesses.

Will Microsoft succeed in tightening the reins on its OS group under Johnson's exclusive stewardship? Will it manage to keep Vista and Longhorn Server on-track, or are still more dramatic structural changes necessary within the company? And what of Bill Gates' own forthcoming retirement? Send us your thoughts.

Posted by Neil McAllister on January 30, 2007 02:50 PM

December 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)

MS official denies RSS grab

Microsoft has responded to bloggers' claims it was trying to patent RSS, saying its applications last week for RSS-related patents do not change its commitment to the standards-based format.

InfoWorld-hosted Open Sources wrote:

Just what the world needs--Microsoft to claim control over something they didn't create. I'm not even sure how it makes sense if the context is just the Vista OS...

Microsoft responded in blogs over the Holiday weekend, with Microsoft RSS lead Sean Lyndersay posting in his blog regarding the patent applications (see 1 and 2):

From the beginning we have sought an open and reasonable relationship with the RSS community. As one example, we have published various RSS and Atom extensions under a Creative Commons license. These specifications provide proof of our commitment to offer our contributions to the community and evidence of our efforts to advance the technology. We honestly hope that our work brings benefit to all feed publishers, developers and users, and we've been happy with the response we have received from the community so far.
Finally, as a number of commenters have noted, we are far from the only company to apply for patent protection in this space. Other companies, including Apple and Google, have apparently also applied for patents. Applying for a patent on your innovation is common industry practice, and one which, by incenting and protecting the companies and people involved, encourages everyone to contribute to the community.

Are your concerns hosed down enough for you to rest easy with that Microsoft is just in it for everyone? Talk back to us.

Posted by Mike Barton on December 26, 2006 12:18 PM

December 11, 2006 | Comments: (0)

New Word zero-day reported

Microsoft's Security Response Center (MSRC) is warning users of some versions of Microsoft Word of yet another previously unknown (zero-day) vulnerability that's being exploited on the Internet. Mind you, this is different from the zero-day hole in Word that Microsoft reported last week.

According to a post on Sunday on the MSRC blog, company researchers are investigating a hole in Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003 and Word Viewer 2003. Word 2007 (ie, the new version) isn't impacted.

According to a blog posting by the folks at the SANS Institute Internet Storm Center, AV vendor McAfee first discovered the new exploit, which is being used to install a password-stealing trojan known as PWS-Agent.g. A.

According to MSRC, the attack is being used in "very very limited, targeted attacks," which, as ISC points out, adds an even finer grained category to their usual description of "very limited, targeted attacks," described here by MSRC staffer Christopher Budd.

Given that most security vendors have been saying for some time that most malicious behavior online has shifted from mass-attack worms and viruses to targeted attacks against selected targets, I'm not sure what MSRC hopes to accomplish by pointing this out -- kind of a "don't worry, you're probably not being targeted, unless you are, in which case you're screwed."

It is useful to note that, at least with the previous WOrd Zero Day, users must open the malicious Word document in order to be compromised. Not sure if that's the case here, but it's a good bet. So beware of strangers bearing Word documents!

Posted by Paul Roberts on December 11, 2006 08:08 AM

December 08, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Open XML a one-way standard?

Is Microsoft's Open XML document standard "so complex and so geared towards compatibility with legacy Office compatibility that it could never be implemented as a fully functional file format by any competing personal productivity applications (PPAs) like WordPerfect and OpenOffice"?

That's the question Adobe's Andrew Shebanow revives in his Shebanation blog about Open XML, as he reflects on an October post by IBM open standards "guru" Bob Sutor now that the document standard has been approved.

Shebanow cites a recent article by Microsoft Mac BU's Rick Schaut as cause for his pause. The Schaut post describes "very eloquently why the Mac version of Office won't support the Open XML file format until sometime next year."

This is proof-positive that Sutor's concern/claim is real, writes Shebanow.

From Shaut's article:

[...] a team of 5 developers will implement 25 handlers a week, which means that we'd have all the XML handlers written in 44 weeks. [...] Nevertheless, we've taken a little less than a year to get the converters reading the new file format. We still aren't writing the new file format, we have the RTF side of things to worry about, which is actually more complex than the XML side, and I've completely left out all of the design and coding for the intermediate representation of the file. The intermediate representation, itself, is at least 6 to 8 months worth of work.

Shebanow writes:

Got that? It would take 5 developers a year to do a quarter of the work.
How can competitors afford to make that level of investment? Novell says they will support import and export for Open XML with financial and technical help from Microsoft. Corel says they'll do it too. Guess we'll need to wait and see how successful they'll be at maintaining fidelity and compatibility, though given what Rick has to say, I'm not super confident.

Looks suspicious ... but is this just competitor angst, or is it MS behaving badly?

Posted by Mike Barton on December 8, 2006 11:05 AM

November 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Update: PS3 able to run Office?

Sony's new game console may not just be for gaming, and you might even be able to claim your new "toy" as a business expense, writes InfoWorld Test Center's Ted Samson.

This is thanks to Sony being good enough to make available Open Platform for PlayStation 3, which has allowed Linux enthusiasts to load their new PS3s with Fedora Core 5 OS.

Samson writes:

Intrigued? Well, QJ.net has some instructions on how to go about doing the installation, and videos are popping up on sites like YouTube showing how it's done.
According to QJ.net, once you've put Fedora on your PS3, "you will be able to install any app as long as it has a PPC build of it. That includes most major applications like Mozilla Firefox, VLC player, and more."

Update: ~~Well,~~ So, Codeweavers CrossOver Linux software does run Windows apps on Fedora 5, but not a PS3 with because it runs on a Cell processor..

~~According to one blog entry found in this Google search, Codeweavers works pretty well.~~

But could not virtualization software do the trick? Just not sure if any is done for Cell. According to IBM Research, Cell does virtualization.

Is it possible?

Challenge, or Game in this context, is on...

Posted by Mike Barton on November 21, 2006 04:40 PM

November 02, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Three reasons why Microsoft will put Linux on their desktop

In case you haven't heard, Microsoft is about to ink a deal with Novell to create technology that will allow Windows users to put Novell's Suse Linux on a Windows desktop.

This stunning news out of Redmond, Washington and Waltham, Massachusetts has the gurus of instant analysis scrambling for an explanation.

Well, far be it from InfoWorld not to play the game as well, so here are three possible reasons why Microsoft is doing the deal.

Scenario one: Looking to the future and seeing the proverbial handwriting on the wall, this stops the bleeding of Windows to Linux desktops.

For those companies and individual users that chose Windows with some reluctance but felt Linux still wasn't 100 percent ready for the desktop, they can now choose Windows without the pain and guilt.

Microsoft may also believe it will make for happier and more loyal customers who will not be looking to ditch Windows at the first opportunity.

And for those who would ditch Windows now for Linux, they can have the best of both worlds. Windows may have its detractors and its problems but face it, it is still a powerful OS.

Scenario two: Did the desktop OEMs push Microsoft toward this deal?

More of their customers want Linux and so the PC manufacturers want this technology so they can give them both.

Perhaps, despite the lawsuits of the past, the OEMs make money off Windows and they make zilch, as we used to say, from putting Linux on the desktop.

Scenario three: The most intriguing possibility of all.

Did increasing sales of Apple Macintosh which now has Intel inside and uses OS X which is a form of Unix which is the parent of Linux, have anything to do with this decision.

Stay tuned.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on November 2, 2006 01:05 PM

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