Microsoft is adding a new hotfix option for its SQL Server customers similar to the one it began phasing in for Exchange Server users earlier this year.

Microsoft notified SQL Server users on April 5 of a new option — known as the Incremental Servicing Model — via which they can receive regularly scheduled hotfix updates, allowing them to plan more predictably their maintenance schedules.

Microsoft plans to provide automatic notifications to SQL Server customers when the new cumulative updates are available. Those interested in participating in the Incremental Servicing Model program should sign up via Microsoft's Support page.

SQL Server customers will now receive automatic notifications when the newest Cumulative Updates become available. In order to elect for the update, customers should visit the Microsoft Support Page at Support.Microsoft.com.

According to the SQL team, "Hotfixes are now available through Cumulative Updates, which include all the necessary fixes to date and are scheduled to be released every two months."

In certain critical cases, where SQL Server users "require 'On Demand' hotfixes, when no suitable workaround is available or when impact to customers is critical," Microsoft will still release the hotfixes to customers who meet the "On-Demand" bar, the Softies added.

"Microsoft is committed to ensuring that SQL Server customers can receive both scheduled and on-demand fixes to address a variety of scenarios," company officials reiterated, via an e-mailed statement.

With the introduction of Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft launched a similar hotfix-update mechanism. As the Exchange team explained to me earlier this year:

"With this new model, when we ship a cumulative rollup, it will contain all hotfixes we have done since the last major milestone (read as RTM or last service pack). We can do this with a high level of confidence that we’re not introducing new problems because of our much more automated test system. So, for Exchange 2007, the process will be more controlled, better tested, and easier to keep a server up to date with all known problems fixed. We can confidently tell people just to stay on the latest rollup patch, and they’ll be as up to date as possible without reading through a myriad of documentation on exactly which patches to apply and which to skip over."

Neither of the new Exchange nor the SQL Server hotfix programs is designed to replace traditional service packs.

If you're champing at the bit to build applications that will be able to take advantage of Microsoft's forthcoming Windows Home Server (WHS) product, you might want to download the newly released beta version of the WHS software development kit (SDK).

As Microsoft explains:

"The SDK will enable hobbyist and professional developers to build applications that run on Windows Home Server and extend the functionality of the Windows Home Server Console on home computers, or to build applications that run on a home computer and connect to Windows Home Server."

Microsoft is readying another new Community Technology Preview (CTP) interim test release of WHS, officials said on April 5, and will integrate the WHS SDK with that release, once it is available.

Microsoft released Beta 2 of WHS in February. The final version of WHS is due out in the latter half of 2007.

There has been some conflicting and confusing information circulating as to how Microsoft plans to distribute the product. I asked Microsoft for clarification.

Company officials said to expect the final WHS release to be preloaded on systems/appliances/devices built by ODMs, or original device manufacturers. Microsoft also is considering making a version of the final WHS release available to system builders interested in preloading it on custom-built systems. The WHS product will not be available at retail.

Speaking of Microsoft's unified-communications strategy, former Softie Alec Saunders has an interesting post on how to "avoid becoming (Microsoft) roadkill" in the converging VOIP/conferencing/phone market.

(Saunders spent nine years at Microsoft in a variety of product management and marketing roles, including the initial launch of Microsoft Internet Explorer. He currently is CEO of iotum, a software firm with technologies in the "presence" space.

"Aikido, Retreat or War. What's Your Microsoft Strategy?" asks Saunders. His taxonomy:

* Aikido: use Microsoft's momentum to launch complementary businesses;

* Retreat: build vertical market applications instead of competing head-to-head in the platform space;

* War: bite the bullet and take on the Redmond bull by the horns. A good read for anyone trying to avoid the dancing Microsoft elephant in any sector, not just unified communications.

Cisco CEO John Chambers has thrown down the gauntlet.

At Cisco's Partner Summit in Las Vegas this week, Chambers told the press corps in attendance that he believes Cisco has a three-year lead on Microsoft in the unified communications space.

And, according to TechIQ Magazine's "VAR Guy," who was at the April 4 Chambers press conference, Chambers added fuel to the fire, by claiming: "We’ve never lost a game when we’ve had a three-year lead… It’s a battle we fully intend to win.”

As the VAR Guy notes, promising you are going to bury Microsoft in a market is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. It often takes a challenge to get Microsoft in gear.

Chambers is promising to deliver more of those mom-and-apple-pie things, like "open architecture, simplicity and interoperability" with its Web conferencing, VOIP, wireless, switching and social-networking products.

One of Cisco's secret weapons in its Microsoft battle may be an alliance with Apple, the VAR Guy says.

"Chambers hinted that Cisco is making progress with Apple in terms of unified communications running on Apple iPhones. He downplayed the recent lawsuit over the iPhone name, which has been settled….

"While he didn’t guarantee an Apple-Cisco relationship for unified communications, (Chambers) said 'I’d be surprised if we don’t make progress on several fronts.' However, he thinks the ultimate decision for interoperability rests with Apple."

Microsoft's Business Division is obsessed with unified communications. That's not surprising, given that Microsoft needs to grow the market around Office, since Office already completely dominates the desktop-PC suite market (with more than 90 percent market share).

In a recent interview with News.com, Microsoft Business Division President Jeff Raikes said the amount of R&D investment Microsoft is putting into unified communications and VOIP "is the largest R&D investment beyond what we do in the core of Office" in his business unit.

But is Microsoft obsessing over the right products and technologies to whittle away Cisco's self-proclaimed three-year lead?

Last I heard, Microsoft's next expected release of Longhorn Server was supposed to be Beta 3, expected by testers some time in April.

On April 4, Microsoft did deliver a new Longhorn Server release to testers. But it was yet another Community Technology Preview (CTP) interim test build, not a full-fledged Beta 3.

Longhorn Server Beta 3 is slated to include the Microsoft Windows PowerShell scripting environment, according to company officials. Beta 3 is expected to be the last major test build of Longhorn Server before the product is released to manufacturing.

As reported by the Windows Connected site, the newly minted Longhorn Server CTP is available to a select group of testers via the Microsoft Connect site. Windows Connected identifies the new Longhorn Server build number as 6001-16497-070330-1720.

So is Microsoft still going to drop a public Longhorn Server Beta 3 later this month? Or will it be delayed into next month? Longhorn Server is still due to ship before the end of 2007, Microsoft officials confirmed recently.

Update: Microsoft responded to my inquiry on the new CTP later on April 5. According to Senior Product Manager Helene Snell:

"This CTP is the build that Microsoft will be asking beta customers to
test and evaluate and then let us know if we are ready to ship Beta 3
and has all the features\functionality that customers will see in Beta
3.  The April 2007 CTP is another milestone on the march to Beta 3,
which is still on track for the first half of this year, and it includes
a number of enhancements to existing server roles and features, plus
some UI changes - most notably in the Server Manager tool and the
addition of Powershell."

 here's more on what's new in the latest Longhorn Server CTP on the Windows Server Team blog. 

Another day; another Windows Vista poll. The latest comes from the consumer-survey kingpins at Harris Interactive.

The latest Harris Vista findings: Microsoft has done a great job getting the word out about Windows Vista. But increased awareness isn't translating to an automatic increase in sales. According to the latest survey results, published by Harris on April 4:

"A full 87 percent of those online say they were 'aware' of Vista. Hats off to Microsoft because they certainly have gotten the word out and their marketing machine appears to be running at full throttle. In December of 2006, one month before launch, only 47 percent of those online were aware of Vista's existence. So awareness has skyrocketed since December!"

At the same time, however, as Harris noted:

"In December 2006, 20 percent of those online adults who are aware said they intended to upgrade to Vista within the coming year. The current survey results say that number has not really changed — 12 percent of online adults who are aware say they intended to upgrade."

For its most recent poll, Harris surveyed online 2,223 U.S. adults between March 6 and 14, 2007 — just about six weeks after the release of Windows Vista. I asked the Harris officials whether anyone had sponsored or requested the company to conduct this study. On April 5, a Harris representative said the study was conducted independently and not sponsored by any vendor or other party.

Here are the detailed results of one of Harris' questions:

"Do you intend to switch or upgrade your primary home computer to Windows Vista operating system in the next 12 months?"

Base: Online adults aware of Vista

                                                        March, 2007 %        December, 2006 %         

Yes, I will upgrade to Windows Vista:            12%                    20%

No, I will stay with my current OS:                 67%                    31%

Not sure:                                                        20%                    49%

Note: Percentages may not add up to exactly 100% due to rounding

Source: Harris Interactive

Bottom line: No big surprises, say the Harris folks. Consumers are taking a wait-and-see approach with Vista, Harris said. And given that,"Consumers tend to wait until a few service packs have been released to fix real or perceived problems," the delay in purchasing/upgrading is predictable, Harris officials added.

To see the rest of Harris' findings, check out the rest of the Harris Vista survey results here. Anyone else see anything surprising that I missed?

Now that Microsoft's Office Open XML specification has entered into the official ISO five-month technical review/balloting period, company employees are encouraging Microsoft supporters to lend their support to Microsoft's standardization campaign.

Ecma approved Open XML as a standard in December. Open XML is an alternative to ODF, the Open Document Format, which already is an ISO-approved standard.

Several Microsoft bloggers recently have posted links to an online petition in favor of ISO standardization of OpenXML.

The petition asks customers, partners and other interested parties to register their "full support for the ratification of the Ecma Open XML formats as an international open standard for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations and strongly urge the British Standards Institute to support this Fast Track process."

Am I the only one, in reading Microsoft's rationale for ISO standardization, who finds it ironic that Microsoft is citing "customer choice" and "interoperability" as the motivators for its moves?

Wouldn't it be more genuine (to use another Microsoft buzzword) to admit that Microsoft is seeking standardization for Open XML because there is a growing number of customers — especially government customers — whose purchasing contracts require approved-standards-based technologies?

I feel Dianne Kelley's pain. But I think the idea of suing Microsoft for $5 million because the company's Windows Vista branding is confusing is over the top.

Kelley filed a class action suit against Microsoft, claiming deceptive Vista marketing practices.

"In sum, Microsoft engaged in bait and switch — assuring consumers they were purchasing 'Vista Capable' machines when, in fact, they could obtain only a stripped-down operating system lacking the functionality and features that Microsoft advertised as 'Vista,'" according to the suit, filed March 29.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer quotes Microsoft as saying it did all it could to educate customers, retailers and partners about the distinctions between Vista-Capable and Vista Premium-Ready.

Like many Microsoft watchers, I have found Microsoft's categorization murky. My ZDNet blogging colleague Adrian Kingsley-Hughes says the same.

Can all Vista-Capable machines run Aero Glass? Can some run it? None? I still am not entirely sure. And Microsoft's Web site does little to make that clear.

Microsoft's "Make the Move to Vista" Web site explains "Vista Capable" in the following way:

"A new PC running Windows XP that carries the Windows Vista Capable PC logo can run Windows Vista. All editions of Windows Vista will deliver core experiences such as innovations in organizing and finding information, security, and reliability. All Windows Vista Capable PCs will run these core experiences at a minimum. Some features available in the premium editions of Windows Vista—like the new Windows Aero user experience—may require advanced or additional hardware."

At the very bottom of the page, there's a link to "Footnotes." There, Microsoft introduces into the already muddy picture the concept of the different Windows Vista versions (Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, Ultimate). On a different Microsoft Web page, there is a table comparing the features of the various Vista editions. It's clearer from this page that Vista Home Basic cannot run Aero, won't work on Tablet PCs, doesn't include MeetingSpace, etc. Home Premium includes some of these missing features, but still lacks built-in backup, BitLocker encryption and other features.

Nowhere (that I've found) does Microsoft spell out clearly which versions of Vista will run on Vista Capable machines. Sure, you can argue (as Microsoft has) that it's up to the individual PC makers to make that clear. But why is figuring out which PC is best suited to running which version of Vista such a chore? Isn't there an easier way to help consumers make the right choice?

I think it's fair to ding Microsoft for confusing branding/marketing. But is that a criminal offense? I say it's up to the buyer to beware. If you don't like what you see, buy a Mac or a Linux system. (I figured I'd say it before one of my usual "Buy a Mac" posters beat me to it.)

What do you think? Should Kelley and other potential plaintiffs prevail?

I usually leave patch updates and security warnings to my ZDNet blogging colleague Ryan Naraine. But when Naraine flags an out-of-band update as "super-high priority," it seems like it's worth an extra mention.

The MS07-017 update includes patches for a total of seven animated cursor (.ani) vulnerabilities, three affecting Windows Vista. In addition to Windows Vista, the update applies to Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and Windows Server 2003 SP2.

No doubt there will be other patches out on April 10, the regularly scheduled Microsoft Patch Tuesday. But Windows users shouldn't put off until then what they can (and should) patch today.

Are developers designers? Are designers developers? And who is Microsoft (or any software vendor) to decide?

After getting an earful from the Microsoft programming community over its decision not to make its Expression tools available to Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) subscribers, Microsoft has done an about-face. The company is making Expression Web available starting on April 3 as part of the company's MSDN Premium subscription and will add Expression Blend to the MSDN Premium check-list once that product becomes available (expected in a couple of weeks).

Microsoft isn't planning to make Expression Design or Expression Media available as part of MSDN, however, company officials said.

"This is not a change in who these products are for," said Forest Key, director of product management for Microsoft's design tools. "It's ore about giving developers access to the tools" in case they want to see how they work and how they will dovetail with Visual Studio.

Robert McLaws, president of Interscape Technologies, was one of the first to draw attention publicly to Microsoft's original decision to bar Expression Web from MSDN.

"Whether Microsoft likes it or not, the unfortunate reality is that developers often have to be designers too. And now the 'Jack of all tradesmen' can have the right tools for the job," McLaws posted on April 3.