Microsoft announced on September 24 that it is ready to release to testers both Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate (RC) 0 and Windows Vista Service Pack (SP) 1 beta.

Testers had been expecting the new test builds of both Windows products to debut earlier this month.

Microsoft said on Monday that it is releasing the beta of SP1 to approximately 12,000 preselected testers. Testers are under non-disclosure about the beta build and are not supposed to discuss it publicly, according to Microsoft. (I guess 11,999 testers are under NDA. One doesn’t seem to be.)

The final version of SP1 is slated to ship in the first quarter of 2008.

Microsoft officials said they will release to testers RC0 “within the next 24 hours.” Microsoft also is releasing simultaneously the Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS7) Media Pack Community Technology Preview. This CTP will feature Windows Media Services 2008, which Microsoft says will provide two times scalabilty over Windows Media Services 9.0. The new media pack also can be installed as part of Windows Server Core.

Windows Server 2008 RC0 also incorporates the first test build of Microsoft’s “Viridian” hypervisor in the form of a Community Technology Preview.

Once RC0 is available, it will be able to be downloaded from this Windows Server page. The IIS7 Media Pack CTP will be available for download here.

Microsoft isn’t the only one questioning whether a Google-DoubleClick merger would be good for advertisers and consumers.

During a panel on “The Changing Landscape” at the MiXX 2007 Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) conference in New York on September 24, Yahoo and WPP Plc representatives joined a Microsoft official in voicing their worries about the $3 billion proposed deal.

The panel moderator, New York Times Editor Saul Hansel, asked participating panelists whether the Google-DoubleClick deal should be approved. Representatives from Yahoo, WPP took pains to answer carefully and vaguely, but their concerns still came through.

Michael Walrath, founder and CEO of Right Media, which Yahoo acquired in April, totally avoiding answering Hansel’s question, but made it clear that he wasn’t in favor of it. Yahoo officials previously have indicated they believe the Google-DoubleClick merger deserves government scrutiny.

The U.S. House and Senate and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission are looking into potential market-competition concerns surrounding the deal. Google asked the European Commission to investigate the implications of the deal, as well.

David Moore, Chairman and CEO of 24/7 Real Media, of which WPP completed its acquisition in July, said there shouldn’t be “blanket approval to move forward” for Google and DoubleClick. He said there should be some constraints placed on the pair so they won’t be able to do anything they want.

Karl Siebrecht, president of the Atlas division of aQuantive, the ad powerhouse Microsoft acquired earlier this year, was, not surprisingly, the least reticent to criticize the Google-DoubleClick deal.

Siebrecht reiterated that Microsoft has “concerns around market concentration implications of this merger.” He said Microsoft is responding to FTC requests for information about the Google-DoubleClick deal.

David Rosenblatt, CEO of DoubleClick, who was also on the MiXX panel, quickly responded: “There’s no irony there at all.”

Hansel chimed in, noting that Microsoft was allowed by government regulators to close its $6 billion deal for aQuantive while being a “proven monopolist.” Hansel didn’t mention explicitly Microsoft’s new lobbying efforts around thwarting the Google-DoubleClick deal.

Rosenblatt emphasized that “in terms of data, (DoubleClick’s) customers own all of their data, one hundred percent. Any customer can take their data whenever they want. I find it unlikely any M&A (merger and acquisition) activity would change that. … To believe somehow that a Google-DoubleClick deal would make this market less competitive than is today stretches common sense.”

Hansel followed up with the point that Google often offers for free various services and products for which other vendors charge. He noted that Google could offer ad serving for free and turn it completely into a commodity.

DoubleClick’s Rosenblatt and other panelists noted that ad serving already is basically free and that it is the services and tools surrounding it that are the potentially lucrative business arena for those playing in the online advertising market.

“The issue is one of neutrality,” 24/7 Real Media’s Moore added. “For years, DoubleClick was positioning itself as the Switzerland of the ad business. With the pending (Google) transaction, it’s hard for that to continue to be the case. Google is the new Microsoft, where Microsoft is becoming the nice guy now, which is really a change. So the real issue for the industry is that neutrality is getting harder and harder to find.”

What do you think? Is Microsoft really now Mr. Nice Guy — at least in the online ad space?

The thing that most surprised me about the news coverage regarding Microsoft lobbying to thwart Google’s DoubleClick acquisition is that anyone is surprised.

The UK Guardian got its hands on an e-mail that PR agency Burson-Marsteller has sent out to various UK businesses. According to the Guardian, B-M, on behalf of Microsoft, is seeking support for a new organization — the “Initiative for Competitive Online Marketplaces” — which is gearing up to make a bunch of pronouncements regarding Google, Internet privacy and copyright.

The timing of the anti-Google campaign is seemingly designed to coincide with the U.S. Congress’, U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s and the European Commission’s pending investigations of Google’s $3.1 billion takeover of DoubleClick. Both Microsoft and the No. 2 search vendor, Yahoo, have objected to the deal that would merge the two biggest online advertisers. (In an ironic twist, Microsoft also bid on DoubleClick, but lost, and subsequently acquired advertising bigwig aQuantive for $6 billion.)

I guess folks have forgotton that:

• Microsoft hired lobbying firm Patton Boggs earlier this year to help try to derail the Google-DoubleClick merger. As of September, Microsoft had paid Patton Boggs $40,000.
• Microsoft lobbies in its own interests all the time, using a variety of tactics — from pushing online petitions, to backing other organizations with innocuous-sounding names (“Voices for Innovation,” for instance) — to build what it hopes might look like grassroot support on a variety of issues, including document-format standards and the right to bundle standalone products into Windows.
• On the flip side, Google spent at least $580,000 in the first six months of 2007 to lobby the U.S. government regarding its various telecommunications, commerce and other interests. Just like Microsoft came to understand, Google is slowly learning that it can’t ignore Washington as it grows.

Lobbying isn’t illegal. It’s the trying to pretend you aren’t lobbying when you are that is shoddy.

Master data management will be part of Office 14, a first Community Technology Preview (CTP) of which is due in the first quarter of 2008.

That’s according to a September 19 blog post by Microsoft IT Pro Evangelist “PatricG.”

Master data management is technology that allows for the management of common reference data across disparate IT systems or groups. Microsoft stuck a toe in the MDM space in June 2007 with its acquisition of privately held MDM specialist Stratature. Microsoft said at the time of the acquisition that it planned to withdraw existing Stratature products from the market and instead integrate the Stratature +EDM technology into Office applications and servers.

The first iteration of Stratature’s technology that will be part of Office 14 — most likely a component of the SharePoint Server product, it would seem–  is codenamed “Bulldog,” according to PatricG’s post. Bulldog’s successor is codenamed “Greenwich,” he said, providing no delivery vehicle for that particular release of MDM. Greenwich will add new integration, analytical and transactional capabilities on top of what’s shipped with Bulldog, PatrickG said.

From PatrickG’s blog post:

“Bulldog includes Microsoft process and standards applied to the Stratature code base as well as several important new capabilities. Bulldog will meet these requirements while laying the foundation for the long-term master data management vision at Microsoft. In concert with the product enhancements, we will be building the product ecosystem including sales channels, customer support, partner readiness, demos and training materials.”

PatrickG said Bulldog will be aligned with the Office 14 wave for the CTP, Technology Adoption Program (TAP) and release-to-manufacturing deliverables. He said the CTP is due to go to select customers by Q1 2008.

Microsoft has said next-to-nothing about its plans for Office 14. Back in February 2007, a Microsoft presentation leaked that pegged Office 14 as on target to be shipped in the first half of 2009. When Microsoft told its sales force this summer that Windows 7, the next version of Windows, was unlikely to ship before 2010, I was betting that Office 14 also had been pushed back a year. Given this latest blog post, I’m now wondering  Office 14 will ship ahead of Windows 7.

Any other new Office 14 scuttlebutt out there?

Where is the Windows Vista Service Pack (SP) 1 beta and the Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate (RC) 0 test builds that many testers expected to have in hand by now?

Microsoft isn’t saying anything, other than Microsoft promised to get these builds out “in a few weeks” at the start of this month and that the code is on its way.

(I was pretty sure that the Windows Client team told me “in two weeks,” not “in a few weeks” back on August 29, but OK…)

On the server side of the house, some testers said were expecting to get code last week, given that Microsoft delivered to Technology Adoption Program partners an RC0 build a couple weeks ago. Then it looked like Microsoft was aiming to get Windows Server testers code some time the week of September 17, which is this week. Now it is sounding like Windows Server 2008 RC0 — the first test build that will include a Community Technology Preview of the “Viridian” hypervisor — might be on for next week. I asked for an update (a couple of times), but received no reply.

Update: I see Microsoft publicly confirmed during the Intel Developer Forum that Windows Server RC0 is now tracking for next week.

On the client side, some of the 10,000 to 15,000 estimated Vista SP1 beta testers said they received beta confirmation notes from Microsoft this week, acknowledging that they are going to get the SP code real soon now. (The invites for the SP1 beta went out on August 31.)

Microsoft might release the new Windows client and server test releases simultaneously, or could stagger the new drops. Again, no official word on that.

Windows Vista SP1 is slated to ship in the first quarter of 2008. Microsoft has said it expects to release Windows Server 2008 to manufacturing also in the first quarter of 2008.

Hewlett Packard now has its hands on the Windows Home Server (WHS) update for which it decided to delay its MediaSmart Home Server.

HardwareGeeks.com got Microsoft to confirm that HP now has the WHS patch. The Windows enthusiast site also is reporting that Microsoft is planning an announcement on Tuesday, September 25, about the availability of the WHS update.

At the end of August, Microsoft officials acknowledged they were working on a post-RTM (release-to-manufacturing) WHS update would make the platform more appealing to developers. Microsoft said at that time that it planned to make the update available in a couple of weeks.

HP admitted in late August that it planned to delay its initial WHS shipments in order to incorporate the Microsoft WHS update — leading some to question exactly what was in the update and why it seemed to impact HP more than other WHS vendors. HP’s new official due date for its MediaSmart Server: Holiday season 2007. (Originally, HP was expected to be first out of the WHS gate, shipping MediaSmart Server on September 15.)

Philip Churchill, a Microsoft beta tester and principal with the independent Microsoft Windows Home Server Web site, posted earlier this month a chart listing tentative WHS due dates from various Microsoft partners. Churchill’s chart came from a recent Microsoft presentation at the recent IFA consumer-electronics show in Berlin.

Based on this new data, the only WHS vendor which seems to have pushed back substantially its WHS release as a result of Microsoft’s WHS update is HP. (Note: It’s not clear whether these dates are specific to Europe or not.) The WHS availabilty list:

Medion: October 2007
MaxData: October 2007
Chili Green: October 2007
Fujitsu Siemens: November 2007
Lacie: November 2007
Leo: November 2007
HP: January 2008

I asked HP about the alleged January 2008 date. A spokesperson sent the following statement:

“We have said that the (MediaSmart) server will be available through HP’s U.S. channel partners in time for the holidays. It’s generally true that products are available first in the U.S. and then in the rest of the World.”

I wonder whether the other WHS vendors decided against including the Microsoft WHS update in their initial releases and, instead, expect customers to download WHS patches themselves. Perhaps Microsoft will share more specifics next week….

Microsoft has used all kinds of excuses for not providing access to the server communications protocols that other vendors have said they needed to make their products interoperable with Windows Server.

We’ve heard it all: Documenting these protocols would require time (like years…). Microsoft would be harmed by having to make public its intellectual property. A fair pricing scheme needed to be determined. Making public the protocols would be redundant, as Microsoft already is providing other vendors with the required interop information via one-on-one licensing and interop deals.

Now that the Court of First Instance has overturned Microsoft’s appeal of the European Union’s antitrust case, Microsoft is finally going to have to deliver all required protocols and documentation for a price deemed reasonable. But who cares, at this point?

Samba and … Samba.

That point comes across loud in clear in a podcast on Groklaw with Jeremy Allison, co-author of Samba; Volker Lendecke, a member of the Samba team; Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe; and Carlo Piana, the lawyer for Samba and FSF.

Greve noted that by the time of the September 17 Court decision, Microsoft had “bought out” most of the companies who originally wanted the protocol information, specifically Novell, Sun and the Computer and Communications Information Association (which represented a number of Microsoft’s rivals). As a result, the only vendor who has been advocating actively for access to Microsoft’s protocols is Samba.

This is a bit deceptive, however, as Samba is doing implementations on behalf of a number of vendors. Here’s Allison from the Groklaw interview:

“So the interesting thing… (Microsoft General Counsel) Brad Smith gave a statement just after the judgment was announced, where he talked about how the industry had changed and Microsoft was doing deals with Sun. Sun had now become a Windows OEM. They had the Novell deal, et cetera. What he didn’t say was that both Sun and Novell, their workgroup server implementation is Samba (laughter) which is being explicitly excluded from the agreements that they’ve done with Novell. (laughter) And IBM’s workgroup server implementation is Samba, and Apple’s workgroup server implementation is Samba, and… y’know. You go into Fry’s Electronics in the US and any sub-$5,000 NAS box you will find in the place is Samba. So essentially, anyone who actually really competes with them has been excluded from these agreements.”

And the idea that Microsoft could simply extend its existing Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (MCPP) to provide Samba with the required interoperability protocols and documentation is a sham, too, Allison said.

“(I)f you look at the agreement that Microsoft had done with companieslike Novell, and probably Xandros and Linspire — I’ve only seen the Novell agreement, I haven’t seen the Xandros or Linspire ones, the Novell ones are public by the way — you will find that they specifically exclude what Microsoft call in their legal documents “clone products”, which I think they include Samba among. So yeah, there’s this whole theory that they’re trying to set up that Samba is a clone of Windows and therefore is not available for protection.

“The interesting thing about the licensing is that I think what Microsoft will try and do… I believe this might have been what some of the discussions with the Commission have already been about is that they’re trying to say ‘look, we have a licensing programme already that we implemented in the US for the Department of Justice case” and that’s the MCPP, Microsoft Communications Protocol Program licensing program, and what they were trying to do is to say “Well, why don’t we just extend that to cover the server-to-server stuff and then we’ll adopt that in the EU and let’s settle the case.”‘ The problem with the MCPP is that it’s an abject failure in that if you look at the companies that are licensed under that program, and the license terms are explicitly designed to exclude free software, so they’re designed so there’s a per-royalty basis, there’s a time limit on the implementation’s validity - I think it’s about five years - there’s royalties, there’s per-seat licenses. There’s all sorts of methods to make this unusable in a free software implementation.”

The rest of the Groklaw podcast and transcript are definitely worth a read.

So, yes, while I did say I think Microsoft has changed some of its monopolistic ways, I would be the first to admit it has not changed them all. Microsoft’s stall tactics and word games around providing interoperability information is a case in point.

SQL Server 2008 isn’t set to be released to manufacturing until the second quarter of next year. But Microsoft already is taking aim at Oracle with its forthcoming release.

Microsoft officials announced on September 19 that they have no plans to increase the price of SQL Server 2008 beyond what the company already charges for SQL Server 2005. Microsoft execs also announced that, starting today, customers who migrate from Oracle to SQL Server will get a 50 percent discount on the price of SQL Server Enterprise Edition or 25 percent off the price of Standard Edition. However, both discounts are available only when users sign up for Software Assurance, Microsoft’s annuity volume-licensing plan.

Microsoft made its SQL Server announcements at the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) Community Summit in Denver. More specifics on the Oracle pricing promotion will be provided on Microsoft’s SQL Server Migration page.

This past spring, Microsoft held a contest to entice developers to build Oracle-Office mash-ups. Microsoft also created earlier this year a new user consortium designed to work with joint Oracle-Microsoft customers.

In other database-related news, Microsoft also announced on September 19 that its Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 product will be released to manufacturing this week.

PerformancePoint is Microsoft’s latest business-scorecarding application and a key component of its business-intelligence line-up. PerformancePoint provides users with monitoring, analysis and forecasting/budgeting functionality. PerformancePoint builds on top of SQL Server and uses Office as its user interface. PerformancePoint integrates with SQL Server Reporting Services, SharePoint Services and SharePoint Server, officials said. It costs $20,000 per server, plus $195 per Client Access License (CAL), and $30,000 per Internet connector.

Microsoft officials said more than 10,000 customers kicked PerformancePoint 2007’s tires as part of the Community Technology Preview (CTP) test process.

Officials declined to discuss how Microsoft plans to add a services component to PerformancePoint in the future. But earlier this year, Microsoft officials said that Microsoft is developing a managed business-intelligence bundle that will include Microsoft-hosted versions of SQL Server and PerformancePoint. Still no date so far on when Microsoft plans to make that hosted BI offering available, however.

It sounded too good to be true. And it turns out it was.

A report last week that Microsoft had sold 70 million copies of Office 2007 since the product was released to manufacturing turned out to be wrong. Officials with Microsoft France allegedly told press last week that Microsoft had sold 70 million copies of Office 2007 since Microsoft made the product available at the end of 2006.

I asked Microsoft whether that number — which seemed awfully high, given that Windows Vista just hit the 60-million-copies-sold mark in July — was accurate. Last week, officials declined to comment on Office 2007 sales. But in responding to IBM’s unveiling of a new Microsoft Office competitor known as IBM Lotus Symphony, Microsoft shed more light on that 70 million figure.

In response to IBM’s September 18 announcement, Microsoft released the following comment from Jacob Jaffe, Director of Microsoft Office.

“Customers continue to tell us that our solutions deliver the ease of use, reliability and security that they need.  This is validated by the strong adoption and usage seen by Microsoft Office having sold more than 71 million licenses in just the last Microsoft fiscal year. Our long history in meeting the complex needs of enterprise customers, a partner ecosystem that has grown 43% on the Office platform since last year and our current and future investments in the software + services arena will deliver even more flexibility to customers.”

At the Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting at the end of July, Microsoft Business President Jeff Raikes told attendees that Microsoft had sold 70 million licenses of all versions of Office during fiscal 2007, the Microsoft spokesperson further elaborated this week.

What percentage of the 70 million copies sold between July 1, 2006, and June 30, 2007, were Office 2007? I’d be a good percent of them were, but Microsoft won’t comment….

Speaking of Office, Microsoft has shipped Service Pack (SP) 3 for Office 2003. The latest SP disables “Fast Save” for security reasons, according to Microsoft.

IBM’s September 18 unveiling of its IBM Lotus Symphony desktop-productivity suite — yet another Open Document Format (ODF) alternative to Microsoft Office — got me thinking about when and whether too many choices yield confusion.

IBM Lotus Symphony is another OpenOffice.org variant. It is free and available for immediate download for both Windows and Linux desktops.

IBM’s name may give this alternative to Microsoft Office more corporate oomph than the many Office competitors that have come and gone over the years. None of these Microsoft alternatives have managed to make any kind of real dent in Microsoft’s 90-plus-percent marketshare in desktop office suites.

But if customers decide they want an ODF-based productivity suite, IBM isn’t the only option. Sun is still selling StarOffice. Google is hawking its ODF-based Google Apps Premiere Edition (GAPE) offering — now with a Google PowerPoint killer.  Google also is offering StarOffice for download as part of its Google Pack. (Instead of charging the $70 per copy that Sun has levied for StarOffice, Google made StarOffice available for free.)

On the plus side, IBM has set itself up nicely in case Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) doesn’t make it through the standards gauntlet early next year. For government customers and others who are required to purchase “open-standards-based” software, IBM Lotus Symphony will fit the bill.

Anyone out there see IBM’s new Office alternative as offering things other ODF suites don’t? Do you think IBM’s Office competitor will make more inroads than others — and if so, why?