All About Microsoft

April 11th, 2008

Former Softie getting the old band back together?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 11:58 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Web 2.0, Utility/cloud computing

Tags: Cloud Computing, Microsoft Corp., EMC Corp., Smart Desktop, Storage, Hardware, Mary Jo Foley

Former Microsoft platforms chief — who, these days, is heading up cloud computing at EMC — might be trying to get at least some of the old Microsoft band back together again.

According to a few different sources who asked not to be named, Maritz has hired Charles Fitzgerald, Microsoft’s former head of Platform Strategy, to work at Smart Desktop, a division of Martiz’s Pi Corp.

Fitzgerald resigned from Microsoft in January 2008 and neither Microsoft nor Fitzgerald himself would comment on where he was going.

(I tried contacting Smart Desktop to see if Fitzgerald was hired, to no avail. I also tried e-mailing Fitzgerald, but so far, no reply.)

Maritz sold his personal-information-management startup, Pi, to EMC on February 21. As part of the transaction, Pi became an indepenent subsidiary of EMC, and Maritz became general manager of EMC’s cloud computing division, reporting directly to EMC CEO Joe Tucci.

Smart Desktop, according to its Web site, “is a pioneer in intelligent information management for the Microsoft Windows desktop. Smart Desktop’s patent pending machine intelligence technology automatically organizes the resources you access by associating them with the projects, clients, or customers you work with on a daily basis.”

With development headquarters in Bangalore, India, Pi is set “to deliver products that will allow users to create, repurpose, store, share and access personal information in novel ways, taking advantage of the ubiquity of computing power and a new interconnected world,” according to its Web site.

Wonder if any other former Softies will resurface at Pi/EMC, going head-to-head with Microsoft….

April 11th, 2008

Reports of Windows’ demise are greatly exaggerated

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 9:43 am

Categories: Vista, Windows client, Windows Live, Corporate strategy, App Compatibility, Web 2.0, Channel, System builders, OEMs, Resellers, Virtualization, Windows 7

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Mary Jo Foley

I was planning to avoid posting about Gartner’s “Windows will collapse under its own weight” presentation from earlier this week because I felt it was a bunch of hype that didn’t provide any new insights or conclusions.

But given how many others are riffing — and riffing crazily — on Gartner’s findings, I’ve decided to throw my two cents in.

It’s not news that Windows is huge and unwieldy. Many (probably most) of Microsoft’s own Windows developers would agree with that premise. But to suggest that Microsoft is burying its head in the sand and hoping its problems just go away is ridiculous. And to pretend that online advertising revenues will be Redmond’s bail-out money for its Windows/Office franchises any time soon is a joke.

Some points to ponder:

* Windows currently contributes one-third of Microsoft’s revenues and two-thirds of its profits, I’ve heard company officials claim. Windows is installed on more than 90 percent of consumer and business desktops combined. That market share isn’t going to disappear overnight, no matter how much Web 2.0 pundits and online-services vendors want that to happen.

* Windows 7, from all accounts, is going to be a minor upgrade to Vista. It is not going to be the start-from-scratch, slimmed-down operating system that many believe Microsoft is building in a back room as a “Plan B.” Singularity, the Microsoft Research microkernel OS, also is not that brand new Microsoft operating system. However, I do believe Singularity is the core of what ultimately will become a brand-new distributed OS platform from Microsoft. Unlike Gartner, I’m not going to pick a date out of a hat (by 2011!) and claim that’s when such a platform will be announced.

* As has been reported previously, Windows 7 is likely to include a feature that, at least at one point, was called the “Component Delivery System” which is expected to allow users to install the pieces of Windows that they want and need in a more user-configurable way. This may not be identical to the modularized role structure offered in Windows Server 2008, but it is similar in its intention. This should help, to some extent, with Windows’ bloat — as should Microsoft’s expected move to use Windows Live to deliver non-core pieces of functionality to users.

* Windows 7 also is likely to include some kind of virtualization layer that will help ease backward compatibility, I’ve heard from various sources. Microsoft isn’t likely to a port of Hyper-V to Windows client. But it could take the form of a virtualization service like SoftGrid (Microsoft’s application virtualization offering) and/or hosted desktop virtualization (the new name/positioning for Microsoft Terminal Server, I hear).

Bottom line: Windows, as it exists today, is untenable. I agree with Gartner on that one point. Windows’ internal dependencies need to be reduced; it needs services hooks to make delivery of new features less cumbersome; and it needs a way to improve compatibility of the growing number of legacy drivers and applications. From what I hear, Microsoft is working to address all of these issues.

Microsoft’s continued unwillingness to talk Windows 7 and Windows futures shouldn’t be confused with a lack of plans for how to keep Windows and its successor(s) alive. I think there’s still a lot more fight left in Microsoft than folks seem to realize. And Windows is going to be a key part of Microsoft’s future arsenal, not just a remnant of its monopolistic past.

What do you think?

April 10th, 2008

What if News Corp., MSN and Yahoo were a separate company?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 7:48 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Google, Advertising, Yahoo

Tags: MSN, Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft Corp., News Corp., Business Structures, Mergers & Acquisitions, Corporate Law, Entrepreneurship, Financial Accounting, Finance

For the first time since Microsoft announced its intentions to buy Yahoo, I see one way the coupling might make (a tiny bit of) sense.

As of late yesterday (April 9), Yahoo is now rumored to be contemplating a merger with AOL (talk about the ultimate anti-Microsoft poison pill!). And Microsoft is said to be talking to News Corp. about going in together on the Yahoo acquisition bid. My ZDNet blogging colleague Larry Dignan has all the latest gory details in the tit-for-tat Microsoft-Yahoo saga.

Of all these leaks and rumors, the one that’s most intriguing to me is the possible Microsoft-News Corp. tie-up. What if the pair does manage to buy Yahoo — and then decides to create some kind of independent subsidiary that would combine the assets of Yahoo, MSN and MySpace?

It wasn’t that long ago that Silicon Alley Insider Henry Blodget was suggesting that a Microsoft-Yahoo partnership might work if the pair spun it off. From Blodgett last May:

“If Microsoft spun out Yahoo-MSN, the company would be able to recruit the best talent, run it’s own show, and, if necessary, compete with Microsoft (which it would never be able to do freely as a division–this is the primary reason an outright acquisition would be a disaster). The company could have an exclusive technology deal with Microsoft and get first crack at all partnerships. Most importantly, existing Microsoft and Yahoo shareholders would benefit from all the upside–because they would be the combined company’s single largest shareholders.”

Some (including Blodget) have argued that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer & Co. would never agree to such an arrangement. Just look at how they fought the Department of Justice’s suggestion that they cleave Microsoft into a Windows company and an “everything else” company back in the 90s, they doubters claim.

But I’d argue that Microsoft in 2008 might be more amenable to spinning off a subsidiary in the name of maintaining the people and the more entrepreneurial culture. Look what happened last year with Bungie. Sure, the Bungie (Halo) folks had to practically mutiny to get themselves unhitched from Microsoft, but they did it. And a number of teams in the Microsoft Entertainment and Devices division have been acting closer to independent subsidiaries than part of the Redmond juggernaut. (Think Xbox, Zune, Pink, etc.)

Suspending all the regulatory questions for the moment, do you think a Microsoft-Yahoo-MySpace combo would work as an independent subsidiary or separate company, bankrolled by Microsoft and News Corp.?

April 9th, 2008

Microsoft-Yahoo-Google: The vicious antitrust circle

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 4:08 pm

Categories: Corporate strategy, Legal, Google, Yahoo

Tags: Google Inc., Antitrust, Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft Corp., Barron, Corporate Law, Security, Business Operations, Mary Jo Foley

Within minutes of Yahoo announcing it was going to do an AdSense for Search deal with Google, Microsoft began firing the antitrust warning shots.

It took about 15 minutes after I saw the Yahoo press release before I got an e-mail from the Microsoft camp reminding me that any kind of Google-Yahoo partnership would be frowned upon by the authorities.

(Microsoft must have been saving up this list for a rainy day — just in case Google actually made motions to bail out Yahoo. And remember: In Seattle, at least for nine months a year, almost every day is a rainy day. Here are the excerpts Microsoft sent me:

Approval Unlikely For Google-Yahoo Pact: Experts
Competition Law 360, February, 4, 2008

“Google and Yahoo really cannot form an alliance — that is the whole purpose of antitrust law — to prevent the biggest competitors in the market from aligning to the detriment of consumers. If the question is whether Google and Yahoo can collectively set the rates of online advertising, that is a complete no-no under antitrust law, That sounds a lot like blanket price-fixing, which is per se illegal under Section One. That is the simplest of all cases.” — Marc Edelman, Professor (Antitrust), New York Law School

“It would be seen as worse than the Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo, which at least can be viewed as No. 2 plus No. 3 to compete more successfully against No. 1. A Google acquisition of Yahoo would merely entrench Google in a dominant position.” — Albert Foer, American Antitrust Institute

The Perils of a Google-Yahoo Blocking Move
The Wall Street Journal Deal Journal, Matthew Karnitschnig, February 8, 2008

If Jerry Yang is seriously considering cutting some kind of deal with Google to stave off Microsoft, he’d better make sure he’s got a good stable of lawyers.

“Google has more than 50% of the search advertising market,” says Gary Miller, a corporate attorney with Eckert Seamans in Philadelphia. “I can’t see the regulators allowing someone with 50% to take over the No. 2 or No. 3. It’s a non-starter.” — Gary Miller, Eckert Seamans, Corporate Attorney

Yahoo weighs outsourcing search ads to Google
San Francisco Chronicle, Verne Kopytoff, February 9, 2008

Antitrust concerns also swirl around any Yahoo-Google partnership. Regulators would think twice about allowing Google, the most popular search engine, to add to its already sizable lead in the search advertising market.

“I think it would definitely raise regulatory concerns,” said Richard Idell, an attorney with Idell & Seitel, a San Francisco law firm. “You would have this one consolidated entity that is controlling the vast majority of the market share.” — Richard Idell, Idell & Seitel, attorney

Yahoo Expected to Reject Microsoft���s Takeover Bid
New York Times, Andrew Ross Sorkin and Miguel Helft, February 10, 2008

Legal analysts said the board’s deliberations were complicated by the fact that both of its most talked-about options could face antitrust objections. Google has already raised potential antitrust issues about a Microsoft-Yahoo tie-up. A Google-Yahoo partnership in search advertising could have “even bigger antitrust implications,” — Carl Tobias, law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia

Yahoo Considers Playing a Google Defense
The Wall Street Journal, Kevin J. Delaney and Matthew Karnitschnig, February 9, 2008

But antitrust experts say even such a pact with Google would likely raise red flags with regulators because of Google’s and Yahoo’s large shares of the Web-search and search-advertising markets.

Yahoo looks to raise its game in the UK
Media Week, By Andrew McCormick, April 1, 2008

“The Microsoft bid for Yahoo is about creating a viable competitor to Google. On this basis, we don’t have a problem with the proposed takeover. There has been some talk of Yahoo seeking to see off the bid by outsourcing its search to Google - we would most definitely have a problem with this.” –Nigel Gwilliam, Head of Digital at the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising

Would The FTC Block A Google Deal With Yahoo?
Barron’s, Eric Savitz, February 7, 2008

Meanwhile, investors may be overlooking the potential regulatory scrutiny Yahoo would get from an oft-cited rescue strategy: outsourcing search to Google (GOOG). In a research note this morning, UBS analyst Heather Bellini summarizes a conference call she hosted yesterday with Glenn Manishin, a litigation attorney and partner and the law firm Duane Morris.

Manishin notes that the Federal Trade Commission has the authority to review any agreement, even if it does not involve M&A. And his view, according to Bellini, is that “such a deal probably would not be approved because of Google’s existing very significant search share.” She writes that Manishin believes “an agreement between Yahoo and Google would be much more problematic than a deal between Yahoo and Microsoft.”– Heather Bellini, UBS analyst and Glenn Manishin, Duane Morris, litigation attorney and partner

Yahoo’s last stand
Financial Times Lex Column, February 10, 2008

Yahoo could threaten to outsource its search advertising to Google to boost profitability. Such an agreement would put the wind up Microsoft, potentially forcing it to raise its bid. The trouble is, if Yahoo thinks that being bought by Microsoft has a serious anti-trust risk, such a deal with Google looks even more tenuous.

Yahoo Board to Determine Fate Of Company Today
Techcrunch, Michael Arrington, February 8, 2008

“…There is also the strong likelihood that any deal reached between Yahoo and Google would be rejected by U.S. regulatory authorities.

Obviously, there are no mentions in the citations from Microsoft of authorities rejecting a Yahoo-Microsoft tie-up… which you can bet Google (and probably Yahoo) would do everything in their power to make sure happened.

Is a Microsoft-Yahoo merger any more/less potentially anti-competitive than a Yahoo-Google outsourcing partnership?

April 9th, 2008

Yahoo’s strategy: Torpedo the Microsoft deal or up the offer?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 1:34 pm

Categories: Windows Live, Corporate strategy, Windows Mobile, Google, Advertising, Facebook, Yahoo

Tags: Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft Corp., Telephony, Search, Mergers & Acquisitions, Marketing Research, Strategy, Networking, Investment, Finance

There are two ways to look at Yahoo’s latest move in the Microsoft-Yahoo chess game: Yahoo is either trying to torpedo the deal or trying to force Microsoft to rush into it by upping its offer.

Yahoo announced on April 9 “that it will begin a limited test of Google Inc.’s AdSense for Search service, which will deliver relevant Google ads alongside Yahoo!’s own search results. The test will apply only to traffic from yahoo.com in the U.S. and will not include Yahoo!’s extended network of affiliate or premium publisher partners. The test is expected to last up to two weeks and will be limited to no more than 3% of Yahoo! search queries.”

Update: Microsoft’s response to Yahoo’s latest plan, courtesy of Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith:

“Any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google’s hands. This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo! We will assess closely all of our options. Our proposal remains the only alternative put forward that offers Yahoo! shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers.”

I’m really feeling the love! Microsoft and Yahoo sure are going to make great allies, if Microsoft’s deal ever is consummated…Not.

Since Microsoft announced its bid for Yahoo in late January, Yahoo has done as much as possible to make itself an unattractive marriage partner. It layed off a bunch of employees, including some seemingly desirable developers. It gave those remaining very generous golden parachutes. It announced that it was backing more “open” protocols and interfaces in building out its search ecosystem. (More specifics on that one still to come, but I’d bet open-source licensing will be key here) . It joined OpenSocial, a Google-backed alliance to fight Facebook, a Microsoft partner.

This week, Yahoo announced it was buying a Web analytics company (Microsoft is building out its adCenter analytics, a k a “Gatineau,” software). Last week, Yahoo bought a stake in Vlingo, a company that provides voice recognition for mobile phones (Microsoft bought TellMe a couple of years ago to provide the same exact service.)

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said earlier this week he isn’t opposed to an acquisition by Microsoft — if Microsoft ups its offer. But Yang also has made no bones about the fact that he is vehemently against Microsoft taking over Yahoo.

So what’s really going on here?

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I still think Microsoft should take all these Yahoo moves as a sign that its initial plan to buy Yahoo was a bad one, and walk away. I wonder would happen to Yahoo, at this point, if Microsoft did withdraw its offer to buy the company… I doubt it would be a positive outcome. And I bet Google would be thanking Microsoft (privately) for weakening the only search rival it currently has.

Your two cents?

April 9th, 2008

Microsoft delivers first commercial version of healthcare-info system

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 9:53 am

Categories: Windows Live, Corporate strategy, Web 2.0, Healthcare

Tags: Patient, Health Care, Microsoft Corp., Amalga, Vertical Industries, Benefits, Healthcare, Enterprise Software, Software, Human Resources

Amalga, the product formerly known as Azyxxi (wow, try saying that ten times fast), is finally out as a commercial product.

On April 9, Microsoft announced that its healthcare-information-system product — which has been used for more than 10 years by MedStar Health System, the organization from which Microsoft bought Azyxxi a couple years ago — is now available broadly to other customers.

Customers for this product, a company spokesman reiterated, are “large health organizations - any variety of hospital, health system  - with existing health information systems.” Amalga is meant to integrate with existing health-record software and systems and to help the disparate patient information sources integrate with one another.

For now, there is no direct connection between Amalga and HealthVault, Microsoft’s patient-information software/service combo, a beta of which Microsoft fielded last October. That said, it sounds like something is in the works. From the aformentioned Microsoft spokesman:

“There is an Amalga-HealthVault patient portal pilot underway where information from Amalga can be pulled into a patient’s HealthVault record. Microsoft recognizes that healthcare is a complex problem that will require solutions both within complex internal hospital systems (Amalga) and within the complex external healthcare ecosystem (HealthVault) and the need to integrate the two. Stay tuned for future developments on that front.”

Healthcare is one of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s top investment areas, in terms of his three-plus year plan for diversifying Microsoft’s revenue base.

April 9th, 2008

Microsoft 2.0: Pre-order and save five percent more

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 9:04 am

Categories: Housekeeping, Corporate strategy

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Blogging, Operating Systems, Software, Internet, Mary Jo Foley

Just after Microsoft’s three-week ultimatum to Yahoo is up, my book about Microsoft’s future (Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post Gates Era) should be out.

I’ve tried to keep the book promotion to a minimum on this blog. But in the name of saving money, I wanted to mention that by pre-ordering the book via Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com, you can save five percent more on top of the already discounted pre-order price. (The offer is good through May 12, 2008, which is the official launch date for this title.)

Because this is a book about Microsoft’s future and not Microsoft’s past, I’ll be providing updates to what’s in the print version via a separate Microsoft 2.0 book site that I’m building out now. (Stay tuned for more on that.) That way, as the Yahoo-Microsoft saga continues to evolve; the company begins to roll out some of its secret (and not-so-secret) services; and Windows 7, Pink/eLive and other new business and consumer initiatives covered in the book begin to materialize, Microsoft 2.0 will “live” on.

If you’ve already bought your copy, thanks. I hope I’ll have the opportunity to sign it for you at a Microsoft show or other event later this year.

April 9th, 2008

Why business users should grab a copy of Microsoft’s new robotics toolkit

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:00 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Development tools, Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas), .Net Framework, Robotics, Multicore/distributed computing

Tags: Robotics, Microsoft Corp., Robotics Toolkit, CCR, Robots, Team Management, Emerging Technologies, Management, Mary Jo Foley

If you’re a business user who thinks Aibos and sumo robots are fun and cute but irrelevant to the enterprise-software world, read on.

On April 9, Microsoft is delivering a first test release of the third iteration of its robotics toolkit, Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008. The final version of the Windows-based development environment is aimed at academics, hobbyists and other programmers who want to write robotic programs, is due by the end of this year.

There have been more than 200,000 downloads of the current version (1.5) of the Microsoft Robotics Studio toolkit, said Tandy Trower, General Manager of Microsoft’s Robotics Group. And more than a few of these have been from companies like SAP, Siemens and MySpace. These companies aren’t building robots; they’re interested in some of the other elements in the guts of the robotics toolkit, Trower said.

“We’re seeing interested in the enterprise space,” Trower said, “for mail handling, financial trading, scientific modeling” and other business applications.

Businesses have discovered that the Microsoft Robotics Studio includes technology that is suited for programming multicore, distributed systems. Specifically, businesses are quite interested in the concurrency and coordination (CCR) and decentralized software services (DSS) runtimes that are currently embedded in the robotics toolkit, Trower said. These runtimes are part of the evolving multicore/distributed programming model into which Microsoft and other tech vendors starting to plow lots of money and development work.

Trower’s team has improved the distributed computational capabilities of the forthcoming version of the toolkit, he said, by building in support for distributed language integrated queries (LINQ), “which reduces network utilization and simplifies service authoring,” according to Microsoft’s April 9 press release.

“In the Microsoft Robotics Studio, you see the new programming model we are creating at Microsoft,” Trower said.

The developer division at Microsoft is in the process of integrating the CCR library into the parallel frameworks it is devising (but not specifically into the Parallel FX parallel extensions to the .Net Framework), Trower said. Ultimately, Microsoft is planning to make CCR part of Visual Studio itself and possibly even part of the Common Language Runtime (CLR), he said. Microsoft’s Mobile and Embedded teams are planning on integrating CCR and DSS into their own toolkits, as well, Trower said.

MySpace already uses CCR to help program across its own distributed network, Trower said. Does that mean Microsoft’s own Web 2.0/cloud-computing teams are using these technologies, as well?

“We’re working with cloud-based services under (Chief Software Architect Ray) Ozzie and other teams inside Microsoft,” Trower said. “Half our time these days is in these (internal) integration efforts. We are talking to Microsoft about integrating into their (services) platforms.”

Trower said he was not at liberty to divulge more specifics now, but he said we’ll “hear more about that in the coming months.”

April 9th, 2008

Red Dog: Yet another unannounced Microsoft cloud service

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 4:52 am

Categories: Windows Live, Database, SQL Server, Corporate strategy, Web 2.0, Virtualization, Google, Utility/cloud computing

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Tools & Techniques, Team Management, Web Services, Application Servers, Middleware, Enterprise Software, Management, Software, Mary Jo Foley

In the Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie regime of “announce no service before it’s done,” there have been precious few cloud-computing announcements from Microsoft.

That doesn’t mean Microsoft is sitting on its software laurels, just waiting for the clouds to pass, however. There are a bunch of still-unannounced Microsoft services in the works from business units all over the company.

One of these, which the LiveSide.Net guys described as a “cloud utility platform,” is code-named “Red Dog.” According to the LiveSiders, Red Dog, or RD for short, is a project coming out of Amitabh Srivasta’s Cloud Infrastructure Services (CIS) team — one of the four main Microsoft groups charged with hosting, developing and maintaining the various services Redmond churns out.

Unlike other services Microsoft has announced so far, RD is built on a “virtualized computational substrate,” according to a help-wanted description cited by the LiveSiders. RD will be “one of the lowest levels of the services software hardware/stack,” the job posting said.

The LiveSiders posit that RD might be what Microsoft has up its sleeve to compete with Google App Engine. I am not as sure. I believe Microsoft is working on a hosted app platform for developers, with BizTalk Services and SQL Server Data Services (SSDS) at its heart. In fact, I‘ve heard the codename “Zurich” attached to this Google-App-Engine competitor. But are Red Dog and Zurich one and the same? I think they are different, and all part of the big Microsoft services plan in the sky.

April 8th, 2008

Microsoft releases public Beta 1 of Stirling security bundle

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 2:18 pm

Categories: SharePoint Server, Management tools, System Center, Exchange Server, Security

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Stirling Beta, Security, Servers, Hardware, Mary Jo Foley

On April 8, Microsoft made available to any and all interested testers a public beta of “Stirling,” a bundle of several of next-generation versions of its security and management wares.

The elements of Stirling include Forefront Client Security, Forefront Security for Exchange Server, Forefront Security for SharePoint and the next generation of Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA Server) — which Microsoft is renaming Forefront Threat Management Gateway — and a unified management console.

The final release of Stirling is slated for the first half of 2009, the Softies reiterated on Tuesday.

Microsoft has been privately testing Stirling over the last few months. The public Stirling beta is downloadable from the Microsoft site and/or is available in prson at the Microsoft booth at the RSA Conference in San Francisco this week.