May 13th, 2008
Microsoft to raise Windows Small Business Server price 80 percent
When Microsoft starts shipping its Windows Small Business Server 2008 product later this year, its price will be substantially higher — as much as 80 percent — than the current version of Small Business Server.
Surprisingly, some testers and at least one market researcher don’t seem fazed by the change. While base prices are higher, users are going to get more functionality, performance and product with the new release, they said.
Microsoft shared pricing and licensing information for its forthcoming Small Business Server (SBS) and new mid-size Essential Business Server (EBS) products on May 13. The company also announced immediate availability of a public preview test build of EBS (formerly codenamed “Centro”). A public test build of SBS 2008 (formerly codenamed “Cougar”) is due out by the end of May. Microsoft officials have said both of these new serers will ship before the end of calendar 2008.
Researchers at International Data Corp. note that an apples-to-apples pricing comparison between Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 (the most recently delivered SBS release) and SBS 2008 are tough because the new product includes more SKUs and a variety of client-access-license (CAL) options. (The new pricing and licensing for Microsoft’s products was complex enough for IDC to issue on May 13 a non-Microsoft-commissioned research note, in which IDC dissects the new pricing information in detail.) One highlight from the IDC note:
“The most important difference between Windows Small Business Server 2008 Premium and Windows Small Business Server 2003 R3 Premium is the inclusion of the full release of SQL Server into the new product. Microsoft says that ISVs balked at supporting LOB (line-of-business) applications aboard the SQL Server Workgroup Edition and pressed Microsoft to give them a two-server version of the product so that the LOB application could be installed aboard a dedicated server that runs only the application and the database.”
One EBS tester — Ken Dippold, Director of IT with Star Children’s Dress Company — said the new pricing model made sense.
“The standard pricing (for SBS) is lower then previous releases. The increase is on the new Premium SKU, which includes SQL 2008. Because SQL 2008 needs to be on its own server, they get you with the additional server license.
“I think with the new EBS offering, Microsoft will bring a lot of the mid size businesses on board. My company uses SBS 2000 now. It’s maxed out. So moving to EBS offers great savings over buying the component products separately.”
Another EBS tester agreed that buying products by the bundle is ultimately cheaper.
“I am pretty satisfied with the pricing of the EBS suites,” said Sumeeth Evans, IT Director for Collegiate Housing Services. “Since there are multiple products and technologies involved, it would have ended up being more expensive if I had purchased the products individually. I again don’t think we are getting as much of a break as the SBS suite of products get. Why MS is doing this is I have no clue whatsoever, but I do want to say that if I am in the market for a product/s to do what we do here, I would definitely purchase the EBS suite.”
Both SBS 2008 and EBS 2008 are built on top of Windows Server 2008. Windows Small Business Server 2008 comes in two versions, Standard and Premium, with Premium including a copy of the still-not-yet-shipping SQL Server 2008. Essential Business Server 2008, likewise, comes in two flavors (Standard and Premium), with Premium including a copy of SQL Server 2008.
The newly published price list:
• Windows Small Business Server 2008 Standard Edition software, including five CALs, $1,089 (U.S.); additional CALs $77 each (U.S.)
• Windows Small Business Server 2008 Premium Edition software, including five CALs, $1,899 (U.S.); additional CALs $189 each (U.S.)
• Windows Essential Business Server 2008 Standard Edition software, including five CALs, $5,472 (U.S.); additional CALs $81 each (U.S.)
• Windows Essential Business Server 2008 Premium Edition software, including five CALs, $7,163 (U.S.); additional CALs $195 each (U.S.)
Small and midsize business users: What do you think? Are these bundles appealing, as priced?
May 13th, 2008
Gates emphasizes PC-phone connectivity in Windows 7
Improved collaboration and connectivity between Windows PCs and cell phones is going to get a major shot in the arm with Windows 7, according to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.
During a speech for members of the Windows Digital Lifestyle Consortium in Tokyo last week, Gates referred a few times to Windows 7, the next version of Windows which Microsoft has said will ship in 2010. Gates highlighted improvements to Windows 7’s lower power and memory requirements that are in the works. But he also played up extensively during his speech the new connectivity between mobile phones and Windows which will be introduced as part of the release.
From a transcript of Gates’ remarks:
“We’re hard at work, I would say, on the next version, which we call Windows 7. I’m very excited about the work being done there. The ability to be lower power, take less memory, be more efficient, and have lots more connections up to the mobile phone, so those scenarios connect up well to make it a great platform for the best gaming that can be done, to connect up to the thing being done out on the Internet, so that, for example, if you have two personal computers, that your files automatically are synchronized between them, and so you don’t have a lot of work to move that data back and forth.”
The file synchronization capability to which Gates refers is the Live Mesh collaboration/synchronization platform/service which Microsoft recently unveiled. But Gates made it sound like there’s something beyond Mesh that could be in the works for Windows 7. Again, from the transcript:
“We’re also a participant in building software for the mobile phones, and our proposition is to build a great mobile operating system, but also to have it be the one that connects best to the Windows PCs. So we’re working hard on both of those things….
“For a customer there are going to be phones with larger screens, and PCs with smaller screens. In fact, there will be even an overlap, but I think the key for us is to drive all the applications, and let the user move easily back and forth. Our best customers are going to have a great mobile phone, and they’re going to have a great personal computer. And if we don’t make those scenarios work well together, that will hold back both of those markets.”
Gates also told the audience that Microsoft is going to deliver a “major new version of Windows” every two to three years. (A caveat: Gates also said not too long ago that Microsoft would deliver a new version of Internet Explorer every 9 to 12 months. IE 7 shipped in October 2006; we’re still only at Beta 1 for IE 8.)
What’s your take? What kinds of new features in Windows 7 — and Windows Mobile 7, allegedly due out in 2009 — might improve PC-to-mobile connectivity and what kinds of applications/services would benefit?
May 12th, 2008
Microsoft issues first SP1 betas for VS 2008, .Net Framework 3.5
Microsoft is making available to testers a first beta release of Service Pack (SP) 1 for Visual Studio 2008 and the accompanying .Net Framework 3.5.
On May 12, Microsoft made available to any/all interested parties the first beta bits for both VS 2008 SP1 and .Net Framework 3.5 SP1. These can be downloaded from Microsoft’s Microsoft Developer Network site. Microsoft is warning testers that there are some compatibility issues involving the VS 2008/.Net Framework 3.5 SP1 betas and Expression Blend, the Silverlight 2 Beta 1 software development kit (SDK) and Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for VS 2008.
New to VS 2008 SP1, according to Microsoft, are “new features for targeting Windows, Office, and the Web. Developers building .NET-basedapplications will enjoy improved performance in the WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) designer, new components for Visual Basic and Visual C++, as well as an MFC-based Office 2007 Ribbon. Web developers will see continued improvement in the client-side script tooling including JavaScript IntelliSense.”
And new to the .Net Framework 3.5 SP 1 are “more controls, a streamlined setup, improved start-up performance, and powerful new graphics features for client development and rich data scaffolding, improved AJAX support, and other improvements for Web development.”
The .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 also both add support for the ADO.Net Entity Framework. The framework service pack also adds support for ADO.Net Data Services, and the VS 2008 one adds support for the still-in-beta SQL Server 2008 release.
Microsoft has been building an entity data model framework around its ADO.Net technology that is designed to raise the level of abraction for database programmers. Originally, the ADO.Net Entity Framework was slated to be part of Visual Studio 2008.
ADO.Net Services, the technology codenamed “Astoria,” is a RESTful interface for data. Astoria is designed to enable applications to expose data as a data service that can be consumed by Web clients within a corporate network and across the Internet. Microsoft released a first test build of Astoria in December 2007, with officials saying the final release should be ready around mid-2008.
Microsoft officials declined to provide a target date for delivery of the final SP1s for Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Framework 3.5.
May 12th, 2008
Microsoft Biz Unit Chief Jeff Raikes to head Gates Foundation
For all those wondering what Microsoft Business Division President Jeff Raikes would do once he retires from Microsoft in September, the uncertainty is over.
Raikes is going to become the new CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Raikes is replacing another former Microsoft exec, Patty Stonesifer, who is currently serving as the Gates Foundation CEO.
When Raikes announced his retirement from Microsoft, many speculated he did so because he was unwilling to wait nine years for CEO Steve Ballmer to step down. In the end, it looks like Raikes gets to fulfill his CEO dreams — just not at Microsoft.
Raikes is set to be replaced at Microsoft by former Juniper Network Chief Operating Officer Stephen Elop. The Microsoft Business Division, which Elop will run, oversees the Office client, Office Server, Office Communications Server and Dynamics ERP products, among others.
May 12th, 2008
Microsoft adding 10,000 new datacenter servers a month
Today’s trivia question: How big is Microsoft’s back-end services infrastructure?
Microsoft officials won’t say how many servers total Microsoft has churning in its various datacenters. But Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Global Foundation Services Debra Chrapaty is on record saying Microsoft is adding 10,000 new servers a month.
(Facebook is estimated to have 10,000 servers total, the Data Center Knowledge folks report. In other words, Microsoft is adding one Facebook-worth of new servers every 30 days.)
On a related note, Microsoft has been building out its content-distribution-network (CDN) infrastructure, as well, as noted in a Bill Gates ThinkWeek paper that I excerpted in my Microsoft 2.0 book. Microsoft was already building out in late 2006 its Blue Cloud and CloudDB services to support the hundreds of Microsoft online properties/services it was powering.
May 12th, 2008
Blackberry users to get Windows Live services
Research in Motion (RIM) and Microsoft have struck a deal via which Blackberry users will be able to run Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger on their devices.
The two companies announced the deal on May 12; actual availability is slated for some time this summer with support for multiple languages.
Microsoft announced a similar deal to preload the full suite of Windows Live services on Nokia smartphones last August.
Microsoft and RIM have been service partners for years. In 2005, the pair announced enterprise instant messaging (IM) and presence capabilities for BlackBerry subscribers via Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 and BlackBerry Enterprise Server. In April 2008, Microsoft’s TellMe unit announced that it was bringing a new voice-activated-search appliction to the Blackberry (before Windows Mobile — but that’s another story.)
It was just a year ago, rumors were swirling that Microsoft was poised to acquire RIM.
May 9th, 2008
Microsoft not pulling XP SP3 again (so far)
Microsoft isn’t halting Windows XP Service Pack (SP) 3 distribution — so far, at least — in spite of endless-reboot problems reported by AMD-based PC customers, a company spokeswoman said on May 9.
Reports of the reboot problem are cropping up on Microsoft forums and other sites across the Web. Microsoft resumed Windows Update delivery of XP SP3 this week, after temporarily halting its distribution due to an incompatibility involving SP3 and Microsoft’s Retail Management System (RMS).
Microsoft Security Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Jesper Johansson blogged about the SP3 reboot problem on May 8. He has been posting to his blog workarounds for both AMD systems and Intel ones that are affected by the SP 3 problem. My ZDNet blogging colleague Adrian Kinglsey-Hughes also has suggestions of steps cusotmers can take before installing XP Sp3 to potentially avoid installation problems.
This isn’t the first time that a Microsoft service pack caused reboot problems. A Vista SP1 pre-requisite caused endless-reboot problems for some customers, resulting in Microsoft’s temporary suspension of the downloads of that update.
Microsoft is telling XP SP3 customers who encounter installation problems to contact customer support.
“Microsoft is aware of these (SP3) issues and is investigating them further,” the spokeswoman told me on Friday May 9. “We will keep customers informed of the progress.”
Update: On May 12, Microsoft officials shared another update on the cause of the SP3-reboot problem. This is what they told News.com:
“While the root cause of this issue is complex, it results from OEMs improperly placing a Windows XP image created for an for Intel-based computer onto machines with non-Intel chipsets,” Microsoft said in a statement. “Microsoft issued guidance to OEMs advising them to only load Windows XP images onto like hardware in 2004.”
May 9th, 2008
Microsoft appeals $1.4 billion EU fine
On May 9, Microsoft asked a European court to overturn a $1.4 billion fine imposed by the European Commission for Microsoft’s alleged failure to comply with an antitrust ruling against the company.
The fine (originally tallied at about $1.3 billion) — on top of the $1.2 billion the Commission had already charged Microsoft — was for failing to provide competitors access to its protocols at a reasonable price, enabling them to build compatible solutions.
Microsoft tried, to no avail, to head off the newest fine by announcing a set of Interoperability Principles a few days before the court announced its decision to slap Microsoft with an additional fine.
Since the late February announcement of the new fine, Microsoft has been publishing to the Web the full Windows Server protocol and communication protocol interoperability documentation that the EC had requested in 2004.
I’d argue that without the EC’s continual prodding, Microsoft still would not have published all of the documentation required for its competitors and partners to develop products that can plug into Windows. It’s unfortunate it took yet another $1.4 billion to get Microsoft to comply.
Do you think Microsoft will win its appeal? Why/why not?
May 8th, 2008
Mark your calendars: Microsoft to push Office 2007 SP1 on June 16
Systems administrators: Mark your calendars. Microsoft is going to start pushing the first service packs for Office 2007 and SharePoint 2007 next month.
In December, when Microsoft rolled out Service Pack (SP) 1 for the 2007 Office System, company officials said they’d give customers a minimum 30-day advance notice before pushing out the service pack via its Microsoft Update (MU) auto-distribution mechanism.
On May 8, Microsoft gave users that promised heads-up. From a Microsoft spokeswoman:
“Today we are providing our customers more than 30 days advance notice that SP1 for the 2007 Microsoft Office system, which was made available to the public on December 11, 2007, will be released via MU automatic distribution beginning June 16, 2008. This means that those customers who have not already installed SP1 and that have chosen to receive updates automatically will start to receive the service pack as early as June 16th. The distribution through MU is a gradual process and so not every customer will see the service pack on June 16th.”
May 8th, 2008
Microsoft shares more IE8 security details
When Microsoft officials released a first test build of Internet Explorer (IE) 8 back in March, they said they were intentionally refraining from talking specifics about new security features and functionality that would be part of the next browser release.
In the past few weeks, however, Microsoft has started providing more IE 8 security information via postings to the IE Blog.
This week, Internet Explorer Program Manager Matthew David Crowley blogged about the changes Microsoft is making around ActiveX controls with the next release of its browser. Specifically, IE 8 users running on Vista will allow “standard” users to install ActiveX controls in their own user profile without requiring administrative privileges. Crowley explained:
“This improvement makes it easier for an organization to realize the full benefit of User Account Control by enabling standard users to install ActiveX controls used in their day-to-day browsing.
“If a user happens to install a malicious ActiveX control, the overall system will be unaffected, as the control was installed only under the user’s account. Since installations can be restricted to a user profile, the risk and cost of compromise (and, in turn, the total cost of administering users on a machine) will be lowered significantly.”
In April, IE team members blogged about another security change Microsoft is instituting with IE 8. Microsoft will enable DEP/NX (Data Execution Prevention/No Execute) by default in IE 8 on Vista and Windows Server 2008. In IE7, DEP/NX is off by default — in order to avoid compatibility issues. But by turning on DEP/NX, Microsoft is expecting it will lessen the number of browser-based security hacks.
Microsoft released a public Beta 1 of IE 8 on March 5. Beta 2 is due out this summer. Microsoft still has yet to say when the final IE 8 release will be out.
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