All About Microsoft

November 6th, 2009

Microsoft 'Geneva' identity wares approach the finish line

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 1:35 pm

Categories: .Net Framework, Azure, Code names, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Oslo, PDC 2009, Security, Utility/cloud computing, Windows server

Tags: Geneva, Microsoft Corp., Research & Development, .Net, Microsoft Windows, Application Servers, Development Tools, Middleware, Business Operations, Software Development

Microsoft is making available for download the near-final Release Candidate (RC) test build of its “Geneva” framework, the technology officially known as Windows Identity Foundation.

(For all you Microsoft codename trackers out there, “Geneva” is the next version of Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). The programming framework supporting the next version of ADFS originally was codenamed “Zermatt,” then, later, also took on the “Geneva” codename. Microsoft’s Windows Cardspace is the third component of what Microsoft calls “Geneva.”)

On November 6, Microsoft released the RC bits of the framework, which are designed to provide developers with a new programming model and software development kit for creating identity-aware .Net applications. According to a blog post on the Forefront Team Blog, Windows Identity Foundation “provides developers pre-built .NET security logic for building claims-aware applications, enhancing either ASP.NET or WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) applications.

Geneva and the Geneva framework also are related to Microsoft’s Azure environment, as the next version of ADFS is part of the Azure Services layer in Microsoft’s cloud. (Microsoft’s current Azure diagrams don’t show ADFS as part of Azure, but I hear any new ones we see at the Professional Developers Conference in mid-November will include it.) The goal of Geneva is to provide developers and users with a single, secure sign-in capability across both cloud-based and on-premise applications.

In other PDC-related news, Microsoft is planning to distribute a new Community Technology Preview (CTP) test build of its Oslo modeling platform. This will be the first CTP that team has provided since May and it will require Visual Studio 2010 and .Net 4 Beta 2 to work. It’s due out on November 17. (Thanks to MVP Doug Finke for unearthing the Oslo link.)

November 6th, 2009

Microsoft to show off new visualization language at PDC

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 12:33 pm

Categories: Azure, Code names, Corporate strategy, Development tools, PDC 2009, Research

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Tool, Visualization Language, Vedea, MSCSS, Productivity, Blogging, Data Management, Internet, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft is planning to show off a new visualization language, codenamed “Vedea” at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles in mid-November.

From a blog posting by Microsoft UK Researcher Martin Calsyn.

“Vedea is a new language for creating interactive data-driven visualizations… Vedea will be demonstrated publicly for the first time at PDC 09 November 16-19 in Los Angeles and should be broadly available from research.microsoft.com shortly thereafter.”

Best I can tell, the language seems to be a project of the Microsoft Research Computational Science Laboratory. That unit is the team behind the Microsoft Compututational Science Studio (MSCSS), a “a tool for enabling non-programmer scientists and researchers to harness vast amounts of storage and compute power for running the multi-scale models that are needed to truly understand and predict complex natural systems.”

MSCSS s a shell into which you plug in extensions – for visualization, data management, computation, modelling, and more, Calsyn explained in his post. He added:

“One extension might give you access to remote data on Azure; another might allow you to draw heat-maps over Virtual Earth; and another might support Perfect Plasticity Approximation models or computations on the Hadley climate model data .”

MSCSS was one of the tools that Craig Mundie demonstrated during his university tour this past week. Mundie told the Seattle Times that tools like MSCSS would do for scientists what Excel did for business folks: Make t easier to analyze vast amounts of technical data.

I’m not sure whether Vedea is an outgrowth of an existing Microsoft Research project or something brand-new.  Microsoft showed off Vedea privately at the Microsoft Research eScience Workshop 2009 in mid-October.

There are lots of interesting directions Microsoft could take Vedea. Check out some of the visualization links on Calsyn’s blog page for references to other visualization projects, including the open-source “Processing” visualization language, which is being taught in an increasing number of universities.

November 6th, 2009

Microsoft puts more Azure cloud plumbing in place

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:39 am

Categories: .Net Framework, Azure, Code names, Corporate strategy, Development tools, PDC 2009, Red Dog, Utility/cloud computing, Virtualization

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

Microsoft is continuing to lay the groundwork for the commercial version of its Azure cloud environement, rolling out a new content delivery network (CDN) capability, as well as the November update to its Azure developer services.

On November 5, Microsoft delivered the November Community Technology Preview (CTP) test build of its Service Bus and Access Control Service — both of which are feature-complete. Those two elements are known as .Net Services. (Workflow services, queuing and routers also originally were set to be part of the first .Net Services release, but the team decided to pull those components in order to sync with Microsoft’s .Net 4.0 release, due out in March, 2010.)

Microsoft also rolled out on November 5 a new CDN capability that extends the storage piece of the Windows Azure cloud operating system.

(A quick refresher: Windows Azure, codenamed “Red Dog” is what networks and manages the set of Windows Server 2008 machines that comprise the Microsoft-hosted cloud. At the highest level, Red Dog consists of four “pillars”: Storage (like a file system); the “fabric controller,” which is a management system for modeling/deploying and provisioning; virtualized computation/VM; and a development environment, which allows developers to emulate Red Dog on their desktops and plug in Visual Studio, Eclipse or other tools to write cloud apps against it. Azure services including .Net Services and SQL Azure sit on top of the Windows Azure operating system)

The new Windows Azure CDN is designed to allow developers to deliver high-bandwidth content more quickly and efficiently. Here are more details from a November 5 blog post by Brad Calder, who is a leader of the Windows Azure Storage team:

“Windows Azure CDN has 18 locations globally (United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America) and continues to expand. Windows Azure CDN caches your Windows Azure blobs at strategically placed locations to provide maximum bandwidth for delivering your content to users. You can enable CDN delivery for any storage account via the Windows Azure Developer Portal. The CDN provides edge delivery only to blobs that are in public blob containers, which are available for anonymous access.

“The benefit of using a CDN is better performance and user experience for users who are farther from the source of the content stored in the Windows Azure Blob service. In addition, Windows Azure CDN provides worldwide high-bandwidth access to serve content for popular events.”

For the remaining CTP period, Windows Azure CDN access will remain free to testers. (Pricing information isn’t yet available.) Microsoft is recommending caching blobs less than 10 GB in size for best performance.

Speaking of the remaining CTP period, while Microsoft officials have said for the past few months that they planned to remove the beta tag from Azure at the Professional Developers Conference in mid-November, Microsoft isn’t closing the CTP until the end of December. Developers and customers won’t be charged for Azure until February, 2010.

November 5th, 2009

Billing system testing behind Microsoft's SQL Azure outage this week

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 12:51 pm

Categories: Azure, Corporate strategy, Database, PDC 2009, SQL Server, Utility/cloud computing

Tags: Billing, SQL, Billing System, Microsoft Corp., Outage, Manufacturing, Programming Languages, Databases, Software Development, Software/Web Development

Testers of Microsoft’s SQL Azure service experienced a three-plus hour unplanned outage this week — just a couple of weeks before Microsoft is set to remove the beta tag from its Azure cloud service.

During prior Azure outages (planned and unplanned), the team made sure to blog about the causes. This week’s outage, which occurred on the opening day of Microsoft’s SQL PASS user group conference, received no mention (other than a brief acknowledgment on the MSDN SQL Azure forums).

A tester wondering what happened sent me a note. From his e-mail:

“Microsoft didn’t formally acknowledge the problem until the outage was almost resolved. That’s 3+ hours wondering when the cloud would recover. Still no details on what happened.”

When I asked about what was behind the outage, I received the following note back from an Azure spokesperson:

“We were doing testing on the connection of the central billing platform yesterday and unfortunately experienced some downtime with SQL Azure. When discovered, we notified (Community Technology Preview) CTP customers right away and within a few hours had the service back online.”

Yes, Azure and SQL Azure are still in the test phase. But Microsoft is trying to lay the groundwork to get consumers, developers and enterprise customers to trust the availability, reliability and privacy guarantees of the service. Speaking of privacy guarantees, Microsoft published today a white paper outlining the company’s privacy policies for cloud computing.

SQL Azure will be feature-complete by November, the Softies have said, and testers will have the option of rolling over existing projects seamlessly to the fully supported production environment and a paid subscription to the SQL Azure Database service.

Microsoft officials have said to expect the company to remove the beta tag from Azure by mid-November. Last week, the Softies said that the company will go public with a number of new Windows Azure features on November 17 during the company’s Professional Developers Conference. The Azure CTP will remain open through December 31. Customers won’t be charged for Azure usage in January, but as of February 1, Microsoft will begin charging customers for using Windows Azure.

Microsoft provided Azure pricing details earlier this year.

November 5th, 2009

Microsoft to add SharePoint access to Live@edu

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:33 am

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, Exchange Server, Google, Office, Office 2010/Office 14, Office Live, SharePoint Server, Utility/cloud computing, Web conferencing

Tags: Microsoft SharePoint, Web Application, Microsoft Corp., Live@edu, Content Management, Collaboration, Groupware, Enterprise Software, Microsoft Office, Software

Paving the way for its Office Web Apps rollout, Microsoft is adding SharePoint Online to the services it offers students and academics as part of its Live@edu offering.

Microsoft made the announcement at the Educause conference in Denver, according to a posting on the Live@edu blog. The SharePoint Online service should be available to Live@edu subscribers for no additional cost some time next year.

Microsoft officials played up both the collaboration and conferencing capabilities and the Office Web Apps access as being behind the planned addition. Students and educators are a big audience for Google Docs and expected to be one of Microsoft’s biggest group of initial adopters of Office Web Apps.

From the November 3 Live@edu blog post:

“In conjunction with the Live@edu program, we will be bringing a solution to market for students, based on SharePoint Online, for free. So what does that mean? Well, lets look at some possibilities:

“* Work with a class group on a research assignment – documents, background research, project plans can all be stored online and worked on from anywhere.
“* Office Web Apps support means that a user can access Office files on almost any machine to simply view the content, or to make essential modifications.
“* Microsoft Office integration ensures they get a rich, integrated experience with SharePoint Online and the Office Web Apps, if required… and of course offline access to files.”

Microsoft officials have said they plan to offer three different modes of distribution for Office Web Apps — Microsoft’s Webified versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote — due out by mid-2010. There will be a free, consumer-focused version that will be accessible via Microsoft’s Windows Live SkyDrive service. There also will be two paid versions for business customers: A Microsoft-hosted version and an on-premises, user-hosted version. The two hosted versions will require SharePoint/SharePoint Online as part of the back-end infrastructure.

Microsoft already offers hosted Exchange email, among other Microsoft services, to Live@edu subscribers. The Exchange Online version for students/academics is known as “Outlook Live.” There’s no word yet on how Microsoft will rebrand the SharePoint Online offering that will be available via Live@edu.

(Hat tip to Network World for the heads-up on the SharePoint and Live@edu news.)

November 5th, 2009

Browser rivals to register official complaints about Microsoft's ballot screen proposal

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:49 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Google, Internet Explorer, Legal

Tags: Opera Software ASA, Ballot, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corp., Web Browser, Web Browsers, Internet, Mary Jo Foley

The deadline for official comment on Microsoft’s latest rendition of the browser-ballot — the screen the company has proposed to download to PC users in order to appease antitrust regulators handling the Opera vs. Microsoft antitrust case — is next week. (It should be November 10, if the one-month comment deadline the European Commission set for itself is still in place.)

Google, Mozilla and Opera are preparing to weigh in separately with their suggestions, according to a November 4 round-up in the New York Times. These three Microsoft browser rivals still aren’t happy with the revisions Microsoft has made to its proposal. If the Commission decides their complaints have merit, more ballot testing and delays in implementation will ensue.

Mozilla execs already weighed in publicly (via a blog post) about their beefs, which include Microsoft’s suggestion that users see a screen which presents the top browser choices presented in alphabetical order by vendor (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera). Mozilla officials have said they aren’t keen on Apple’s Safari for Windows being No. 1 because it doesn’t work all that well on Windows. Mozilla officials haven’t offered publicly an alternative way to list the browsers on the ballot. I’m sure they’re trying to find some way to justify Firefox being listed first.

Opera officials aren’t keen on the Microsoft logo being at the top of the ballot, fearing undue influence on users (who already opted to buy a Windows PC, mind you). Opera’s CEO also said he wants to bar Microsoft from displaying a warning if and when users choose to download rival’s software.

There’s no word in the New York Times piece about what Google’s objections are. But I bet Google hated even getting a mention in the Times article, since that Google (like Microsoft) prefers back-room politics.

I’ve been a fan of the idea of Microsoft providing a browser ballot since the EC first floated the idea (and Microsoft opposed it vehemently). I was surprised Microsoft changed its tune and embraced the ballot, but I guess that seemed the least of all possible evils and a last stab at attempting to avoid a fine. (A fine is still a possibility; there’s no word on what the EC’s final remedy will be in the case.)

I liked the browser-ballot proposal because I’ve never bought into the idea that IE should be considered part of the operating system. Many less-savvy PC users don’t know there is more than one browser out there; they just assume IE is all there is. While many Softies and Microsoft backers have noted that Microsoft has done nothing to prevent users from choosing other browsers, the bundling of IE did make it unlikely that many PC users would know they had choices or how to get access to them.

I have to say, however, that this round of complaints by Microsoft’s rivals seem like nothing more than an attempt to keep Microsoft’s lawyers busy.

Microsoft has been losing browser share in recent years for a variety of reasons, including user security concerns (given IE is usually hackers’ primary browser target); failure to comply fully and in a timely manner with Web standards; the long lag time between browser updates from Microsoft; and problems with IE 8’s performance, especially on older operating systems and PCs. (I am basing that last reason on feedback from my readers.)

Being forced to compete for the love of users who actually understand they have a choice of browsers might do more to spur Microsoft to be innovative, timely and standards-compliant with IE than anything else would. That’s why I say bring on the browser ballot, but for users’ sakes, not for those of Microsoft’s competitors.

November 4th, 2009

Microsoft does a 180 on Exchange 2007 support (in a good way)

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 2:33 pm

Categories: App Compatibility, Corporate strategy, Exchange Server, Windows Server 2008 R2 /("Windows 7 Server"), Windows server

Tags: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Windows, Servers, Operating Systems, Software, Hardware, Mary Jo Foley

After notifying customers and partners that Exchange Server 2007 wouldn’t be able to run on Windows Server 2008 R2, the latest version of WIndows Server, the Exchange team has reversed its decision.

In a posting on the Exchange Team Blog, Microsoft officials said they’d heard the negative feedback loud and clear. Customers didn’t want to be forced to move to Exchange 2010 before they were ready, just so as to be able to run a version of Exchange on Windows Server 2008 R2.

To fix the problem, Microsoft is prepping an update that will be out some time next year. From a November 4 blog posting by Kevin Allison, General Manager of Exchange Customer Experience:

“In the coming calendar year we will issue an update for Exchange 2007 enabling full support of Windows Server 2008 R2. We heard from many customers that this was important for streamlining their operations and reducing administrative challenges, so we have changed course and will add R2 support. We are still working through the specifics and will let you know once we have more to share on the timing of this update.”

One Exchange 2010 caveat that seemingly hasn’t changed: Users who want to run Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 together must upgrade to Exchange 2007 Service Pack (SP) 2.

Microsoft is slated to provide customers with Exchange 2010 final bits starting the week of November 9. Microsoft released to manufacturing Exchange 2010 in early October.

November 4th, 2009

Free Microsoft open-source content management app to get its debut next week

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 10:11 am

Categories: .Net Framework, Code names, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Open source

Tags: Microsoft ASP.NET, Microsoft Corp., Content Management, Orchard, Oxite, .Net, Open Source, Middleware, Software Development, Software/Web Development

Microsoft is working on a set of free open-source content-management application and set of reusable components for it that is codenamed “Orchard.”

The company is slated to share details about its plans for Orchard at TechEd Europe next week.

I asked Microsoft officials for more information on Orchard and got back a no comment.

But here’s what is known so far about the project, courtesy of the session write-up from the TechEd site:

“Orchard is a new effort to produce free, open source, reusable components and a full-featured CMS application built on these components to produce a variety of different types of web sites. Our small core team of dedicated ASP.NET developers are seeking the guidance and contribution of the .NET community at-large to help shape this project in its early stages. Bradley Millington, Engineering Lead for the project, will be hosting this interactive discussion to invite you to get involved on the ground floor - to tell us what you’d want to see from the project, what components you could envision using in your own applications, and how to best channel the contributions of community to make it all happen. We can talk strategy, logistics, features, or anything else that’s on your mind. Please join us!”

(That session is slated for Wednesday, November 11.)

Microsoft already has been dabbling in the open-source content-management space with a project codenamed “Oxite.” I also tried asking whether Orchard is simply a new name for Oxite or a revamped version of Oxite and received no word back.

Microsoft released an alpha version of the Oxite source code, under the open-source Microsoft Public License (MS-Pl) in December 2008. At that time, the Softies described Oxite as a platform “built to take full advantage of ASP.NET MVC but broken into assemblies so that even ASP.NET WebForm developers can use the data backend and utility code, supports use of Visual Studio Team Suite (DB Pro, Test, etc.), and Background Services Architecture (sending trackbacks, emails, etc. all done as a background process to prevent delays on the web site itself).”

Anyone else have more information about what Orchard is — or how it will compete (or not) with other CMS systems out there, like Dot Net Nuke, for example? DotNetNuke’s Co-founder Shaun Walker is on the board of the newly minted CodePlex Foundation (along with lots of Softies) — so maybe Orchard will end up as a CodePlex Foundation project? Other thoughts and/or guesses?

November 4th, 2009

Are the Microsoft layoffs over now?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 7:57 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Yahoo

Tags: Layoff, Microsoft Corp., Workforce Management, Human Resources, Mary Jo Foley

When Microsoft announced in January that the company was cutting 5,000 jobs, it wasn’t clear how many waves it would take to realize that count. It looks like the cuts aren’t done yet, based on an initial report of November 4 layoffs by TechFlash and a follow-up by PaidContent.

(PaidContent is reporting Microsoft is going to cut 800, citing a company spokeswoman. It sounds like those being cut will be notified starting today. I’ve asked Microsoft to confirm this report and have yet to hear back. and have gotten a call back confirming the 800 figure.)

Microsoft officials haven’t been willing to provide a tally when asked for a count as to how many jobs had been cut by certain dates. The first round of layoffs was 1,400. At that time, Microsoft officials said to expect the “net headcount … to decline by 2,000 to 3,000 over the next 18 months.” (Some of those let go would be hired in other divisions, plus Microsoft planned to continue to hire in certain divisions, like Online Services, officials explained.)

In May, Microsoft made its second major wave of cuts but officials wouldn’t say how many individuals were let go. At that time, CEO Steve Ballmer said that Microsoft reserved the right to cut more than the originally announced 5,000, if need be.

(Since then, Microsoft has shed a couple of thousand employees by selling Razorfish, but is set to acquire up to 1,000 Yahoos if and when its Yahoo partnership is consumated.)

Microsoft has been making cuts across the board — in sales, marketing and the product groups. Products and teams from Flight Simulator, to Office Accounting, all have been hit.

So is Microsoft done? Wall Street analysts have been bullish about the company’s cost-cutting measures — maybe bullish enough to spur more.

In Microsoft’s 10-Q statement, filed at the end of October, company officials implied layoffs were over. From that statement:

“In January 2009, we announced and implemented a resource management program to reduce discretionary operating expenses, employee headcount, and capital expenditures. As part of this program, we announced the elimination of up to 5,000 positions in research and development, marketing, sales, finance, legal, human resources, and information technology by June 30, 2010. We have now completed this program and reduced our overall number of positions by approximately 5,000 and headcount by approximately 4,600.”

It’s unclear if the beancounters had taken into account the new wave of 800 as part of those figures or if this week’s cuts are going beyond the 4,600 who’ve been let go already.

Update: Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos said that prior to today’s announcement, Microsoft already had cut 5,000 positions but only 4,600 people, since about 400 of those cut found new positions at the company. He said it’s not clear how many of the 800 cut today will be rehired. He said that Microsoft has now cut 5,800 positions total since January and indicated that — while no one is willing to say definitively that no more cuts are coming  — Microsoft has exceeded its headcount reduction commitments.

Also no word yet on which teams/groups are part of this week’s cuts. If I hear more, I’ll update this post.

Update No. 2: Don Dodge of Microsoft’s Emerging Business team is one of today’s casualties.

November 4th, 2009

The long and winding road to MSN's reinvention as a social hub

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:54 am

Categories: Advertising, Corporate strategy, Google, MSN, Search, Silverlight (wpf/e), Yahoo

Tags: MSN, Microsoft Corp., Portals, Web Technology, Internet, Mary Jo Foley

It took a couple of years, but Microsoft is finally making good on some of the ideas officials had for making the company’s MSN home page more viable.

Back in 2007, former Senior Vice President of Microsoft’s Online Services Group Steve Berkowitz said Microsoft’s goal was to integrate more social-networking tools and pre-programmed content into the MSN home page. On November 4, Microsoft made public a preview of a new MSN home page that integrates Facebook and Twitter. (And Windows Live, too, the Softies note, usually as an afterthought.)

The revamped MSN home page — which execs say is the most sweeping face-lift the MSN.com site has had in close to a decade — looks less cluttered and easier to navigate. It’s also faster to load and has lost a lot of the “blue links” that dominate the current MSN.com page. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft’s Bing search technology is deeply integrated into the new design.

See Gallery: The past and future of MSN

The final version of the new MSN.com is slated to go live in early 2010.

“If there’s a hot new search term, we can put that on the page. We can surface Twitter and Facebook feeds to make real-time search available on MSN,” said Bob Visse, General Manager of MSN Product Management.

There’s also a big focus on making “local experiences” easier for MSN.com users to find and surface, Visse said. Microsoft will allow users to “interact with content in a programmable way.” Silverlight isn’t required, but if users have it installed on their PCs, it will “enhance” their video-viewing experience, Visse said. He said Microsoft will offer a list of Silverlight applications — such as gas-price indicator, for example — that users can get if they have Microsoft’s Flash competitor installed.

In 2008, Microsoft made MSN part of the combined Search, Portal and Advertising Group as part of one of the company’s regular reorgs. At that time, officials said Microsoft’s goal was to make MSN.com more of a socially networked platform. In an e-mail to employees, Senior Vice President of R&D for Online Services Satya Nadella said MSN was  Microsoft’s single largest source of ad revenue. He also promised that the next version of MSN would be “a software engine that delivers the most relevant and social online content experience.”

It’s easy to forget that shortly before Microsoft decided to focus on MSN as one of its major vehicles for consumer outreach, advertising and search that the company came close to getting out of the portal business. Berkowitz was one of the main execs who helped convince management that there was value in MSN and that Microsoft should keep the platform around.

These days, Microsoft is claiming that it has the largest worldwide audience of any of the consumer-focused portals on the Web. According to the company, 100 million people in the U.S. visit MSN every single month, and MSN added over 10 million new customers in the past year.