Peter Galli

More information is leaking out about the content of the comments, complaints and formal contradictions that 19 countries submitted to the International Standards Organization under the fast-track approval process for Microsofts Office Open XML format. Office Open XML was approved as a standard by Ecma International in December 2006, and in early January that standards […]

Microsofts goal of getting governments across the globe to embrace its Office Open XML format has hit roadblocks in both the United States and abroad. In the United States, legislation was introduced in Texas and Minnesota the week of Feb. 5 to mandate the adoption of open document formats that will essentially preserve all documents […]

Sun Microsystems will release a preview version of its OpenDocument Format plug-in that facilitates two-way conversion of Microsoft Word documents to ODF later in February, with the final release expected in April. The technology, known as the StarOffice 8 Conversion Technology Preview plug-in application for Microsoft Office 2003, will be made available as a free […]

SAN FRANCISCO—Sun Microsystems will spend more than $200 million consolidating all of its internal business applications onto Oracle 11i and, while the move is expected to generate minimal savings in fiscal year 2008, it should yield major savings in fiscal year 2009 and beyond. In a presentation at Suns annual analyst summit here on Feb. […]

Although Windows Vista and Office 2007 officially hit the streets Jan. 30 after years of development, Microsoft is far from done with innovating and changing the new user interface in the Office System family of products. Going forward, the new ribbon-based UI is likely to be applied to other applications that did not receive it […]

Windows Vista and Office 2007 finally saw the light of day on Jan. 30. Chris Capossela, who manages the Microsoft Office System family of products, talked to eWEEK Senior Editor Peter Galli about the products, the experience and the future. The Office 2007 System brings some 34 Office suites, programs, servers, services and tools. Microsoft […]

In spite of ongoing criticism for not being committed enough to open standards and specifications, Microsoft and its partners have finished work on the Open XML Translator. The open-source Translator, which is an add-on to Microsoft Word, will be available for download and use starting Feb. 2 at no cost. Microsoft first announced last July […]

Microsoft is trying to incentivize its largest indirect hardware partners and system builders to preinstall Office 2007 on their systems, before these are sold to resellers, by offering them a referral payment when end users activate the license on those machines. Qualified Microsoft partners were invited to participate in the Referral Payment Pilot Program for […]

Microsoft is trying to dampen criticism by explaining its controversial decision to unify the rendering and editing engines in Outlook 2007 and use only the Word 2007 engine, even though there are some HTML and Cascading Style Sheet attributes that the engine does not currently support. The move is a significant change from previous versions […]

While Windows Vista and Office 2007 officially hit the streets today after years of development, Microsoft is far from done with innovating and changing the new user interface in the Office System family of products. Going forward, the new ribbon-based user interface is likely to be applied to other applications that did not get it […]

Red Hat, facing increased competition from the Novell/Microsoft alliance and Oracle, has won a new enterprise customer: Union Bank of California. Union Bank, which is one of the 25 largest banks in the country and has 320 branch offices in California, Washington and Oregon, will standardize its IT infrastructure on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, a […]

While Microsoft managed to post record quarterly revenue of $12.54 billion for the second quarter of its fiscal year, which ended Dec. 31, exceeding even the high end of its own projections, it also recorded a 28 percent fall in quarterly net profit after deferring some $1.6 billion in revenue. The Redmond, Wash., software company, […]