Peter Galli

Microsoft Corp. last week officially confirmed that Office 12, the next version of its desktop productivity suite, will go into beta testing this fall and is expected to ship in the second half of next year. Bill Gates, Microsofts chairman and chief software architect, announced the expected production timetable for Office 12 in a keynote […]

As Microsoft Corp. continues to aggressively grow its enterprise sales and services force and move into new software markets, it is increasingly encroaching on the traditional turf held by many of its channel partners—and that is creating tension. In addition, many enterprise customers who have long dealt with those partners for their solution sets are […]

Bill Gates, Microsofts chairman and chief software architect, on Thursday will confirm that the first beta testing cycle for Office 12, the next version of its desktop productivity suite, will begin this fall and that it currently plans to ship the final suite of products in the second half of 2006. Gates will make that […]

IBM and Red Hat Inc. are ratcheting up the pressure on Sun and will on Tuesday detail another Solaris-to-Linux server migration program that includes a free migration assessment for customers interested in or considering such a migration. Both IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co. have been targeting Sun Microsystems Inc.s Solaris customers with migration plans designed to […]

Microsoft does not appear in any imminent danger of losing much market share on the desktop productivity front to any Linux or open-source competitors. In a presentation at this weeks Gartner Symposium/ITxpo here in San Francisco titled “Client OS and Office – Charting a Course to Longhorn (or Linux),” Michael Silver, a Gartner analyst, said […]

As Microsoft Corp. continues its drive to make its licensing models simpler and more understandable to enterprise customers, the company will slash the number of product licensing models from 70 to nine effective July 1. Microsofts PUR (Product Use Rights) document for enterprise customers, which is similar to an end-user licensing agreement, will also be […]

Microsoft Corp. last week released the first private beta for a new product code-named Maestro, a server-based business performance management score card application that is expected to ship in the last quarter of the year. Maestro is designed to help users perform deep analysis by using Microsoft Office to build, manage and use score cards […]

Microsoft and Sun on Friday provided the second update of their yearlong technical cooperation work, with Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer summing up the progress by saying theyve moved from the courtroom to the lab and are now entering the market. The first update was last December, and there was scant evidence of any tangible […]

Microsoft will release to private beta this week a new, server-based business-performance-management scorecard application, code-named “Maestro,” which helps users perform deep analysis by leveraging the Microsoft Office System to build, manage and use scorecards and key performance indicators. Chris Caren, general manager of Microsofts Business Applications Group, told eWEEK in an interview Monday that while […]

Microsoft Corp. officials are aggressively pushing 64-bit computing across their product line but are stepping back from recent comments that the next version of Windows Small Business Server will be 64-bit-only. Bob Muglia, Microsofts senior vice president for Windows Server, recently said at WinHEC in Seattle that while the company intends to ship both 32-bit […]

As a raft of senior executives leave Novell to pursue other interests, the company is reiterating its commitment to embracing Linux across its entire product line. That response follows news that Richard Seibt, the former president of SuSE Linux AG, which Novell Inc. acquired in early 2004, has resigned from his current position as president […]

Microsoft officials are aggressively pushing 64-bit computing across their entire product line, but there are a number of issues that may significantly slow customer adoption in the short-term. Microsoft Corp. server executives are also stepping back from recent comments that the next version of Windows SBS (Small Business Server) will be 64-bit only. Bob Muglia, […]