As the Desktop Linux Summit gets underway in San Diego – on the heels of last month's enterprise-oriented LinuxWorld – it appears that Microsoft is swimming the wrong way against the tide of history. Not that history hasn’t been kind to Redmond. Just two decades ago, Microsoft led the rebel alliance that turned computing on its head by introducing the notion of a commodity-priced operating system running on separate commodity-priced hardware. Now, Microsoft is the Empire to be toppled. The operating system is becoming a layer of code that exists, for all intents and purposes, in the public domain. And Microsoft’s responses to this shift – and threat to its core business – have been tepid and misguided.
- By Joe McKendrick
- February 19, 2003
Moving to reassert the former Compaq's role as the leading vendor of eight-way, industry-standard servers, Hewlett Packard Co. this week shipped its long-awaited industry standard eight-processor servers based on the new F8 chipsets.
- By Scott Bekker
- February 19, 2003
VMWare has created a market for itself by providing software that slices and dices individual processors within Intel-based servers and workstations down to smaller partitions used by multiple instances of operating systems. Now VMWare is moving upmarket a bit, unveiling a product that will allow server administrators to create partitions out of groups of processors.
- By Scott Bekker
- February 19, 2003
Precise Software Solutions' storage resource management software was updated this week to support Network Appliance filers, greatly increasing Precise's access to the network-attached storage market.
- By Scott Bekker
- February 13, 2003
Microsoft put out a new version of a cumulative security patch for Internet Explorer originally released last week due to problems with users being locked out of some subscription-based Web sites and their MSN e-mail. Microsoft said the problem primarily affected consumers and the company emphasized that the problem had nothing to do with the underlying security issue addressed by the patch.
- By Scott Bekker
- February 13, 2003
Dell Computer Corp. turned in a 32 percent improvement in profits for the quarter ended Jan. 31, the company reported Thursday afternoon. Dell saw net income of $603 million on revenues of about $9.7 billion for the quarter.
- By Scott Bekker
- February 13, 2003
The ongoing effort to expand the SQL Server database into a broader business intelligence and applications platform continues as Microsoft adds enterprise reporting services to its flagship database.
- By Scott Bekker
- February 12, 2003
Microsoft’s latest suite of development tools will provide optimized database connectivity, an enhanced version of the .NET Framework, and better mobile application programming capabilities. But even Microsoft called the new release “incremental.” At the same time the company announced a timeline for its next two Visual Studio releases.
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- February 12, 2003
Microsoft this week gave a formal name to an upcoming XML client that will be an addition to the Microsoft Office family. The product, which had been code-named XDocs, will launch as InfoPath in the middle of this year, Microsoft said.
- By Scott Bekker
- February 11, 2003
Microsoft posted a fixed version of a botched security patch from December that had been causing Windows NT 4.0 systems to crash.
- By Scott Bekker
- February 11, 2003
SQL Slammer hit one of Microsoft's flagship enterprise products just as the company was patting itself on the back for a year's worth of Trustworthy Computing progress. The damaging worm highlights both the strengths -- and the weaknesses -- of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing effort.
- By Scott Bekker
- February 10, 2003
The Windows Server 2003 version of Datacenter Server will have a couple of licensing changes -- a 128-processor SKU and Datacenter-only downgrade rights.
- By Scott Bekker
- February 07, 2003
VMWare this week released a new version of its virtual machine offering for servers, adding support for Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Datacenter Server and 32-processor, Intel-based servers from Unisys.
- By Scott Bekker
- February 06, 2003
Microsoft posted a "critical" cumulative patch fixing two new vulnerabilities affecting Internet Explorer. Microsoft also put out a separate patch for an "important" security problem in Windows XP.
- By Scott Bekker
- February 06, 2003
In the space of a week, Microsoft and IBM’s Lotus software group introduced versions of their enterprise messaging and groupware platforms designed to support high-volume service provider and ISP implementations.
- By Stephen Swoyer
- February 06, 2003
UltraBac Software has released the second installment of planned incremental upgrades to its flagship UltraBac 7.0 backup and disaster recovery software. The new version, 7.0.3, builds in encryption, compression, improved back-up granularity and administrative enhancements.
- By Scott Bekker
- February 05, 2003
Microsoft's Windows Datacenter Server has been about more than technology features since its launch in late 2000. Fittingly, the tightly controlled support program that makes Datacenter Server so different from other Microsoft server operating systems is getting a complete overhaul for the Windows Server 2003 launch. Microsoft unveiled details of the program Wednesday, including the new name, the "Windows Datacenter High Availability Program."
- By Scott Bekker
- February 05, 2003
A new study by IDC finds that enterprise Linux server usage is moving beyond its traditional bastion of Web serving and moving into Unix and Windows strongholds such as application serving and database serving.
- By Scott Bekker
- February 05, 2003
AMD refreshed its line of multiprocessor chips for servers and workstations this week with the introduction of the AMD Athlon MP 2600+.
- By Scott Bekker
- February 05, 2003
A federal appeals court on Monday stayed a district court judge's order for Microsoft to distribute Sun's Java Runtime Environment with Windows XP.
- By Scott Bekker
- February 04, 2003