Microsoft News Tracker

Not a big surprise, but Microsoft today has a Press Release touting the fact. It’s in Los Angeles on September 13-16 and the focus is on Vista and Office 12. Some links: PDC05 web site, PDC05 blog, and PDC bloggers (they’re different). Of course, per the list of sessions, it won’t all be Vista and Office 12.

Harold Wong reveals the date and even has a download link (nothing there yet). The details on SP2 are here and Mary Jo Foley reports the mobile email features are key:

Microsoft executives have said that Exchange Server 2003 SP2, when coupled with the Windows Mobile 5.0 Messaging and Security Feature Pack, will provide a push e-mail solution that will trump the one delivered by Research In Motion (RIM) for its Blackberry devices.

Microsoft is calling this push e-mail support “Direct Push.” Microsoft is playing up Direct Push as an alternative to short-message service (SMS) technology for automatical e-mail detection and retrieval. “SP2 will use an HTTP connection, maintained by the device, to push new e-mail, calendar, contact, and task notifications to the device,” according to the Microsoft Web site. Direct Push also will work over Wi-Fi networks, Microsoft officials have said, and will make use of additional data compression to speed up message sending, retrieval and synchronization.

Microsoft officials have said to expect the final versions of Exchange Server SP2 and the Mobile 5.0 Feature Pack are due to ship before the end of calendar 2005, according to the most recent information made public by Microsoft.

More details on the positioning are available in this presentation by Peter Knook, Microsoft Senior Vice President of Mobile and Embedded Devices Division and Communications Sector at this year’s Financial Analyst meeting.

Catching up with just one more item from last month, here’s the Press Release. Turner came from Wal-Mart where he was president and chief executive officer of SAM’S CLUB and at Microsoft he “will be responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of Microsoft’s sales, marketing and service professionals on a global basis as well as the company’s fulfillment and IT operations.” His first day at Microsoft will be Sept. 8. Some analysis here and here.

A new CTP (community technical preview) of Microsoft’s forthcoming graphic design tool codenamed “Acrylic” was released yesterday. The download is here and check out the Acrylic home page for some samples. Note that Acrylic offers both “vector-based and pixel-based design.” eWeek has some background:

Acrylic, a professional illustration, painting and graphic-design product, is targeted at de-signers working in print, Web, video, and interactive media. Up until now, Microsoft Corp. has not fielded a product in this space, which is dominated by Adobe Systems Inc. Acrylic is based on the Creature House Expression product that Microsoft acquired in 2003, when Microsoft bought the developer of Expression, a Hong Kong-based company, Creature House Ltd.

“Acrylic relates to Windows Vista, and it is a technology for the creation of rich applications and user interfaces,” said Forest Key, group product manager for the technology. Acrylic also relates to the Windows Presentation Foundation, formerly code-named Avalon, and “gives developers capabilities to build compelling applications. There is a need for tools to target XAML [Microsoft's Extensible Application Markup Language] for presentation of compelling applications. Acrylic is a design tool to target XAML.”

The article also mentions the rumored Expressions Studio suite for designers which was due in 2006, but whose status is now unclear. Despite the similarity of the names, Expression is different from Expressions Studio as this article at CNET makes clear. From the same article, a rumored ship date for Acrylic is before YE2006.

Filing another item from late last month.

Microsoft announced their 4th quarter and FY 2005 financial results on July 21. Joe Wilcox has a detailed analysis, but here’s my take in a nutshell:

• - Servers and Tools had a solid increase lead by SQL Server
• - Cash cow Client continues to track OEM sales
• - Cash cow Information Worker (Office) is still slow
• - MSN seems to have achieved continuing profitability
• - MBS, Mobile, and Home had losses and are still investments for the future with MBS (Microsoft Business Solutions, i.e applications for SMBs), in particular, continuing to struggle

The analyst reaction was muted.