Microsoft News Tracker

Michael Paige at MarketWatch reports:

McAfee Inc.’s stock rose as much as 3.4% on Monday after the company said it renewed a pact with Microsoft Corp. to provide online security to subscribers of the software giant’s MSN Premium Internet service.

The extension of the pact originally inked in 2003, while unlikely to dramatically shift McAfee’s revenue, did help remove an overhang on the stock due to uncertainty lingering about its renewal. It also provided a lift to sentiment among some investors concerned about the impact of Microsoft’s own security plans on partners.

More by following the link and in the McAfee press release. In case you aren’t familiar with MSN Premium:

MSN Premium gives you hundreds of dollars of software for a single monthly rate—and since it is a subscription service, you will always have up-to-date versions of important programs like Virus Guard and Firewall. While you could try to reproduce the benefits of MSN Premium in a piecemeal fashion by buying individual programs, MSN Premium gives you a single, all-in-one Internet software solution that provides essential online security, productivity, and educational features.

Currently it’s $9.95 per month.

Bink.nu reports that Release Candidate 1 of Windows Server 2003 R2 has gone to beta testers. R2 is scheduled to ship before the end of the year and Tom Sanders observes that since the recent virtualization licensing changes taking effect Dec. 1 call R2 out by name, it’s likely that the ship date is after that.

Update: Mary Jo Foley reports that there will be no RC2 - next stop is Release to Manufacturing (RTM) in December.

Paul Thurrott:

On Monday morning at 8:00 am PST, Microsoft will issue the October 2005 Windows Vista Community Technical Preview (CTP), or build 5231, to beta testers, and MSDN and TechNet subscribers. As an interim build between the Beta 1 and Beta 2 milestones, Vista build 5231 does not include the fit and finish of a true beta, but it does introduce several major new features, including Windows Media Player (WMP 11), Mobility Center, and Network Center, as well as a significant upgrade to Internet Explorer (IE) 7.

This is the second in what Microsoft has promised to be a series of monthly CTP releases. Hit the link for more details and also see Thurrott’s detailed review and Robert McLaws’ overview.

Dan Nystedt at PCWorld:

AMD captured a 52 percent share of the U.S. retail desktop market in September, topping Intel’s 46 percent share, according to market research firm Current Analysis.

“Despite its past successes in surpassing Intel desktop sales in select retail sales weeks, September 2005 marked the first time AMD was able to outperform Intel for an entire month,” Current Analysis said in a report released late last week.

And a large part of the story is the current popularity of Windows XP Media Center PCs:

AMD benefited from increased sales of Media Center PCs, according Current Analysis, which are meant to be used for home entertainment purposes. In September, Media Center PCs accounted for 46 percent of all U.S. retail desktop sales, the market researcher’s report says. What’s more, 55 percent of those machines went out with AMD processors inside.

The star Media Center system was Hewlett-Packard’s HP Pavilion a1130n, running on a 64-bit AMD Athlon 64 processor, Microsoft Media Center operating system and 1GB of RAM at a post-rebate price of $679, the Current Analysis report says.

The market researcher says the HP model is the most popular Media Center PC in retail to date, and credits AMD for being in the right system at the right time.

Press release:

Today at Siebel CustomerWorld 2005, Microsoft Corp. and Siebel Systems Inc. announced availability of the Siebel Component Assembly for Microsoft® .NET. This offering enables customers to simplify and speed the development of custom CRM applications, enhance organizational decision-making and increase end-user productivity. This product is one of several .NET Framework-based offerings that has resulted from a long-standing successful strategic global alliance between the two companies.

Siebel Component Assembly delivers the essential building blocks to help organizations build custom CRM applications more quickly, easily and efficiently. Major elements of this new product line shipping today include a metadata-driven, declarative development environment and a pre-built library of industry-leading customer relationship management (CRM) components that enable rapid application development for .NET. The Siebel Component Assembly product offering is targeted for organizations that are experienced in building highly customized CRM applications. Customers using Siebel Component Assembly and .NET can now deliver CRM solutions that are cost-effective, agile and among the best in class, because Siebel Component Assembly is designed to take full advantage of a broad set of Microsoft technologies.

Siebel Component Assembly for .NET is based on the .NET Framework and features native integration with a broad range of Microsoft technologies, including Microsoft Office 2003 editions, Office Outlook® 2003, SharePoint® Products and Technologies and Exchange.

Recall that Siebel is being acquired by Oracle.

Update: A somewhat disquieting take by Stacy Cowley at InfoWorld:

Oracle threw cold water on Siebel Component Assembly last month at its own user conference, however, where executives including Ellison said Oracle would not seek to preserve code from its acquired applications as Oracle develops the next generation of its applications software.

Siebel Component Assembly still launched as scheduled on Monday, but Siebel’s executives focused their keynote presentations on the company’s broader strategic vision. Siebel CEO George Shaheen touted the company’s industry-leading 3.7 million active users of its CRM software, while Siebel products head Bruce Cleveland outlined the company’s plans to unify its Enterprise, Component Assembly and CRM OnDemand software user interfaces into one common interface for all of its applications. The company’s goal is to make its products flexible enough to match its customers’ varied needs and business processes, an approach Siebel has dubbed “customer adaptive solutions.”

Code in hand is worth a whole lot of “strategic vision” and even worse, this devalues the code they just shipped.