Microsoft News Tracker

Via Mini-Microsoft comes word that Hadi Partovi and Don Gagne are moving on. Per Brier Dudley at the Seattle Times:

The highly regarded manager of Microsoft’s MSN.com portal and content group, Hadi Partovi, resigned last week, a month after a large reorganization folded MSN into the larger Windows group.

Additional changes are possible as the merger of MSN and Windows is sorted out.
…
Partovi, 32, said he’s not leaving because of any turmoil at MSN. He said he’s leaving to start his own company, probably an Internet venture.

“It’s really more ‘I want to do my own thing,’ ” Partovi said.

The resignation was announced at a staff meeting last week. Partovi is remaining at the company for several more weeks to finish projects he’s excited about, including a revamped version of the MSN.com home page and updates to the Start.com portal developed by his group.

Alorie Gilbert at CNET reports on Don Gagne:

Don Gagne, director of development for Microsoft Office, plans to leave the company in December to pursue a car racing hobby. The 11-year Microsoft veteran gave his notice last week, company spokesman Lou Gellos said Tuesday, confirming a report about Gagne’s resignation in a blog.

Gellos said Gagne’s departure, which comes a month after Microsoft announced a major reorganization, is amicable. The company has yet to find a replacement for him but expects a smooth leadership transition, Gellos added.

There’s also more on Partovi by following the link.

While I’m on the subject of Microsoft employee retention, not all of Microsoft’s departing employees are techies as Emma Trincal reports at TheStreet.com - Microsoft Alumni Plan New Hedge Fund:

It’s a familiar story on Wall Street. Talented money managers split off from a blue-chip trading shop, hoping to achieve fame and fortune as managers of their own hedge fund.

In the case of Tahoma Capital, the story has a twist. The team, led by Jeffrey Scott, never worked for Goldman Sachs or Julian Robertson. Scott’s crew cut its teeth investing tens of billions of dollars for a different corporate icon: Microsoft.

Scott, Tahoma’s founder, was assistant treasurer at Microsoft for 10 years, leading the software company’s portfolio team for the past five. Besides him, Tahoma’s ranks include one former managing director in the Microsoft portfolio unit and four other senior directors and directors, according to market materials obtained by TheStreet.com.

Corporate treasury departments are not fertile breeding grounds for hedge fund talent. Usually, they employ conservative strategies to invest a company’s excess capital, with their main goal being preservation of money that may eventually be needed to fund operations.

At Microsoft, whose high-margin software products have thrown off enormous sums of cash for years, the situation is different. Tahoma says that over five years at the company, its team oversaw an average of $56 billion in assets that produced as much as one-fifth of Microsoft’s earnings.
…
Tahoma’s literature claims that between July 2000 and July 2005, Scott’s team produced an average annual return of 7.07% at Microsoft, making it the third-largest profit generator at the company. A Microsoft representative didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking confirmation of the performance.

More by following the link.

John Andersen at GameSpot:

Gamers looking to be among the first to get their hands on an Xbox 360 controller at Wal-Mart demo kiosks can still do it, but they won’t actually be controlling anything.

Xbox 360 kiosks placed in Wal-Mart stores across the country have been shut off, said a Microsoft spokesperson contacted this afternoon. The reason, according to Microsoft, is due to the console causing interference with Wal-Mart’s wireless “hand scanner” inventory system. Microsoft has acknowledged the problem as being “minor” and says a software solution is in the works to correct it.

GameSpot became aware of the problem after one of its editors entered a Wal-Mart store and discovered the Xbox 360 kiosk had been shut off. The Wal-Mart rep confirmed that the console had been causing problems with the store’s scanners.

Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, instructed all stores to shut down the 360 kiosks.
…
Microsoft said it identified the problem and within 24 hours had deployed new software to Wal-Mart stores.

The exact details of the problem aren’t clear, but it does pose worries for in-home interference problems. A Microsoft spokesman is quoted as saying it’s not a big problem:

“Xbox 360, like portable phones, wireless network routers, and Bluetooth devices, emits radio frequency in the 2.4GHz band. It is possible that devices that do not comply with FCC/ETSI rules of operation in this band may not properly handle interference from other 2.4GHz sources. Such devices would be extremely rare in a home environment.”

Press release - Microsoft Learning Launches a New Generation of Certifications:

Microsoft Corp. today announced a new three-tiered certification program that provides valuable training and credentials for IT professionals and developers. The new certifications — Microsoft® Certified Technology Specialist, Microsoft Certified IT Professional or Professional Developer, and Microsoft Certified Architect — map closely to Microsoft’s technology road map and better reflect the changing IT environment and the needs of individuals and organizations.

The first credentials will be offered for Visual Studio® 2005 and SQL Server™ 2005, which will be available next month, to help Microsoft customers and partners more readily and rapidly adopt these new technologies. Partners will also be able to take advantage of a new level of integration between Microsoft Learning and the Microsoft Partner Program, which will let them apply Microsoft Certified Professional certifications toward multiple Microsoft Solution Competencies.
…
Certifications for Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 will be available in early 2006. Microsoft will present more information about the credentials and learning resources at a launch event Nov. 7 for the Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk® Server 2006 products. Additional information about Microsoft Learning can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp.

The proliferation of Microsoft certifications continues. While not necessarily bad, the days are long gone when there were just MCSEs (Microsoft Certified System Engineers) and Trainers (Microsoft Certified Trainer - MCT) and not much else. Now the Microsoft Learning web site is beginning to look like a college catalog.

Press release:

At Fall Processor Forum in San Jose, California today, IBM announced the custom designed microprocessor built for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console is in production at the company’s East Fishkill, N.Y. fab and at Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing in Singapore. Together, IBM and Chartered’s common platform offers Microsoft a unique dual-source capability that provides the highest level of manufacturing redundancy and flexibility.

The specialized chip, featuring customized and enhanced IBM intellectual property, was designed and developed by IBM and Microsoft to meet the unique requirements of the next generation Xbox 360 console.

The chip was delivered to Microsoft in less than 24 months from original contract signing in the fall of 2003 in time to meet Microsoft’s massive worldwide product launch for the 2005 holiday season.

Since Xbox 360 launches on November 22, it is just in time. The dual sourcing is standard in the semiconductor industry for critical components. More details by following the link, but Arik Hesseldahl provides some interesting background at Business Week in Inside IBM’s Xbox Chip:

There’s a lot riding on Microsoft’s new and much-hyped gaming console, the Xbox 360 — and not just for Microsoft. IBM, maker of the chips that will run the machine, has a lot at stake, too.

IBM is keen to improve its reputation for manufacturing semiconductors after Apple earlier this year said it would begin using chips from Intel starting in 2006. At least part of the reason for the switch was Apple’s frustration with the pace of development at IBM and Big Blue’s inability to deliver a version of its PowerPC 970 chip suitable for use in a notebook computer. At other times, IBM has struggled to produce the number of chips that Apple needed.

To prove its chipmaking mettle, IBM is showing what its new Xbox chip is made of — literally — on Oct. 25. the outfit will make the disclosure at the Fall Processor Forum, an annual gathering of chip engineers taking place Oct. 25-26 in San Jose, Calif.
…
Microsoft will own the rights to the chip, says IBM Vice-President James Comfort. IBM says the chip is in full production at its factory in East Fishkill, N.Y., and at a plant in Singapore owned by Chartered Semiconductor (CHTR), which will serve as a second source for Microsoft, and was a partner in the development.
…
Microsoft, in a bid to get its next-generation gaming console on the market before Sony’s PlayStation 3, held suppliers to tight deadlines. IBM’s Comfort said the company sped up its development cycle to meet Microsoft’s demanding timetable. IBM’s Engineering Technology Services unit kicked development into high gear, cutting a process that would have normally taken 30 to 36 months down to 24 months. That meant making sure there were no mistakes made along the way. “We paid extremely close attention to detail in our design practices,” Comfort says.

“Microsoft is really touting the fact the the Xbox 360 will be on the market before the PlayStation, and that means that IBM had to build the chip right the first time,” Krewell says. “There was little opportunity to go back and re-spin the silicon.”

I’ll bet they’re keeping their fingers crossed. More by following that link too, including the fact that IBM is also intimately involved with the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Revolution.