Microsoft News Tracker

Press release:

Nov. 14, 2005 — Today at LiveLinkUp Orlando 2005, Microsoft Corp. and Open Text™ Corporation announced a new strategic relationship to optimize Open Text’s comprehensive enterprise content management (ECM) solutions for the Microsoft® platform. This effort will take advantage of both companies’ global scale and complementary products to enable ECM solutions in large, complex customer environments.

As part of the announcement, Open Text, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, becomes a worldwide ECM partner with Microsoft. By deepening the relationship between Open Text and Microsoft, the companies will work to enhance Open Text solutions in ways that combine the power of the Microsoft platform and Open Text’s deep understanding of the ECM needs of large enterprises. The resulting end-to-end solutions from Open Text, which will include vertical-market offerings in financial services and government, will help companies address the complexity of managing an ever-growing volume of online information, a major source of productivity loss and compliance risks.

With today’s announcement, Open Text is also introducing two new solutions that use Open Text’s Livelink ECM suite and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003.

It’s another one of those “Get the Facts” studies, this time by Security Innovation Inc. The net: Reduced IT complexity yields greater reliability for companies running Microsoft Windows platform compared with Linux.

Today at the IT Forum 2005 event in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft Corp. announced findings from a report it commissioned from Security Innovation Inc. (SI), a leading independent provider of application security services, which concluded that as requirements evolved over time, the Microsoft® Windows® platform was more consistent, predictable and easier to manage than Linux. Microsoft also announced that industry-leading customers, including Teleflora and Tommy Hilfiger Corp., have cited reduced complexity and greater reliability as driving their decision to deploy the Microsoft Windows platform over Linux.
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“As they attempt to increase business capabilities over time, customers are telling us that they are hitting a wall with Linux, experiencing significant reliability issues resulting in higher total cost of ownership,” said Martin Taylor, general manager of Platform Strategy at Microsoft. “This study shows that IT administrators were better able to maintain the system while delivering new capabilities predictably and consistently on the Windows platform. We invite other vendors, including Novell, IBM and Red Hat, to repeat their own independent analysis based on Security Innovation’s methodology.”

Lots of luck on that last part. Paul Thurrott has more.

Ed Oswald at BetaNews:

Microsoft said on Tuesday that it was making available over 400 pieces of downloadable content through the Xbox Live Marketplace, including interactive demos of games, as well as free and premium add-ons for games, movie trailers and music videos.

To serve the younger gamer, credit cards will not be required to purchase goods. Premium content will be paid through a new stored-value system called Microsoft Points. These points are available for purchase at retail locations and online through the Xbox Live Dashboard.

Using Microsoft Points, users will be able to purchase gamer pictures, themes, and even full game downloads from the Xbox Live Arcade, the company said.

The Marketplace will become available when the Xbox 360 console launches on November 22.

Check it out here. Joe Wilcox has some further thoughts including:

I’m thinking that at least initially, the killer application here might not be the day one games so much as Xbox Live and Xbox Live Marketplace.

Robert Scoble points out that Ray Ozzie has started blogging again in his new role as Microsoft CTO. I have to frankly commend Ozzie and the other Microsoft bloggers, executive or otherwise, for providing real self-written content unlike the PR pieces written by staff that you sometimes see at other companies. Not everyone needs to blog, but those that do should really do it and they seem to at Microsoft.

Press release:

Microsoft Corp. and Cable Television Laboratories Inc. (CableLabs®) today announced they have reached an agreement that will allow Microsoft and PC manufacturers to bring to market digital-cable-ready Windows® Media Center-based PCs in the holiday 2006 time frame.

These Media Center PCs, capable of supporting a CableCARD™ module, will allow consumers to enjoy one-way cable programming, including premium high-definition cable content, on their personal computer and throughout the home on compliant network-connected devices, such as Xbox 360™, while protecting cable operators’ investments in high-value content in a digital environment. Microsoft is working closely with CableLabs to document final approval of Windows Media® Digital Rights Management (DRM) as a content protection technology for OpenCable™ products that receive one-way cable content under the terms of this agreement.
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“This agreement carefully balances the need to preserve the flexibility of the personal computer for consumers with the need for cable operators to be confident that the hardware and software shipped with compliant Media Center PCs will function like a CableCARD-enabled digital television,” said Glenn Britt, chairman of CableLabs and chairman and CEO of Time Warner Cable.
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The specified OpenCable architecture allows for multiple DRM systems to be used in the device and ensures content providers of protected delivery of content to the PC. Microsoft® Windows Media Digital Rights Management is the first major DRM system to complete the due diligence necessary for approval by CableLabs.

If you aren’t familiar with CableLabs, it is the technology arm of the cable TV industry.