Microsoft News Tracker

Press release/Q&A:

With the release of Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, Microsoft sought to deliver on a lofty goal: To provide enterprises a new level of automation, efficiency and insight into security vulnerabilities when deploying, updating and managing their IT systems.

IT managers took notice. A year after the release of SMS 2003, a Forrester Research survey found that Microsoft was the clear industry leader in client-systems management (CSM) products, with 41 percent of enterprise-scale businesses and 30 percent of small and medium-sized businesses choosing SMS. The next-closest products had less than half as large a share of the market, according to a Dec. 31, 2004 Forrester report, titled “The CSM Vendor Landscape.” In a more recent survey conducted by Forrester Research, Microsoft was the top choice among 43 percent of North American enterprises that selected a preferred client-management vendor, according to the analyst firm’s October 2005 “The State of IT Infrastructure Adoption” report.

Note that the statistics are for client management. Server management tends to be a different story because it is a more heterogeneous (and non-Microsoft) environment.

Microsoft has extended its commitment to its enterprise management customers by today releasing a public beta of updates that significantly expands SMS 2003’s tools and capabilities. The new SMS 2003 R2 helps businesses install and manage software updates for third-party and line-of-business (LOB) applications via SMS in the same format used by SMS, rather than the numerous different formats and mechanism used by other vendors. In addition, IT administrators can now rely on SMS 2003 to check for configuration errors and security vulnerabilities on their system’s desktops and servers.

And from the following Q&A:

The release to manufacturing (RTM) of SMS 2003 R2 is slated to follow this beta, in the next several months.

The new news here is the support for third party applications and the vulnerability checking. Microsoft has made security analyzers available for some time and incorporation of the function within SMS is a natural fit. Including third party software updates is also a good idea, but requires a certain amount of cooperation from the third party vendors to reach parity with the SMS support of Microsoft applications:

Now, if independent software vendors use ITCU to create a catalog containing the definitions for their application updates, customers can download updates from the vendor’s Web site in the same format and in the same way they download Microsoft patches. They then can deploy these updates using SMS. SMS’ administration console now contains an option to point to any site that contains such a catalog and import it directly into SMS.

It’ll be interesting to see if Microsoft has enough clout to get a significant number of ISVs to participate.

Barbara Darrow at InformationWeek:

Microsoft is weighing a move into “smart shoring.”

The software giant is considering an “onshore-only” support option for new products, including its upcoming Office 2007, sources said.

If the vendor goes this route, it will join the likes of Dell and other tech companies burned by over-reliance on offshore support.

Currently, customers and partners calling support are routed to whatever call center is available. There are exceptions. Some government agencies now mandate onshore support from vendors.
…
Microsoft likely will charge a premium for an onshore support option, sources said.

Much more by following the link, but as we are all aware, language problems add to the general frustration of calling a help desk, particularly when it is a complex problem not solvable via scripted answers. Sweetening the customer support experience with exclusive or selective onshoring seems like a smart move and I’d bet it was suggested via customer satisfaction measurement.

Juan Carlos Perez at InfoWorld:

America Online is developing a version of its instant messaging (IM) service for workplace use, an attempt to give the consumer-oriented AIM the security, collaboration, and IT management features businesses require, the Dulles, Virginia company plans to announce on Tuesday.

Developed with online meeting specialist WebEx Communications, the new AIM Pro will become available in this year’s second quarter. Pricing details haven’t been finalized, but it will probably be offered on a per-user monthly subscription model, executives from AOL and WebEx said.

AIM, the most widely used IM service, is designed for personal use, but many workplaces have adopted it. This causes IT departments problems when they can’t manage, secure, and log their users’ IM communications.

To address this issue, AOL partners with IM gateway providers, whose software gives IT departments some control over the medium. AOL also collaborated with Microsoft to make AIM compatible with Microsoft’s LCS enterprise IM platform. Similar support is in development for IBM’s Sametime enterprise IM platform.

However, with AIM Pro, AOL is moving into competition with IBM, Microsoft, and other enterprise IM providers, the executives acknowledged. AIM Pro’s hosted, on-demand model will be an attractive alternative to the platform approach of IBM and Microsoft, which costs more and requires in-house installation and management of an IM server, they said.

The latter is the key difference, of course. If you want to roll out Microsoft Office Communicator to the troops for IM, you need to install and maintain Office Live Communications Server while AOL will offer a fully hosted solution. That’s the same distinction as that between Windows Live Hosted Domains and Google’s hosted email service.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with Microsoft’s current approach - it’s the traditional enterprise software model. It’s just that to get to where they profess to want to go with the alternative “Live” model of hosted Internet services, they are going to have to play catch up with competitors like AOL and Google who are already there.