Microsoft News Tracker

As promised, Microsoft today released the so-called “Enterprise” Community Technical Preview (Build 5308) of Windows Vista to a select group of beta testers as well as MSDN and TechNet subscribers. It is now feature complete and John Clyman at PC Magazine has done some tire kicking and provides screenshots.

When Microsoft discontinued the monthly CTPs in January and apparently felt the need to come up with new names for remaining ones, the expectation was that the “Enterprise” appellation indicated that this CTP was to be the first one explicitly rolled out to the business customers in Microsoft’s Technology Adoption Program who have volunteered to use it in production environments and report back. While that part is true, the nomenclature was apparently irresistible to the marketers who felt compelled to remind us that Vista is for business too:

In a conference call Wednesday, General Manager of Windows Client Product Management Brad Goldberg heralded the Enterprise CTP — numbered build 5308 — as a “call to action for businesses.” Microsoft is encouraging enterprises to begin testing out new features starting today.

“Windows Vista is as much, if not more, a business focused release that will provide significant value for business customers,” Goldberg said. He cited four examples of how the operating will benefit companies: deployment and support costs, security, connecting people and information, and mobile productivity.

It’s not clear what lead to their belief that business use of Vista had slipped everyone’s mind, but the speculation is that the proximate cause was Bill Gates’ demo of it as a home and entertainment platform at CES (see also [1]). Whatever the reason, this CTP does not lack the consumer features.

In fairness, Microsoft did provide some information about future support offerings for deploying Vista in enterprises:

The Redmond, Wash. software maker also gave information about a number of deployment tools and imaging technologies that will be made available alongside Vista, including the Windows Vista Application Compatibility Toolkit, the new user state migration toolkit and the new image format that provides neutrality across languages and form factors.

The next CTP is scheduled for 2nd quarter and is reported to be “targeted at the broader consumer market.”

This week both Gartner and IDC announced their server sales rankings for 2005 and there was a variety of news. Stephen Shankland at CNET:

Windows narrowly bumped Unix in 2005 to claim the top spot in server sales for the first time, according to a new report from IDC.

Computer makers sold $17.7 billion worth of Windows servers worldwide in 2005 compared with $17.5 billion in Unix servers, IDC analyst Matthew Eastwood said of the firm’s latest Server Tracker market share report. “It’s the first time Unix was not top overall since before the Tracker started in 1996.”

And in another first, fast-growing Linux took third place, bumping machines with IBM’s mainframe operating system, z/OS. Linux server sales grew from $4.3 billion in 2004 to $5.3 billion in 2005, while mainframes dropped from $5.7 billion to $4.8 billion over the same period, Eastwood said.

On the hardware side, Shelley Solheim at InfoWorld:

Worldwide server revenue rose in 2005 driven largely by increased sales of x86-based servers, according to figures released by market research firms Gartner and IDC Research this week.

Worldwide server revenue in 2005 grew 4.5 percent to $51.7 billion, while server shipments grew 12.7 percent to 7.6 million units from the previous year, according to Gartner. IDC estimates revenue grew 4.4 percent to $51.3 billion, while shipments grew 11.6 percent to 7 million servers.

For the 4th quarter, Gartner had somewhat slower growth year to year while IDC estimated a slight decline.

Although the two research firms’ numbers vary, the overall message was the same: lower-end servers based on x86 microprocessors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices continue to outpace sales of midrange and higher-end enterprise servers.

Revenue for the x86 server market grew 11 percent year-over-year to $25.7 billion, while shipments were up 14.3 percent to 7 million units, according to Gartner. Revenue for RISC-Itanium Unix servers remained about flat year-over-year, increasing 0.5 percent to $15.4 billion, while shipments were down 5.3 percent to 460,000 units, said Gartner.
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IBM continued to lead the server market with 32.1 percent revenue share followed by Hewlett-Packard, at 28.2 percent, Dell, with 10.5 percent and Sun Microsystems Inc. with 9.6 percent share, according to Gartner. IDC reported similar figures, with IBM accounting for 32.9 percent of the market, HP with 27.7 percent, Dell with 10.3 percent and Sun with 9.5 percent.

Jeffrey Burt also has more at eWeek.

None of the above are really surprising - they reflect longstanding trends in server software and hardware commoditization. Windows would have reached first place some time ago if not for Linux which takes server OS commoditization one step further.

Here’s an interesting twist as reported by Graeme Wearden at CNET:

Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and BayStar Capital must hand over details of their involvement with SCO Group, as IBM builds its defenses against the charge that it included SCO’s Unix code in Linux.

The long-running legal battle between IBM and SCO over the claim that Linux violates SCO’s intellectual property took another twist on Tuesday, when IBM sent subpoenas to four other tech players.
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The subpoenas demand that Microsoft, HP, Sun and BayStar hand over a range of information, including details of their dealings with SCO, by March 7. They will also have to appear in court later in March to give depositions.
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Microsoft’s subpoena runs to 13 separate demands. They include handing over details of agreements relating to any Unix product involving Microsoft and SCO, and all communications between the two companies. In early 2003, Microsoft started paying SCO what eventually grew to $16.6 million for a Unix license, according to regulatory filings. Only longtime Unix fan Sun previously paid close to that, with a $9.3 million license deal. Microsoft provided a second, though indirect, boost in August or September of 2003, when it referred SCO to BayStar, a fund that arranged a $50 million investment.
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BayStar must hand over details of its communications, agreements and investments in SCO. It must also reveal communications between it and Microsoft regarding SCO, IBM and the ongoing court case.

More by following the link and at Groklaw which published the full text of the subpoenas.

Hold on to your hats! IBM has subpoenaed Microsoft! And Sun! At last, we’re getting to the core of the matter. We’re going to get to find out the whole story. I’d pay for this. No kidding. Feast your eyes on these and don’t skip the topics for deposition…

The subtext here is the suspicion that SCO was encouraged by other parties to sue IBM as a way of inhibiting the growth of Linux.

Continuing the theme of previous reports, InternetRetailer reveals that the demographic targeting is paying off for advertisers in the ongoing adCenter beta:

… Microsoft Corp.’s new demographics-data-driven MSN AdCenter search engine marketing service is producing better results for advertisers than Google or Yahoo, a search expert says.

“We’re seeing better results on MSN than on Google or Yahoo,” Dave Williams, chief strategist of search engine marketing firm 360i, tells Internet Retailer.

The reason for the better results through MSN AdCenter, which is still in a beta test, is its ability to provide marketers with demographic data, including age, sex and home city, Williams says. Google and Yahoo don’t currently offer similar demographic data.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that MSN Search has far fewer users than Google or Yahoo.

William Echikson from Dow Jones:

In an escalation of their battle to wield antitrust law to rein in Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), a group of rival software makers Wednesday filed a new complaint with European regulators aimed at stopping it from bundling products with its Windows software.

In a statement, the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, whose members include International Business Machines (IBM), Nokia Corp. (NOK) and Oracle Corp. (ORCL), said it had “filed a complaint with the European Commission against a range of Microsoft business practices that threaten to deny enterprises and individual consumers real choice among competing software products.”

It said it wanted to stop Microsoft from bundling new products that would “reinforce Microsoft’s existing monopolies and extend its market dominance into a range of existing and pre-announced future product areas.” It cited Microsoft “dominant Office productivity applications.”

“Today’s complaint brings to the European Commission’s attention anticompetitive Microsoft practices in a growing number of areas,” said Simon Awde, Chairman of ECIS. “These include bundling and interface non-disclosure practices similar to those that the Commission declared illegal in its 2004 decision.

Although a new complaint from rivals was expected, the move guarantees months if not years of new legal wrangling for Microsoft. European regulators are obliged to investigate the new complaint.

Microsoft response:

Spokesman Tom Brookes said the company had “come to expect” complaints from competitors when it introduces new products.

The ECIS association “is a front for IBM and a few other competitors who constantly seek to use the regulatory process to their business advantage,” Brookes said in a statement. “When faced with innovation, they choose litigation,” he said.

Microsoft “will respond quickly and comprehensively to any requests for information from the Commission on this complaint, but no such requests have been received so far,” Brookes added.

The new complaint focuses on the difficulties of making rival software work well with the Microsoft Windows operating system. Rivals say they need more information from Microsoft to enable that to happen.

In Wednesday’s complaint, the ECIS pointed to Microsoft Office software an example of a Microsoft product that doesn’t permit rivals to interoperate properly with the Windows operating system.

The addition of client software interoperability complaints is new and potentially much more burdensome for Microsoft. On the other hand, nothing moves fast in the corridors of the EU bureaucracy so this story will be with us for quite a while.

Update: It’s not just Office but Vista too as Simon Taylor reports at InfoWorld:

A coalition called the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (E.C.I.S.), which includes vendors such as IBM, Nokia, Oracle, RealNetworks, and Red Hat, announced that it had made a formal complaint to the Commission over a “range of products present and future.” The reference to future products is understood to be Microsoft’s Vista desktop operating system, due for release later this year.

One example of the issues raised in the complaint is Microsoft’s refusal to disclose interoperability information for its Office suite, a lawyer representing ECIS said. By refusing to provide data such as the file formats for .doc, .xls, and .ppt documents, the company prevents other applications suites such as OpenOffice and StarOffice from achieving full compatibility, according to attorney Thomas Vinje, acting for ECIS. “This has crucial implications for Linux on desktops,” Vinje said.