Microsoft News Tracker

Joseph F. Kovar at CRN:

Microsoft is extending its storage operating system from NAS to the iSCSI SAN space thanks to iSCSI initiator software technology it acquired.

Microsoft said Friday it has acquired the technical assets and intellectual property of String Bean Software and hired three of the four people who worked at the Montgomery Village, Md.-based developer of iSCSI targets.

Building a SAN based on iSCSI requires that the host server has an iSCSI initiator for sending data and that the storage device has an iSCSI target for receiving the data.

While Microsoft has included iSCSI initiators with its server operating systems for some time, the company has not made an iSCSI target available with its storage operating system, Windows Storage Server 2003.

With the iSCSI target, Microsoft plans to make it possible for OEMs, and possibly eventually custom system builders, to use its WSS 2003 to build hybrid storage appliances that can be used for file (NAS) or block (iSCSI) applications, said Claude Lorenson, group product manager for the company’s Windows Server Division.

According to Byte and Switch, the Microsoft version of String Bean’s WinTarget software will be an extra cost option.

Yesterday’s twists ([1], [2]) in the Microsoft European Union antitrust case were exciting, but there’s a topper today - Microsoft asks US courts to intervene in EU case:

Microsoft Corp said on Friday it had asked U.S. Federal courts to force IBM, Sun Microsystems Inc, Oracle Corp and Novell Inc to give it documents in its battle against the European Commission.
…
Microsoft, citing a law that allows U.S. courts to order companies to turn over evidence for use in foreign and international tribunals, said it had filed papers in San Jose, California, New York and Boston.

“A court has broad discretion to grant discovery,” Microsoft said in its filing with a court in Boston.

If EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes was cranky yesterday, she’ll really like this. Fun aside, I’m still presuming the audience for this very visible contention strategy is the public and the EU member governments, but it’s not really clear where the payoff lies.

Update: Aoiffe White at the AP:

Microsoft Corp. is asking U.S. courts to compel Sun Microsystems Inc., IBM Corp., Oracle Corp. and Novell Inc. to hand over correspondence with EU regulators on Microsoft’s antitrust battle in Europe.
…
Microsoft said it needs to see these documents to understand how an independent expert came to write reports highly critical of the company’s efforts to comply with a 2004 EU antitrust order.

“We are now turning to the U.S. courts for assistance in obtaining relevant communications between our U.S. competitors and the Commission,” said Horacio Gutierrez, the company’s associate general counsel in Europe.

Representatives from Sun, IBM and Oracle did not immediately return calls seeking comment. Novell spokesman Bruce Lowry said he couldn’t immediately comment because the company hasn’t seen the suit.

Press release:

Accenture will provide Microsoft with credit and collection services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) under a five-year business process outsourcing contract the two companies signed recently. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

Under the terms of the contract, Accenture will manage the processes associated with receivables and collections from Microsoft’s business customers and channel partners throughout EMEA. Accenture will also provide support for Microsoft’s credit analysis, cash application, customer data management and associated business intelligence reporting processes.

The technology supporting the services consists of a sophisticated suite of enterprise resource planning (ERP), invoicing and receivables management applications all running on the latest Microsoft platform.

Accenture is a long time Microsoft partner on the selling side so it isn’t surprising that Microsoft turned to them for outsourcing, but the question is why did Microsoft feel the need for outsourcing this function in the first place? Ovum has some analysis:

We assume complexity of work was one of the drivers behind the deal. Microsoft’s indirect channel is huge. This means that management of account receivables must be a costly and time-consuming activity. The size of the contract is hard to quantify. Microsoft has 5,000 employees in general and administration, and derives 32% of its revenues from outside of the US. But certainly, this is big deal for Accenture.

And the implication, of course, is that Accenture has better tools and/or cheaper employees to handle the work.

China Martens at InfoWorld:

A group of more than 35 U.S. and international IT vendors, organizations, academic institutions and industry bodies is due to announce the formation of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) Alliance Friday.

The new body, whose initial members include IBM, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems, will focus on further evangelizing the OpenDocument electronic file format.

Open Document Format for Office Applications, also known as OpenDocument, is being developed by the OASIS standards body as an XML (extensible markup language) file format. The format covers text, spreadsheets and other document types created by office productivity suites. Supporters of OpenDocument include offerings from open-source players and Sun’s StarOffice and IBM’s Workplace software suites.

The ODF Alliance has formed under the auspices of trade association the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). Other IT vendors in the alliance include Corel, EMC, Novell, and Red Hat.

There’s more in the article, including how the alliance would have aided Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn in his fight for Open Document. The ODF Alliance web site is now online and has more information.

Press release:

Building on a long-standing relationship of integrating enterprise-class systems, software, services and shared best practices, EMC Corp. and Microsoft Corp. today announced a significant expansion of their alliance to further simplify the delivery of information life-cycle management (ILM) solutions for Microsoft® application environments. EMC and Microsoft will work together to develop and deliver a portfolio of integrated solutions that will help business customers cost-effectively manage information on the Microsoft server platform.

The expansion includes significant investments and commitments by both companies to joint solution delivery and sales engagement support to accelerate customer adoption and simplify deployment of Microsoft’s Exchange Server 2003 and SQL Server™ 2005 Enterprise Edition. In addition, a worldwide network of partner account managers will be established to drive predictable joint engagement and solution delivery.

EMC and Microsoft have committed to this new framework, which will facilitate the delivery of an ongoing portfolio of joint solutions. The alliance will initially focus on the following three initiatives:

• Simplified Exchange Upgrade and Deployment. Assessment, design and implementation services enhance the Exchange Server 2003 collaboration architecture and accelerate the implementation and upgrade process. An optimized information infrastructure with a centralized e-mail operation will enable customers to back up and rapidly restore Exchange Server information for disaster recovery, archiving and compliance.

• SQL Server 2005 Upgrade and Deployment. Database design and implementation services streamline customer upgrades to or new deployments of SQL Server 2005. This solution also results in an information infrastructure optimized for scalability, performance and availability.

• Accelerated Lotus Notes to Exchange Migration. Migration assessment, design and implementation services help Lotus Notes customers migrate to Exchange Server 2003 on an optimized EMC information infrastructure.

This is on the service side of EMC’s business. They still compete with Microsoft on products like VMware and continuous data protection, while having a strained relationship in low end network storage.

Update: And today EMC was one of the founders of the OpenDocument Format Alliance.