Microsoft News Tracker

Press release:

Today at HostingCon 2006, Microsoft Corp. announced the availability of Microsoft® Solution for Windows®-based Hosting Version 4.0, which helps Web hosting providers rapidly launch new services; target developers of Web applications; and increase operational efficiency in their business through best practices, tools, scripts and code samples. The updated solution includes support for the recently launched Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0, as well as guidance for hosters just starting out with Windows.
…
Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting Version 4.0 will be available worldwide on Aug. 4. More information about Microsoft’s hosting solutions can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/hosting.

Microsoft was also touting the successes of Windows Web hosting in a separate press release.

Press release:

Microsoft Corp. and XenSource Inc. today announced they will cooperate on the development of technology to provide interoperability between Xen™-enabled Linux and the new Microsoft® Windows® hypervisor technology-based Windows Server® virtualization. With the resulting technology, the next version of Windows Server, code-named “Longhorn,” will provide customers with a flexible and powerful virtualization solution across their hardware infrastructure and operating system environments for cost-saving consolidation of Windows, Linux and Xen-enabled Linux distributions.
…
Microsoft anticipates providing a beta release of Windows Server virtualization by the end of 2006 and plans to release the solution to manufacturing (RTM) within 180 days of the RTM of Windows Server “Longhorn,” which is targeted for the end of 2007. Microsoft currently provides virtual machine add-ins and technical support for Linux guest operating systems running on Virtual Server 2005 R2.

This agreement builds on an ongoing relationship between Microsoft and XenSource. XenSource has previously licensed the Microsoft Virtual Hard Disk format to enable interoperability with Microsoft virtualization technologies. For customers with Premier-level support agreements, Microsoft will use commercially reasonable efforts to address potential issues with Microsoft software running in XenEnterprise.

Peter Galli has more background at eWeek including:

Frank Artale, the vice president of business development at XenSource, told eWEEK that Xen is being incorporated into Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 platform, as well as in upcoming enterprise Red Hat Linux releases, and said that, from a technical perspective, Linux has a protocol through which it talks to the Xen hypervisor.

“One of the significant pieces of the work we have going on is to provide an adapter between the Xen hypercall API and the Microsoft Windows Server virtualization hypercall API, so there will be adaptation to allow existing Linux implementations that are Xen enabled to run on the Longhorn Server that has been enabled with Viridian,” he said.

Also, specific optimizations will be added to optimize Linux performance as it runs on top of Longhorn Server in the form of drivers to enable specific forms of I/O partitions, in particular network and disk I/O, Artale said.

Finally, Steve Hamm at BusinessWeek online gives an assessment of the state of the virtualization business by reference to Microsoft competitor VMware who we mentioned last week:

Last week, when parent EMC revealed second quarter results, VMware’s business posted a very healthy 73% increase to $158 million. That puts it on track to rack up around $630 million in sales this year. VMware very slyly in February released a free version of its basic virtualization software to head off the threat from Xen. (It still charges for maintenance) Now its main bulwark against rivals is innovation. Analysts say it has a solid lead on both Microsoft and Xen.

Update 7/20: Ashlee Vance at The Register offers some background on the interactions between Microft, VMware, and XenSource.

The June statistics on US Web searches are in from comScore and Microsoft is still getting beaten up by Yahoo and Google:

In June 2006, Google gained in search market share for the eleventh consecutive month and maintained its status as market leader with 44.7 percent of searches conducted on its sites. Yahoo! remained in second place while increasing its share to 28.5 percent, and MSN ranked third with 12.8 percent.

Compared to May, Google and Yahoo were up 0.5 while MSN was down 0.3. One other interesting factoid:

Google and Yahoo! continue to dominate the toolbar search market, combining for more than 95 percent of the market share in June. Google grabbed 49.6 percent of toolbar searches, while Yahoo! captured 46.1 percent.

If you’re involved with the technical side of Microsoft Windows, you’ve certainly heard of the expertise of Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell of Winternals Software (freeware is at Sysinternals) and more than likely have used some of their diagnostic tools. I’ve only had occasion to mention them once on this site, but always follow Russinovich’s blog where he announced the news:

I’m very pleased to announce that Microsoft has acquired Winternals Software and Sysinternals. Bryce Cogswell and I founded both Winternals and Sysinternals (originally NTInternals) back in 1996 with the goal of developing advanced technologies for Windows. We’ve had an incredible amount of fun over the last ten years working on a wide range of diverse products such as Winternals Administrator’s Pak, Protection Manager, Defrag Manager, and Recovery Manager, and the dozens of Sysinternals tools, including Filemon, Regmon and Process Explorer, that millions of people use every day for systems troubleshooting and management. There’s nothing more satisfying for me than to see our ideas and their implementation have a positive impact.

That’s what makes being acquired by Microsoft especially exciting and rewarding. I’m joining Microsoft as a technical fellow in the Platform and Services Division, which is the division that includes the Core Operating Systems Division, Windows Client and Windows Live, and Windows Server and Tools. I’ll therefore be working on challenging projects that span the entire Windows product line and directly influence subsequent generations of the most important operating system on the planet. From security to virtualization to performance to a more manageable application model, there’s no end of interesting areas to explore and innovate.

So what’s going to happen to Winternals and Sysinternals? Microsoft is still evaluating the best way to leverage the many different technologies that have been developed by Winternals. Some will find their ways into existing Microsoft products or Windows itself and others will continue on as Microsoft-branded products. As for Sysinternals, the site will remain for the time being while Microsoft determines the best way to integrate it into its own community efforts, and the tools will continue to be free to download.

More details in the FAQ, but no financial terms were disclosed. Coincidentally (or perhaps not as far as the acquisition timing goes), Winternals just settled a lawsuit with Best Buy over the use by their Geek Squad service personnel of unlicensed copies of Winternal tools.

Reuters:

Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday said it has set a communications alliance with Canada’s Nortel Networks Corp. the latest step in Microsoft’s drive to promote software as a way to simplify how workers communicate.

Nortel said it expects to reap more than $1 billion in new revenue over the life of the four-year pact, under which the companies will shift traditional business phone systems into software, allowing customers to cut costs.

“We believe we can capture well beyond $1 billion in new revenue, ramping up with increased momentum through 2009 via professional services, voice products and applications, as well as data pull-through in the enterprise,” Nortel chief executive Mike Zafirovski said in a statement.

Nortel (which is overcoming some recent troubles) has its fingers in a number of telecom pies, but traditionally has been a provider of business telephone systems. This is likely a win-win for both players as Nortel gets a leg up on new technologies and Microsoft gets an entry to the business phone system market. I would observe that Nortel also collaborates with other companies like IBM in other technical areas. The press release has more details on the four year agreement.

Update: John Dvorak has a more skeptical view:

Part of the lure here seems to be Microsoft’s much touted “Unified communications platform.” This is yet another one of those half-baked Microsoft sounds-good-on-paper-fix-all-problems ideas that eventually drifts off into an obscure nook, sputtering. Nobody is even sure what it is — as usual.

Let’s be honest here: Insofar as communications is concerned, specifically, Microsoft is a laggard and Nortel is too. Two laggards do not make a juggernaut.