Microsoft News Tracker

Microsoft has raised a media alert for a press conference at 2PM Pacific time where CEO Steve Ballmer will make “an industry announcement.” There are no more official details than that, but the Wall Street Journal is reporting (actual WSJ link here, subscription required) that Microsoft and Novell are entering into a partnership whereby Microsoft will offer sales support for Novell’s SUSE Linux and the two will work on technologies that make it easier for users to run both SUSE Linux and Windows. It sounds to me like a Microsoft Virtual Server deal in the same vein as Microsoft’s agreement with Xensource in July.

Update: The actual deal was rather bigger than I had guessed:

Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. today announced a set of broad business and technical collaboration agreements to build, market and support a series of new solutions to make Novell and Microsoft® products work better together. The two companies also announced an agreement to provide each other’s customers with patent coverage for their respective products. These agreements will be in place until at least 2012.

Removing the spectre of Microsoft patent lawsuits is nice for the Open Source crowd and I suppose vice versa, but here’s the fine print:

Under the patent cooperation agreement, both companies will make upfront payments in exchange for a release from any potential liability for use of each other’s patented intellectual property, with a net balancing payment from Microsoft to Novell reflecting the larger applicable volume of Microsoft’s product shipments. Novell will also make running royalty payments based on a percentage of its revenues from open source products.

So at one stroke, Novell gets cash and Microsoft establishes the position that Linux in some way infringes on Microsoft patents. Nice.

But wait, there’s more:

Under the agreement, Novell is establishing clear leadership among Linux platform and open source software providers on interoperability for mixed-source environments. As a result, Microsoft will officially recommend SUSE Linux Enterprise for customers who want Windows and Linux solutions. Additionally, Microsoft will distribute coupons for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server maintenance and support, so that customers can benefit from the use of an interoperable version of Linux with patent coverage as well as the collaborative work between the two companies.

I’m somewhat doubtful that Microsoft salesmen are going to be giving SUSE Linux more than a footnote for sheer personal economic reasons. Could you blame them? The fine print says that Microsoft is purchasing 70,000 coupons from Novell so my take is that this is merely another cash transfusion.

The two companies will create a joint research facility at which Microsoft and Novell technical experts will architect and test new software solutions and work with customers and the community to build and support these technologies. The agreement between Microsoft and Novell focuses on three technical areas that provide important value and choice to the market:

• Virtualization. Virtualization is one of the most important trends in the industry. Customers tell Microsoft that virtualization is one way they can consolidate and more easily manage rapidly growing server workloads and their large set of server applications. Microsoft and Novell will jointly develop a compelling virtualization offering for Linux and Windows.

• Web services for managing physical and virtual servers. Web services and service-oriented architectures continue to be one of the defining ways software companies can deliver greater value to customers. Microsoft and Novell will undertake work to make it easier for customers to manage mixed Windows and SUSE Linux Enterprise environments and to make it easier for customers to federate Microsoft Active Directory® with Novell eDirectory.

• Document format compatibility. Microsoft and Novell have been focusing on ways to improve interoperability between office productivity applications. The two companies will now work together on ways for OpenOffice and Microsoft Office system users to best share documents, and both will take steps to make translators available to improve interoperability between Open XML and OpenDocument formats.

I question how much of a player Novell is in any of these areas where there are already substantial ongoing efforts, but heck, why not share the love? Finally, the press release is replete with encomiums from executives at Intel, AMD, HP, Dell, IBM, and SAP, but it’ll be interesting to see how it plays in the broader Open Source community.

To net it out in one line: Microsoft bought some legitimacy in the heterogeneous environments that predominate in larger businesses while Novell got cash and perhaps a slight advantage in the Linux commercialization business.

As promised back in September when Windows CE 6.0 was released to manufacturing (RTM), yesterday was the day for the formal launch event:

Craig Mundie, Microsoft Corp. chief research and strategy officer, announced the availability of Windows Embedded CE 6.0, the latest version of the company’s industry-leading software toolkit used to build real-time operating systems for devices such as Internet protocol (IP) set-top-boxes, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), wireless projectors, and a variety of industrial automation, consumer electronics and medical devices.

In conjunction with the 10-year anniversary of Windows Embedded, 100 percent of the Windows Embedded CE 6.0 kernel is now available through the Microsoft^® Shared Source program, an overall increase of 56 percent from previous versions of Windows Embedded CE. The Shared Source program provides full source-code access for modification and redistribution by device-makers (subject to the terms of a license agreement), who are under no obligation to share their final designs with Microsoft or others. Although the Windows operating system is a general-purpose computing platform designed for creating a consistent experience, Windows Embedded CE 6.0 is a tool kit device-makers use for building customized operating system images for a variety of non-desktop devices. By providing access to certain parts of the Windows Embedded CE source code, such as the file system, device drivers and other core components, embedded developers are able to choose the code they need, compile it, and build their own, unique operating systems, quickly bringing their devices to market.

Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition is also shipping as part of Windows Embedded CE 6.0. This marks another first for Microsoft; Platform Builder, an embedded-specific integrated development environment, will now be included as a powerful plug-in for Visual Studio 2005 Professional. This brings the entire development chain together in one, easy-to-use tool, from device to applications, shrinking time to market for device development.

Hit the link for the enhancements in CE 6.0 and as implied above, the importance of Windows CE is less for itself than as a base for device specific customizations from 3rd parties and Microsoft itself like the upcoming Windows Mobile Crossbow.

As for the complete sharing of source code with 3rd parties, that seems to have been a surprise for everyone including parts of Microsoft:

The 100% sharing campaign may actually come as a surprise to Microsoft’s own support staff, which this morning released instructions regarding how to tell whether a portion of CE 6.0 is shared or not. With today’s news, which BetaNews confirmed, there is no “not.”

However, not all of Embedded CE’s source code will be licensed for free. A significant portion of it will be free to those who have already purchased and licensed Embedded CE “in the box.” The remainder of the code will be licensed under Microsoft’s existing “Premium Shared Source Program” terms, specifically to “qualified OEMs and partners.”

As the spokesperson told us today, although the fees have not yet been disclosed, Microsoft will consider this program a legitimate source of revenue.

The fact that at least those who can afford it can see everything that Microsoft put into Windows Embedded CE 6.0, will be of interest to those who responded to the news of its impending release last May with questions about its relative interoperability, especially in the face of rising competition from Linux and embedded UNIX. Operating systems based on industry standards, some have argued, are more prone to being shared under open-source licenses, which lends greatly to their inherent interoperability.

In this space (or more correctly, collection of spaces) Microsoft has to compete with other proprietary operating systems as well as open source and in the scramble for share, Microsoft has to do what it takes to attract device vendors:

However, Hardy Poppinga, product manager for Microsoft’s mobile and embedded division in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, told ZDNet UK that the new “shared source” initiative was in itself the division’s “most significant announcement for years”.

…

According to Poppinga, Microsoft is opening up the code in response to the wishes of its partners, but he conceded that a “more competitive market” had also necessitated the move.

That’s certainly a refreshing difference from other markets.

The November 14 USA launch of Microsoft’s Zune is rapidly approaching and while the marketing has been low key so far, expect to see the sky darken with ads shortly. To kick things off, Microsoft’s Cesar Menendez points to the first Zune TV ads which he has posted on YouTube.

To be perfectly frank, I am hard pressed to see how any of them will convince people in the market for a personal media player to buy a Zune as opposed to any other brand. I’m sure the budget was large and that they tested them with some sort of focus group, but the one with the most Zune specific content is bizarrely uncomfortable while the others barely show the Zune in passing. On the other hand, maybe pet lovers are one of the hot Zune demographics:

More hopefully for Microsoft’s Zunies, ABI Research has come out with a study that reports that 58% of iPod Owners Planning Another MP3 Player Purchase Will Consider Microsoft’s Zune. The results were similar for other brands too, but the downside was that “Zune’s Wi-Fi peer-to-peer sharing, which Microsoft is playing up heavily, ‘isn’t all that compelling, at least not now.’”

Update: Menedez has just posted that Zune.net (general marketing info) and Zune-Arts.net (posters, Flash videos) are now live.