Microsoft News Tracker

Press release:

Microsoft Corp. today unveiled the first publicly available test version of the next edition of Windows Server, code-named “Longhorn.” The release allows people to evaluate the increased control, flexibility and protection built into Microsoft Windows Server “Longhorn” Beta 3, available for download today at http://www.microsoft.com/getbeta3. The final version of Windows Server “Longhorn” is on track for release to manufacturing in the second half of 2007.
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The newest version of Microsoft’s Web server, Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0, also provides a more secure, extensible platform for efficiently managing and reliably hosting Web applications and services. Microsoft is today announcing the availability of the IIS7 Go Live license, which will allow customers to host Web applications and .NET 3.0 Web services on Windows Server “Longhorn” Beta 3 in live production environments.
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The Beta 3 release of Windows Server “Longhorn” marks the beginning of the second wave of innovation to be delivered by Microsoft over the next year. Following on the heels of the successful launch of Windows Vista™ and the 2007 Office system are Windows Server “Longhorn” and the next versions of Visual Studio®, code-named “Orcas,” and Microsoft SQL Server™, code-named “Katmai.” These products will provide organizations with an advanced development and Web platform as well as streamlined data management and analysis, enabling infrastructure optimization.

There’s more on new features in Beta 3 by following the link, but I didn’t spot any surprises although there have certainly been enhancements. David Lowe at the Windows Server Division weblog has more details on how Beta 3 will be widely distributed plus some new information resources including the Windows Server Code Name “Longhorn” Technical Library, a Reviewer’s Guide, and some free e-learning clinics.

From this week’s SAPPHIRE conference comes the latest on Microsoft’s Duet partnership with SAP:

April 24, 2007 — SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and Microsoft Corp. (NYSE: MSFT) today announced that they have deepened their relationship and extended their product road map for Duet™ software for Microsoft® Office and SAP, a solution that allows information workers to interact with select SAP business processes and data through Microsoft Office applications. The companies will jointly enhance Duet with additional business scenarios, platform capabilities and development tools. The upcoming version, Duet 2.0, is planned for the end of 2008 and Duet 3.0 is planned to be released soon after the next generation of SAP® Business Suite applications and Microsoft Office software, including Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server. This announcement from SAP and Microsoft underscores the companies’ continued investment in shaping the future of Duet to ensure that it benefits their joint customers.
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Following are some new features customers can expect in Duet 2.0 and Duet 3.0:

• Enhanced and new business scenario support for sales and supply chain management, and other business scenarios — extended capabilities will allow sales professionals to manage sales leads and opportunities within SAP® Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) from Microsoft Office. Additionally, supply chain managers will have new capabilities for purchasing and legal contract management. There will also be support for selected governance, risk and compliance scenarios.

• Expansion of Duet to support unstructured processes, information and team collaboration through embracing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Microsoft’s business productivity platform. The combination of SAP Business Suite and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server streamline the way people do business by truly connecting people, process and information.

• Enhanced Duet tools and infrastructure interwoven with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, so customers and partners can customize existing scenarios and create new ones. New scenario templates and development tools allow organizations to adapt existing Duet scenarios and build new scenarios that meet their evolving business needs.

For more information on Duet, visit http://www.Duet.com.

Duet still rates as one of the sparse crop of “corporate alliances” that actually produced substantial product, but there are some sour notes in the harmony since Microsoft persists in competing with SAP’s core business with their Dynamics line which has its own Office connector. For now at least, the companies are papering over the cracks:

The Duet partnership had appeared somewhat strained last month when Microsoft unveiled plans to come out with Dynamics Client for Office and SharePoint, a new product to more tightly integrate its own rival Dynamics business applications with Office and its SharePoint Web portal. Microsoft, which has tended to focus more on small to midsize users, also promised to compete more aggressively in the enterprise applications space against both market leader SAP and number-two player Oracle Corp.

Microsoft executives positioned the Dynamics Client, due out in May, as “a superset” to what Microsoft and SAP currently offer with Duet. For instance, unlike Duet 1.0, the Dynamics Client will provide Microsoft’s customers and partners with access rights to information and processes managed by Dynamics so they can customize and build their own Office business applications.
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During Tuesday’s press conference, SAP and Microsoft executives were keen to stress their ongoing commitment to Duet and limit their likely competitive clashes. The two vendors remain “good friends,” according to SAP CEO Henning Kagermann. “Every so often we’ll meet in the market and will act as fair competitors,” Apotheker added.

It will be interesting to see how well that works out.

When the first reports surfaced last week that a number of big name IT companies (including Microsoft) had participated in widespread kickbacks on US government contracts, it wasn’t clear to me exactly how Microsoft was allegedly involved. Today, the details are a little clearer in Lorraine Woellert’s report at Business Week. First the big picture:

With some big players already named in lawsuits alleging a widespread kickback scheme, the information technology industry will see further scrutiny as federal prosecutors pursue additional charges in coming weeks. Last week, the Justice Dept. filed civil charges against Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Sun Microsystems (SUNW), Accenture (ACN), and Accenture subsidiary Proquire as part of a two-year investigation involving potentially billions of dollars in government procurement projects.

The Justice Dept. unsealed complaints Apr. 19 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas in Little Rock, charging the four companies with fraud and conspiracy in their attempts to win lucrative government contracts. Prosecutors also made public six whistleblower lawsuits that had been filed under seal in September, 2004, by former Accenture employee Norman Rille and Neal Roberts, a onetime partner with Deloitte & Touche who has investigated alliances between technology vendors.

The lawsuits accuse at least a dozen technology vendors of operating rebate and commission programs, referral systems, and strategic alliances that they kept secret from the government agencies that bought their systems or followed their advice. The practice has been going on in some cases for a decade, the lawsuits claim. The Justice Dept. is seeking treble damages plus civil penalties.

There are more details in the article, but the problem is with the payment of referral fees which aren’t uncommon or illegal in many business situations, but have to be disclosed on government contracts. The way the fees were so visibly institutionalized at these companies indicates to me at least that they didn’t understand what trouble they were getting themselves into with the government. Where’s a lawyer when you need one?

As for Microsoft:

According to court documents, the original six civil cases Rille and Roberts filed will proceed against Cisco Systems (CSCO), Electronic Data Systems (EDS), SAP (SAP), Lockheed Martin (LMT), Oracle (ORCL), American Management Systems, CACI International (CAI), SeeBeyond Technology, and Dell (DELL). At least five other defendants remain cloaked under court seal, including one identified in court documents as a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM (IBM).

Boeing (BA), Raytheon (RTN), Microsoft (MSFT), SAIC (SAI), and Exostar were named in the original complaints, but the court, at the urging of prosecutors, dismissed them from the cases last week. The lawsuits themselves describe a network of relationships that reads like a Who’s Who of the nation’s biggest IT companies. Based on documents and information he received while a senior manager at Accenture, Rille claims in one of the original lawsuits, “all the major systems-integration consultants and technology vendors were and are engaged in the same kickback scheme and associated conspiracies.”

So Microsoft isn’t on the hook right now, but they and a number of other big names still seem to have a significant risk. I wonder if it will rate a footnote in tomorrow’s quarterly report?