Microsoft News Tracker

If it is January it must be time for Microsoft’s Government Leaders Forum Europe where Microsoft regales the assembled bureaucrats with the latest computer technology. This year, Microsoft is pushing the Citizen Service Platform (CSP) which is “an approach to help governments of all sizes more responsively deliver services to citizens via the Internet.”

The Citizen Service Platform doesn’t involve any new products - it is a collection of tools and templates that customize Microsoft’s Windows Live, Office Live, Virtual Earth, Windows SharePoint Services, Office SharePoint Server, and Dynamics CRM for government use. That approach is typical for Microsoft and most other large vendors targeting vertical markets.

Microsoft is holding a private Virtualization Deployment Summit today and tomorrow for Microsoft customers and partners. An uncharitable view is that it is all fancy footwork to distract from the late and featured reduced Hyper-V (formerly Viridian), but there was some interesting news including the acquisition of Calista Technologies.

Microsoft has completed the acquisition of Calista Technologies, a leading provider of graphics technologies for next-generation desktop and presentation virtualization solutions. Calista software improves the user experience of 3-D and multimedia delivery for Microsoft multimedia applications, virtualized desktop deployments, and server-hosted virtualized desktops or applications using Windows Server Terminal Services.

Microsoft also finally backed off on the End User Licence Agreement (EULA) prohibition of the virtualization of Home Versions of Windows Vista which had caused adverse comment when it was revealed last year and was clearly an annoyance for developers (not to mention Mac users) although Microsoft had claimed security risks. Those concerns have apparently been allayed.

Finally, Microsoft renewed their vows with satellite Citrix, the long time provider of Microsoft-based thin client solutions and proud new owner of XenSource, and promised a new virtualization marketing push based on Windows Server 2008.

Microsoft today announced that they nabbed Disney CIO Tony Scott to serve as their new CIO replacing the unrelated Stuart Scott who left Microsoft under a cloud in November.

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European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, fresh off her antitrust victory over Microsoft in the European Court of First Instance, has launched two new investigations into anticompetitive behavior by Microsoft:

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There was quite a surprise today as Microsoft announced that Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division (MBD) will be retiring in September and the replacement is Stephen Elop, current COO of Juniper Networks and former CEO of Macromedia before it was acquired by Adobe:

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