Microsoft News Tracker

Steve Ballmer may regard Microsoft’s robotics efforts as merely cute, but the team continues to beaver on and today announced the general availability of Microsoft Robotics Developer 2008:

At the RoboDevelopment Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, Calif., Microsoft Corp. today announced the general availability of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 (Microsoft RDS), the newest version of its robotics programming platform. Microsoft RDS includes a simple programming model to support building asynchronous applications, a set of visual authoring and simulation tools to aid in application development, and tutorials and sample code to help developers get started.

This is Microsoft’s third major release of Microsoft RDS and builds upon its previous versions, which have received support throughout the robotics community, from students to researchers and commercial developers. More than 250,000 copies of Microsoft RDS have been downloaded and more than 60 hardware and software companies support or use the platform as a part of their products.

Hit the link for a list of enhancements in the new version, but the bigger news is likely in the licensing terms:

The new release also offers improved licensing options by replacing its formal noncommercial and commercial licenses with three editions: a Standard Edition for professional developers, an Academic Edition for students and educational researchers, and an Express Edition for hobbyists and casual users. While with previous versions, the user was allowed to distribute only 200 copies of the Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR) and Decentralized Software Services (DSS) runtimes, each license of the new Standard and Academic editions permits the user to distribute an unlimited number of copies of the CCR and DSS runtimes. Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 Standard Edition is available for $499.95 (U.S.) and is available at http://www.microsoft.com/robotics, or from Microsoft’s Volume Licensing program starting in February 2009.

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 Express Edition is free and downloadable at the same site, while the Academic Edition is the same as the Standard Edition, but subject to academic usage restrictions and distributed through Microsoft’s academic channels.

Nancy Gohring at IDG News Service reports that Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against WebXchange to defend customers that WebXchange had previously sued for using Microsoft’s Visual Studio:

In a new lawsuit, Microsoft asks a San Francisco court to declare invalid several patents assigned to an online transactions company in hopes of defending customers who have been sued by the patent holder, WebXchange.

WebXchange earlier this year filed lawsuits against Dell, Allstate and FedEx in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, charging patent infringement. The suits, filed on the same day in March, say that the companies violate WebXchange patents in some of their online services. In the FedEx suit, for example, WebXchange alleges that FedEx violates three of its patents in an online system that lets people send print jobs to Kinko’s stores.

Microsoft is not mentioned in any of the three complaints. However, in the suit that Microsoft filed against WebXchange, it says that the charges relate to the companies’ use of Microsoft’s Visual Studio software.

Microsoft offers indemnity to Visual Studio customers, so this was a predictable defensive move.

When Microsoft christened their "Flash Killer" technology as Silverlight in April, 2007, one of the reference customers was Major League Baseball. Today Adobe announced that MLB is switching to Adobe’s Flash technology for their online video needs:

MLB.com, the official website of Major League Baseball, and Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced a two-year agreement in which MLB.com has selected the Adobe® Flash® Platform to deliver all of its live and on-demand video offerings beginning in 2009. In addition, MLB.com will provide a downloadable rich Internet application (RIA) built using Adobe AIR™, so baseball fans can access additional features outside the Web browser.

MLB.com streams live every Major League spring training, regular season and postseason game, more than 2,500 annually, via its out-of-market subscription product, which has seen more than 1.5 million total subscribers since its debut on Opening Day 2003. Since that time, fans have accessed more than 1.8 billion streams of live and on-demand multimedia offerings on MLB.com, representing nearly 200 million hours of participation. By the end of 2008, MLB.com will once again stream nearly 12,000 live video events, including Major League Baseball games and thousands of events for its various business partners.

There’s no word on any functional basis for the switch or on financial terms, but Adobe is undoubtedly paying for the privilege.

On the subject of Silverlight, Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie blogs about Silverlight 2’s successes (baseball is not mentioned) and what is coming next year in Silverlight 3.

As promised back in July, Microsoft today took Exchange Online and SharePoint Online out of beta:

Today, at a launch event in San Francisco, Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division at Microsoft Corp., was joined by customers and partners to announce the availability of Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft SharePoint Online for businesses of all sizes in the United States. These subscription services offer businesses a new way to purchase, deploy and manage the industry-leading e-mail and calendaring solution, and the industry-leading solution for portals and collaboration.
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Businesses can buy or try the new services at http://www.microsoft.com/online. As part of the Microsoft Online Services product family, Exchange Online and SharePoint Online are available separately or as a suite together with Office Live Meeting for conferencing, Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services and Microsoft Office Communications Online for instant messaging and presence.

A growing number of companies, from small businesses to large enterprises, are adopting Microsoft Online Services. In just the past year, Microsoft has sold more than a half million seats for Microsoft Online Services, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Office Communications Online. New customers include Pitney Bowes Inc.; CG Healthcare Solutions LLC, an affiliate of Cowan, Gunteski & Co., P.A.; Clean Power Research LLC; Corefino Inc.; and Fair Isaac Corp.

In case it is not clear, these Microsoft Online Services offerings are merely managed hosting (aka remote outsourcing) by Microsoft of Exchange and SharePoint. They allow enterprises to run full fledged Microsoft server software without the expense of a full IT department complete with hardware. There’s nothing the matter with that and it is likely good business for all concerned except the Microsoft partners who used to provide similar managed hosting before the 800 pound gorilla entered the market. The partners do get the table scraps however:

Since July 2008, more than 1,500 companies have enrolled in the Microsoft Partner Program for Microsoft Online Services, with 100 more joining every week. These companies are realizing a wide range of revenue opportunity that spans reselling, migration, customization, consulting, training, support and application development, and integration services.

However, one downside for Microsoft is that the managed hosting business tends to be high in capital outlay and low on margins unlike Microsoft’s core software business. Apparently they are proudly undeterred:

Microsoft also outlined its plans to offer new solutions as a part of Microsoft Online Services in the next year. In addition to Office Communications Online, Microsoft is planning to offer a Microsoft Online Services solution that will provide IT management and security capabilities for businesses, enabling IT managers to secure and manage desktops using a Web-based subscription service. These online services will be based on components from existing systems management, identity and security offerings, and will complement Microsoft’s on-premise solutions, as customers begin to adopt cloud-based computing to address specific needs.

Despite the "c" word in the above nebulous description this future vision sounds like more managed hosting and not cloud computing.