Microsoft News Tracker

Nicholas Carr is providing this weekend’s Microsoft buzz with a rumor that Microsoft is getting ready to roll out a Web apps strategy if not necessarily any actual apps:

Put your ears to the ground, my friends, for the Beast of Redmond may be stirring. I’ve heard that Microsoft has begun briefing its large enterprise clients on an expansive and detailed strategy for moving its software business into the cloud. If the report proves correct - and I make no guarantees - the company will unveil the strategy to the public either next week or the week after.
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The new strategy will, I’m told, lay out a roadmap of moves across three major areas: the transformation of the company’s portfolio of enterprise applications to a web-services architecture, the launch of web versions of its major PC applications, and the continued expansion of its data center network.

And in the latter regard, Carr has a double header - Rumor: Microsoft set for vast data-center push:

I’ve received a few more hints about the big cloud-computing initiative Microsoft may be about to announce, perhaps during the company’s Mix08 conference in Las Vegas this coming week. One of the cornerstones of the strategy, I’ve heard, will be an aggressive acceleration of the company’s investment in its data center network. The construction program will be “totally over the top,” said a person briefed on the plan. The first phase of the buildout, said the source, will include the construction of about two dozen data centers around the world, each covering about 500,000 square feet or more. The timing of the construction is unclear.

You can’t have a good cloud strategy without plenty of capex, of course, but what with the Yahoo acquisition this seems like a fairly stressful time to be raiding the piggy bank. It’s a good thing Microsoft has all those old-fashioned operating systems and offline applications to foot all these bills.

Less snarkily, if these rumors pan out, it will be interesting indeed to see how Microsoft manages to finesse “software plus services” to avoid killing the cash cows while simultaneously avoiding owning some large buildings stuffed with unused computers. And no, I won’t complain about all the times Microsoft disparaged Web apps.

Related: Michael Arrington reports a rumor that Microsoft may also be announcing at Mix08 an offline version of Silverlight to compete with Adobe Air for the Rich (and occasionally offline) Internet Application business.

Bill Gates delivered his last Microsoft keynote at the International Consumer Electronics Show yesterday and it was fortunately missing a lot of the goofy geek tech of recent years although the more staid and occasionally self-congratulatory tone has drawn some complaints about lack of Microsoft innovation ([1], [ 2]). You can catch the replay video online, but here’s a rundown of the new announcements:

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I guess the Microsoft Internet Explorer team took the developer complaints about lack of Internet Explorer 8 information to heart. Today, much reviled Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch took to the Microsoft IEBlog to report that the upcoming IE8 passes the Acid2 Test:

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Just last week Microsoft’s Tony Chor was roundly chastised about the lack of information on Microsoft’s next Web browser in the comments to his rather self congratulatory posting on the IE Team Blog about the first anniversary of Internet Explorer 7.

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In my posts yesterday on the Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting 2007, I focused on the concrete announcements and eschewed the high level pronouncements because frankly I was hard pressed to be sufficiently acerbic without appearing unduly negative. I don’t know that I have really resolved the quandary, but here are some thoughts on Microsoft’s new business initiatives as promulgated at FAM 2007 by Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, Robbie Bach and Kevin Johnson.

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