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Sun’s JavaFX to take on AJAX, Silverlight in the Rich Internet Application (RIA) competition. I thought the days of slow, cheesy looking Java client apps were thankfully past, but I guess not. Hearing that “JavaFX Script leverages 2D graphics APIs in the Swing GUI toolkit” merely reminds me how awful Swing applications actually were. We’ll see if Sun can find a pony here with a scripting variant of Java, but I doubt it. While they were at it, Sun mostly open sourced Java.
Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar v1 released. I’ve long used something similar with FireFox, but one was really needed for IE.
SQL Server ‘Katmai’ Lacks Anticipated WinFS Features. Why spoil a perfect record? Related: David Boschmann explains Microsoft database projects Jasper and Astoria.
Microsoft publicly betas Tahiti, renamed SharedView. It’s a screen sharing program which up to 15 people can use for collaboration. There’s still no hint as to where it fits in the Microsoft galaxy of products although the original rumor was as part of Office Live.
Symantec attacks Microsoft’s Forefront Client Security. The fact that Forefront Client Security (for businesses) is using the same engine as the troubled OneCare consumer product leads to predictable snarking.
Microsoft signs Web video deals:
While it’s tempting to label the shows advertorials and leave it at that, Ben Silverman, Reveille’s chief executive, said he’s tried to find more elegant ways to incorporate products and entertainment.
I think Ron Popeil beat them to it.
Microsoft must answer racketeering claims over Best Buy deal.
Xbox Spring update released including Windows Live Messenger.
PS3 to ‘Win’ Console War Because of Blu-ray according to Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst.
Mac share of US Web surfers doubles in 8 months – it’s up to 6%
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?
David Lawsky and Sabina Zawadzki at Reuters:
A coalition of rivals charged on Friday that Microsoft Corp.’s new Vista operating system coming out next week will perpetuate practices found illegal in the European Union nearly three years ago.
The group, which includes IBM, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, Oracle and Red Hat, said its complaints made last year are yet to be addressed just days before Vista is due for release.
…
“Microsoft has clearly chosen to ignore the fundamental principles of the Commission’s March 2004 decision,” said Simon Awde, chairman of the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS).Microsoft said it had no comment. The Commission was not ready to act.
“We are in the process of examining this complaint,” a Commission spokesman said. ECIS disclosed on Friday that the latest additions to its complaint were made only last month, after it studied Vista.
…
Other complainants in the group include Corel, RealNetworks , Linspire and Opera.
The ECIS press release is here and technologies specifically called out are XAML and Open XML. The European Commission always seems to move at a snail’s place, but they do move eventually so their reaction to Vista continues to be something to watch.
I’ve already mentioned the Forefront announcements, but Microsoft had quite a bit more to reveal today at their Tech Ed IT Forum 2006 in Barcelona:
Last and perhaps least, Microsoft led a mixed bag of software vendors in forming the Interop Vendor Alliance:
Today at Microsoft Tech Ed: IT Forum 2006, Microsoft Corp. announced the formation of the Interop Vendor Alliance, a global, cross-industry group of software and hardware vendors that will work together to identify opportunities for enhancing interoperability with Microsoft systems on behalf of their customers.
Notable among the founding members are BEA, Novell, Sun and AMD, but not Intel, although why AMD signed up is a bit of mystery. Of course, the whole alliance is a bit of a mystery as the goals described are unusually fuzzy. However, Scott M. Fulton III may have won the prize with the observation:
In Europe, at the heart of the global controversy over whether Microsoft and interoperability are incompatible, the Redmond company announced it is funding a global consortium of software and hardware manufacturers in the name of interoperability itself.
Maybe it’s an extra credit assignment from Neelie Kroes?
Update Nov. 15: PowerShell won’t be compatible with Vista until January 31, 2007.
Update Nov 16: Peter Galli at eWeek elaborates on Longhorn Server:
The Redmond, Wash., software maker plans to release another Longhorn CTP (Community Technology Preview) later this year, followed by another CTP in early 2007 and then Longhorn Beta 3 by the middle of the year.
“The current plan is to ship Longhorn and Vista SP1 simultaneously, as it is one source code base. So, if you follow that model, you have to ship them both at roughly the same time,” Bob Muglia, Microsoft’s senior vice president for server and tools, told eWeek at the company’s TechEd IT Forum here.
The server code will be feature-complete in early 2007, said Muglia, who put to rest speculation that Longhorn would be officially renamed Vista Server, as it is referred to on some Microsoft staff blogs.
Update Nov 18: The Windows Server 2003 SP2 RC is now available for public review. Download and info is here.
