Stuart J. Johnston

Beginning in early March, small and medium-sized businesses (SMB)  will have a new option for licensing Microsoft software through resellers – via subscription. Dubbed the Open Value Subscription, the plan will enable SMBs to license the software they use on a “lease-like” basis, according to a posting New Years’ Day on the Microsoft Small Business […]

It’s all over after Sunday night. That’s when Bill Gates, Microsoft’s legendary chairman and chief visionary, gives his final keynote speech at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in glitzy Las Vegas. However, don’t expect Gates to provide a lot of previously undisclosed information. Instead, since it’s his last appearance at the show, Gates […]

Microsoft is running a beta test of its Download Center site powered by Silverlight 1.0, the company’s cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in for multimedia streaming. As a way to showcase the development possibilities with the platform, the company is integrating Silverlight support into many of its own Web sites. And already, company watchers are tossing penalty flags […]

Although the update shipped months ago, Microsoft has been feeling some recent heat over its decision to block all access to a slew of older file formats in its Service Pack 3 (SP3) for Office 2003. Microsoft maintains that the SP3 changes, “>released in September, came about for security reasons. However, users argue that they […]

As 2007 closed out, senior Novell executives took the opportunity to pat themselves on the back, saying that the company’s often-criticized interoperability deal with Microsoft is paying off nicely. During Novell’s fiscal 2007, which ended on October 31, the company reported its deal with Microsoft brought in $355.6 million in revenues. The collaboration and licensing […]

Microsoft to 2007: Good riddance. The past year was full of legal and regulatory messes for Microsoft. Plus, Windows Vista missed the 2006 Christmas rush, and the company was slow to roll out its online services. But things could be looking up in 2008, at least in some areas for the software giant. However, the […]

Microsoft announced Wednesday it has passed an early milestone for the next version of its iconic Internet Explorer. An early version of the pre-beta code for IE 8.0 has successfully passed the so-called Acid2 browser compatibility tests, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager on Microsoft’s IE team, said in a blog post. While Acid2 is not a […]

Microsoft and cable giant Viacom announced Wednesday they’ve inked a deal aimed at providing content to Microsoft’s Web sites, as well as making Microsoft into Viacom’s preferred Web site display ad service provider, and letting the software company sell unsold display advertising for Viacom Web properties. “Microsoft’s Atlas division will become the ad server for […]

When Microsoft shipped Windows Vista this time last year – November 30, 2006 for enterprise customers and January 29, 2007 for consumers – the company’s minions had no idea what a long bumpy year it would be. To start with, Vista arrived too late for the crucial 2006 Christmas selling season. In an effort to […]

Microsoft announced Monday that it has released to manufacturing the long-awaited update to its Dynamics-branded customer relationship management software (CRM). Previously codenamed “Titan,” the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM actually has two names in its final form. For on-premise, customer-hosted, as well as partner-hosted deployments, the product has been dubbed Dynamics CRM 4.0. The […]

Microsoft announced Thursday it has released the first beta of its Hyper-V server virtualization hypervisor, previously codenamed “Viridian.” It wasn’t expected until early next year. The first beta release runs on the x64 version of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition. Microsoft released pre-beta code in the form of a community technology preview, or CTP, for […]

Following the European Union’s Court of First Instance decision in September completely upholding a 2004 European Commission ruling that Microsoft had abused its dominant market position, many observers felt it was just a matter of time before new antitrust complaints arose against the firm. They didn’t have to wait long. Thursday, Opera Software, the Oslo, […]