News

Microsoft Wheeling and Dealing

Microsoft makes some business moves in the fourth quarter of 2009.

• By Scott Bekker
• December 15, 2009

Redmond has been busy in recent months, trading properties and technologies and launching joint projects with business partners.

Rocket Software
This month, Rocket Software acquired the Folio and NXT businesses from Microsoft for an undisclosed sum. The deal means Newton, Mass.-based Rocket Software will handle the development, service and support for Folio and NXT customers and partners.

Rocket Software, a global firm with more than 750 employees, has a history of acquiring and supporting products, according to a FAQ page posted by Rocket Software and Microsoft after the deal was announced.

Folio is a rich-client application Web-publishing suite for assembling, enhancing, securing and publishing reference information. NXT is an electronic publishing suite for "storing, assembling, securing and distributing content online, on CD/DVD or within corporate intranets."

Microsoft acquired Folio and NXT in 2008 when it purchased Fast Search & Transfer (FAST). Rocket Software will support the product as Rocket Folio and Rocket NXT 4. The FAQ noted that other FAST technologies will continue to be developed and supported by Microsoft.

Rocket Software planned to announce details of its plans shortly for adding Windows 7 and PDF support to the products.

Teamprise
A few weeks earlier, Microsoft brought another set of technologies into the fold. Microsoft acquired the Teamprise-related assets of SourceGear LLC. Microsoft describes the technology as allowing developers using the Eclipse integrated development environment or operating on Unix, Linux or Mac OS X to build applications with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. Microsoft committed to integrating functionality from the Teamprise Client Suite into Visual Studio 2010.

The suite includes a Teamprise Plug-in for Eclipse, a Teamprise Explorer and a Teamprise Command-Line Client. Terms of the deal also weren't disclosed.

i365
The same day as the Teamprise deal, Microsoft and Seagate Co. subsidiary i365 Inc., announced an agreement to work on heterogeneous backup solutions that the companies will begin to deliver in the first half of this year.

The companies will work to combine Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010, Microsoft's management software for protecting Windows environments, with i365's EVault data protection software, online backup solutions and appliance capabilities.

A first release will be an appliance-based backup solution that is scheduled for delivery simultaneous with the release to manufacturing of DPM 2010. Microsoft and i365 position the solutions as a way to use DPM for Windows in a single solution that can also handle data backup and recovery from Unix, Linux, Novell Netware, VMware, IBM and Oracle platforms.