News


BRIEF: Altiris To Support VS 2005/SQL Server 2005

Life cycle management tool vendor Altiris says it will support Visual Studio 2005 Team System and SQL Server 2005 in its future products.

Exchange SP2 to Bring a Mobility Boost

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Microsoft this week announced an extension for its mobile platform that will more tightly integrate with Exchange Server 2003, adding new features and beefing up security for mobile devices.

Third Parties Feature New/Upgraded Tools at TechEd

A crowd of third-party software firms – including Borland and IBM Tivoli -- announced new and updated products on the first day of Microsoft’s annual TechEd 2005 conference in Orlando.

Microsoft's First, Best Customer

Welcome to the world's largest beta program. Microsoft is the ultimate "dogfood" company, testing its products on its own network, a global information system encompassing approximately 300,000 devices, 104,000 e-mail accounts and 89,000 end users spread out over 83 countries.

HP Benchmarks SQL Server 2005 Scalability on TPC

SQL Server 2005 got its first independently audited public scalability test this week when Hewlett-Packard posted results of a run of the database against the Transaction Processing Performance Council's TPC-C and TPC-H benchmarks.

Yukon, Whidbey to Launch in November

ORLANDO, Fla. -- SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 will launch the week of Nov. 7, Microsoft senior vice president Paul Flessner said Tuesday.

Borland Requirements Management To Work Inside VS Team System

At Microsoft’s TechEd 2005 in Orlando this week, Borland announced it will integrate its CaliberRM requirements management product to work inside of Visual Studio 2005 Team System (VSTS 2005). The CaliberRM plug-in for VSTS will ship in the first quarter of 2006, according to company officials.

Windows Server Update Services Generally Available

Microsoft on Monday began shipping Windows Server Update Services, its second-generation technology for patching systems in medium-sized organizations and enterprises.

Microsoft to Support RAW Photo Format in XP, Longhorn

Microsoft will add support for the RAW digital photo format in Windows. It will be provided as an add-on to Windows XP and natively in the Longhorn release of Windows.

Office Communicator Released to Manufacturing

Microsoft on Wednesday released to manufacturing its Microsoft Office Communicator 2005, the real-time communications client formerly known by the code-name "Istanbul."

Microsoft Recommits to XML-based File Formats in Office 12

Microsoft will make XML-based file formats the default for its forthcoming "Office 12" version of Office, which is scheduled for release late in 2006. While Microsoft supported XML file formats in Office 2003, the formats weren't the defaults and XML functionality was only available in certain high-end versions of the Office suite.

VIA Debuts Low Power Mobile CPU

VIA Technologies showed off the latest iteration of its x86-compatible CPU for notebook computers at the Computex 2005 trade show in Taiwan this week, touting the chip’s low power requirements.

Coming Soon: Patch Management for Smartphones

With the advent of cell phone viruses and Bluetooth worms, it was bound to happen. PatchLink is readying an upgrade to its eponymous flagship patch management tool aimed at adding patch support for smartphones and wireless PDAs.

Quest Software to Buy Vintela for $56 Million

Windows management software heavyweight Quest Software will buy Vintela Inc., a newer firm specializing in integrating Unix and Linux systems into Active Directory, for $56.5 million in cash, the companies announced this week. Quest expects the deal to close late in the second quarter or early in the third quarter, assuming regulators approve.

HP Readies New Thin Clients

HP will ship by mid-June three new additions to its t5000 line of thin clients, finally answering customers’ questions as to what the company will do now that Transmeta is exiting the thin client processor business, and taking aim at low-priced competitors.

AMD Ships First Dual-Core, 64-bit Desktop CPU

AMD announced this week it is shipping the first dual-core 64-bit Athlon CPU for desktops right on schedule. The company had said in late April that it would ship them in June and beat that by a day.

Opinion: Are We Winning the Battle Against E-Crime?

A recent survey of security and law enforcement executives shows that the fight against electronic crimes (e-crimes) continues to be an uphill battle.

IDC: Unix and Windows Server Market Revenues Equal for First Time

Factory revenues for Unix servers and Windows servers were equal for the first time ever in the first quarter of 2005, according to market researchers at IDC.

AMD Releases 'Pacifica' Virtualization Spec

AMD released the complete specification of its “Pacifica” chip-level virtualization technology for its 64-bit processors this week, joining Intel in the rush to build chip support for running multiple operating systems simultaneously.

Sharing Data Between Operations and Development Goal of New IBM Tools

IBM is shipping two new toolkits that combine technologies from two of its middleware businesses – Rational and Tivoli – to help developers and operators diagnose problems in production code while it’s running.