News


IDC: Asia/Pacific to Supplant North America as Developer Powerhouse

Huge growth in the number of application developers in China and India will lead the Asia/Pacific past North America by 2005 as the region with the most developers, according to recently published research from analyst firm IDC. Meanwhile, Microsoft's C languages still dominate among North American developers, but Java has momentum.

Lovegate Worm Makes the Rounds

A new variant of the LoveGate worm is posing a multi-layered threat to corporate networks this week.

6 New Oracle Flaws Patched

Security researchers at CERT/CC underscored the importance of a group of newly patched vulnerabilities in Oracle Corp.'s enterprise software, including versions that run on Windows servers.

Microsoft Brings Virtualization in House

Microsoft rumbled into the virtual machine market on Wednesday with the purchase of desktop and server virtualization product assets from privately held Connectix Corp. The move is certain to make virtualization a more mainstream technology among Windows users, but it fogs the outlook for current market leader, VMWare.

Microsoft Details MCSE on Windows Server 2003 Exams

The company has modified the requirements of its certification programs for the MCSE and MCSA on Windows Server 2003 and provided an upgrade path for people certified on Windows 2000.

Opinion: Is Open Source the New Normal?

As the Desktop Linux Summit gets underway in San Diego – on the heels of last month's enterprise-oriented LinuxWorld – it appears that Microsoft is swimming the wrong way against the tide of history. Not that history hasn’t been kind to Redmond. Just two decades ago, Microsoft led the rebel alliance that turned computing on its head by introducing the notion of a commodity-priced operating system running on separate commodity-priced hardware. Now, Microsoft is the Empire to be toppled. The operating system is becoming a layer of code that exists, for all intents and purposes, in the public domain. And Microsoft’s responses to this shift – and threat to its core business – have been tepid and misguided.

HP Ships F8-based Servers

Moving to reassert the former Compaq's role as the leading vendor of eight-way, industry-standard servers, Hewlett Packard Co. this week shipped its long-awaited industry standard eight-processor servers based on the new F8 chipsets.

VMWare Scales Up

VMWare has created a market for itself by providing software that slices and dices individual processors within Intel-based servers and workstations down to smaller partitions used by multiple instances of operating systems. Now VMWare is moving upmarket a bit, unveiling a product that will allow server administrators to create partitions out of groups of processors.

Precise Updates StorageCentral SRM

Precise Software Solutions' storage resource management software was updated this week to support Network Appliance filers, greatly increasing Precise's access to the network-attached storage market.

IE Patch Flawed

Microsoft put out a new version of a cumulative security patch for Internet Explorer originally released last week due to problems with users being locked out of some subscription-based Web sites and their MSN e-mail. Microsoft said the problem primarily affected consumers and the company emphasized that the problem had nothing to do with the underlying security issue addressed by the patch.

Dell Reports Fourth-Quarter Growth

Dell Computer Corp. turned in a 32 percent improvement in profits for the quarter ended Jan. 31, the company reported Thursday afternoon. Dell saw net income of $603 million on revenues of about $9.7 billion for the quarter.

Yukon to Get Reporting Services

The ongoing effort to expand the SQL Server database into a broader business intelligence and applications platform continues as Microsoft adds enterprise reporting services to its flagship database.

Visual Studio Gets Preview

Microsoft’s latest suite of development tools will provide optimized database connectivity, an enhanced version of the .NET Framework, and better mobile application programming capabilities. But even Microsoft called the new release “incremental.” At the same time the company announced a timeline for its next two Visual Studio releases.

Office Newcomer XDocs Renamed InfoPath

Microsoft this week gave a formal name to an upcoming XML client that will be an addition to the Microsoft Office family. The product, which had been code-named XDocs, will launch as InfoPath in the middle of this year, Microsoft said.

Microsoft Reposts Windows NT Patch

Microsoft posted a fixed version of a botched security patch from December that had been causing Windows NT 4.0 systems to crash.

Managing Expectations on Trustworthy Computing

SQL Slammer hit one of Microsoft's flagship enterprise products just as the company was patting itself on the back for a year's worth of Trustworthy Computing progress. The damaging worm highlights both the strengths -- and the weaknesses -- of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing effort.

Datacenter Licensing Tweaked

The Windows Server 2003 version of Datacenter Server will have a couple of licensing changes -- a 128-processor SKU and Datacenter-only downgrade rights.

VMWare Refreshes Virtual Machine Offering for Servers

VMWare this week released a new version of its virtual machine offering for servers, adding support for Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Datacenter Server and 32-processor, Intel-based servers from Unisys.

Microsoft Posts 2 Security Bulletins

Microsoft posted a "critical" cumulative patch fixing two new vulnerabilities affecting Internet Explorer. Microsoft also put out a separate patch for an "important" security problem in Windows XP.

Microsoft, Lotus Chase Service Provider Messaging Business

In the space of a week, Microsoft and IBM’s Lotus software group introduced versions of their enterprise messaging and groupware platforms designed to support high-volume service provider and ISP implementations.