Microsoft Corp. has tremendous power to push technological change on IT, but even Microsoft's industry-shaping power is subject to the gale-force winds of economic change.
This is evident in a sampling of Windows end-user companies, contacted by ENT as a follow-up to a Windows 2000 rollout survey conducted at the end of 2000. In every case, companies that had ambitious plans for a Windows 2000 rollout during 2001 have had to scale back because of shrinking IT budgets.
"I was anticipating a number of deals for deploying Windows 2000 last spring, but only one of them came to fruition," says Austin Miller, a consultant and system integrator. "So when I say died, it died."
- By Joe McKendrick
- 02/11/2002
It took Microsoft Corp. more than four years to deliver Windows 2000. Since then, the software giant seems to have set a much snappier pace for operating system releases.
In late 2001 we had Windows XP. This year is supposed to bring Windows .NET Server, with Longhorn coming in 2003.
Now some analysts – and more than a few users – are saying that Microsoft could do itself and its customers a favor by reining-in its aggressive product development and marketing timetables.
- By Stephen Swoyer
- 02/11/2002
As developers shift their focus from the desktop to the Web, Microsoft is <i>opening</i> a new bag of tricks with Visual Studio .NET to ensure its .NET Framework enjoys as much success as Windows did. Visual Studio .NET launches next Wednesday.
- By Matt Migliore
- 02/07/2002
Oracle suffered a security embarrassment this week when a U.K.-based security firm documented several serious vulnerabilities in the midst of Oracle's long-running "Unbreakable" marketing and advertising campaign.
- By Stephen Swoyer
- 02/07/2002
Microsoft and IBM jointly announced a new organization designed to ensure the interoperability of Web services. The group, which will monitor the consistency of emerging standards and protocols, has received the backing of more than 40 vendors. Sun is notably absent but hasn't ruled out joining.
- By Matt Migliore
- 02/07/2002
IBM is consolidating Unix and Windows-based workstations under the IntelliStation line, and adding Linux support to the mix.
- By Scott Bekker
- 02/06/2002
Microsoft is leaning more heavily on its ISV partner SpeechWorks as Microsoft works to create the speech hooks that will encourage developers to use Microsoft's platforms for speech-enabled applications.
- By Scott Bekker
- 02/06/2002
Few topics have commanded as much of Windows server administrators' attention in recent months as the issue of staying on top of Microsoft security vulnerabilities and hotfixes. Shavlik is among the vendors releasing tools to help administrators manage those patches across the enterprise. ENT reviewer Stephen Swoyer takes a look at the latest version of Shavlik's HFNetChk Pro, and finds a lot to like.
- By Stephen Swoyer
- 02/06/2002
Microsoft released a beta version of a tool that partially addresses a hole in the cross-platform claims of its .NET Framework -- lack of Java support.
- By Scott Bekker
- 02/05/2002
Dell this week publicly claimed the performance lead over IBM on the Transaction Processing Performance Council's TPC-W benchmark for transactional Web e-commerce.
- By Scott Bekker
- 02/05/2002
BizTalk Server 2002, an incremental improvement to Microsoft's integration server, shipped on Monday with new technology for quickly distributing trading infrastructure to partners and tight integration with Visual Studio .NET.
- By Scott Bekker
- 02/05/2002
Microsoft no longer offers the Authorized Academic Training Provider (AATP) program as of this year; company replaces it with the Microsoft IT Academy.
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 02/01/2002
Out of 1,139 votes, 61 percent of respondents who had migrated to Win2K had moved to Active Directory.
Changes are afoot to make Active Directory more flexible.
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 02/01/2002
U.S. pricing for Microsoft exams through Prometric and VUE testing centers has increased 25 percent, to $125.
- By Michael Domingo
- 02/01/2002
Beta version of an admin pack lets IT administrators manage Windows 2000 Server, .NET Servers from XP.
- By Stephen Swoyer
- 02/01/2002
Windows NT, one of the most important products in Microsoft’s 25-year history, will be officially laid to rest July 1, 2003.
U.K.-based Netcraft finds Microsoft's fledgling ASP.NET was in use at about 1,500 sites on the Web in January.
- By Scott Bekker
- 01/31/2002
The new fix for the domain trust vulnerability just made it into the Windows 2000 Security Rollup Package Microsoft posted this week.
- By Scott Bekker
- 01/31/2002
Microsoft warned of a serious-sounding privilege elevation vulnerability involving trust relationships between domains in both Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000. Hurdles in the way of exploiting the vulnerability make it a long shot for any attacker to exploit, according to Microsoft.
- By Scott Bekker
- 01/31/2002