Record Revenue Reported by Microsoft
by Alex Woodie

Microsoft recorded the most revenue ever for a three month period last week. For its the second quarter, which ended December 31, Microsoft counted $16.37 billion in its coffers, exceeding the next most successful quarter by nearly $2 billon. The software giant credited the surge to strong holiday spending on Vista and Office 2007, explosive growth in Russia, Brazil, and other developing countries, as well as continued strong demand for its server products and business applications. READ MORE >

Microsoft Quietly Ships Dynamics CRM 4.0
by Alex Woodie

On the first business day of the new year, Microsoft quietly began selling Dynamics CRM 4.0, the highly anticipated customer relationship management system that is expected to help drive Microsoft's push into the Software as a Service (SaaS) market. The multi-tenant architecture is a big part of the story, but a combination of other features like a new reporting wizard, a new workflow engine, and better integration with Office are also expected to contribute to the success of CRM 4.0. READ MORE >

IBM to Buy AMD? Seems Unlikely, But an Interesting Idea
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

A few weeks ago, when I was complaining that Big Blue needed to rationalize its product names, I quipped that IBM could start making its own Opteron processors just so it could call its X64-based servers the System/x6 line and then make it match the System/p6 Power servers and System/z6 mainframes. I was joking, but a report in the Financial Times last week suggested that IBM and Advanced Micro Devices might be thinking of merging their processor businesses. READ MORE >

SQL Server 2008 Delayed--Is Windows Server 2008 Next?
by Alex Woodie

Delivery of SQL Server 2008 has been pushed back a quarter, and won't occur until the third quarter, a Microsoft product manager said in a blog posting last week. The delay--occurring less than a month before the formal launch at the big February 27 server product hootenanny--will lead to inevitable questions about the wisdom of formally launching a product six months before it actually becomes available, and whether the delay will affect the delivery of other, closely tied products, such as Windows Server 2008. READ MORE >