But Wait, There's More

Microsoft Unveils Windows N: The Media Player-less Version for Europe

Windows XP Home Edition N and Windows XP Professional N. Those are the new names for the version of Windows Microsoft will sell in Europe that won't contain the Windows Media Player, as ordered by the European Commission. In addition to the new "N" moniker, which stands for "Not with Windows Media Player," Microsoft agreed to make a number of other changes requested by the European Commission as part of its remediation for holding a monopoly, including: removing references in retail packaging that certain products won't work properly with the "N" version of Windows; to create software that will enable the re-installation of media files the commission ordered Microsoft to remove; and to change various registry settings. As awkward as the "N" version might seem, it's head and shoulders above the previous name that Microsoft suggested in December for the Windows Media Player-less version: "Windows: Reduced Functionality Edition." And you thought WUS was a poor product name…

Quest and Microsoft Bolster NetWare-to-Windows Migration Tools

Microsoft is ramping up its attack on Novell's considerable NetWare installed base, and rolling out new migration programs to entice Novell GroupWise customers to Windows Server 2003 and Exchange Server. Last week the Redmond, Washington, software giant and Windows-migration specialist Quest Software announced the availability of a 20 percent discount off the cost of Quest's GroupWise Migrator for GroupWise shops with more than 1,000 seats. Microsoft also announced that Exchange Server 2003 can now support migration tools for Novell GroupWise 6.5.x, expanding on the previous availability of GroupWise 5.x and 4.1x migration support. These particular tools enable GroupWise shops to simultaneously use GroupWise and Exchange Server 2003 in a coexistence mode as they gradually move to Exchange Server 2003 over time, Microsoft says. (Of course, Novell also offers coexistence between its NetWare and SuSE Linux operating systems and applications as a way to bolster its own Linux migration strategy for its customers, a pie that Microsoft obviously wants a piece of). Since Microsoft and Quest announced their migration alliance last fall, they have moved more than 1.5 million NetWare seats to Windows Server 2003, the vendors say. The migration program includes a variety of tools, "prescriptive guidance," training, and technical support offerings.

Bill Gates' 'Think Week' Retreat Chronicled for the First Time

A journalist has accompanied Bill Gates for the first time on one of his super-secret "Think Week" retreats, the Wall Street Journal reported this week. While Microsoft's chief software architect has barred nearly everybody--including his own family--from attending the twice-yearly practice at a modest cottage in the backwoods somewhere in the Pacific Northwest for the last 20-odd years, he agreed to let in the Journal's tech reporter, Bob Guth, as an observer on the strict condition that he not disclose the Think Week's location. According to Guth's account, Gates spends his days poring over assorted papers on computing, eating humble meals and consuming large amounts of Diet Orange Crush (and some Diet Coke too) in his upstairs study. Gates often works up to 18 hours a day during the seven-day retreats, and has been known to read up to 112 papers, which is Gates' personal record. At this particular Think Week, Gates is a bit off his pace, owing to a slow start, although he still manages to read 100 papers, Guth writes. Among the papers and topics Gates immersed himself during this particular retreat are: computer mapping services; the growth of Internet video and hard-drive capacity and the diminishing advances in microprocessor clock speed; trends in digital photography; ways for software to better handle languages like Vietnamese; a paper entitled "10 Crazy Ideas to Shake Up Microsoft;" and another paper entitled "Can We Contain Internet Worms?" While Gates stays in near total isolation during these retreats--save for twice daily visits by a caretaker who brings him meals--he stays in contact with his company via e-mail. When he gets back to Redmond, Microsoft employees often have extensive new reading lists, and new strategies to execute.

Microsoft Hooks Exchange Analyzer Tool into MOM 2005

Microsoft last week announced a new version of its Best Practices Analyzer Tool for Exchange Server, ExBPA 2.0, that integrates with the new Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005, enabling Exchange customers to run ExBPA through MOM 2005 or through the traditional ExBPA interfaces. Microsoft describes its ExBPA software as an "engineer-in-a-box" guidance tool that helps administrators identify and resolve configuration problems in an Exchange Server messaging topology before problems arise. Since ExBPA first shipped in November 2004, there have been more than 200,000 downloads, Microsoft says. To secure a copy of ExBPA 2.0 go to www.microsoft.com/exchange/downloads/2003/exbpa/default.mspx.

Oracle Grows Sales in Q1, But Profits Hit By PeopleSoft Charges

Having eaten PeopleSoft in December and prevailed in its desire to buy retail software specialist Retek after a brief bidding war with SAP, Oracle is delivering on its promise that the PeopleSoft acquisition would deliver growth for the company. For the fiscal third quarter that ended February 28, Oracle said software license sales were up 12 percent to $947 million (with Oracle properly merging PeopleSoft's financials into its own for both this year's and last year's fiscal third quarters). Support and update sales were up 18 percent to just under $1.4 billion and services sales were up 26 percent to $614 million. All told, sales were up 18 percent to $2.95 billion. However, amortization of intangibles, acquisition related charges, and restructuring charges as Oracle laid off thousands of workers in the wake of the PeopleSoft acquisition took hundreds of millions of dollars off profits for the quarter, which dropped 15 percent to $540 million. Ignoring these charges, Oracle's net income would have been $814 million, up 25 percent.

BMC Software Snaps Up OpenNetwork

Systems management software maker BMC Software last week acquired OpenNetwork, a vendor of single sign-on software that integrates Microsoft's Identity Management Server for the Windows platform with OS/400 security and sign-on software as well as for similar RACF environments on mainframes and sign-on products for Solaris and AIX. BMC, which sells various PATROL system management utilities for the iSeries (including the capacity planning tools), paid $18 million in cash for OpenNetwork. The company's products will be merged into BMC's Identity Management business unit, which will also pick up 40 of OpenNetwork's employees under the deal.

Address Correction Technology from Group 1 and Pitney Bowes Now United

Group 1 Software last week unveiled new address correction software that unites its own CODE-1 Plus address correction engine with Finalist, the address correction engine developed by its parent company, Pitney Bowes. The new product, called DualCoder, enables companies with high mailing volume to utilize both products to get the highest possible address quality, and therefore the lowest mailing rates from the U.S. Postal Service, says Kurt Konow, vice president of product management at Group 1. Companies can either use CODE-1 Plus, which runs on OS/400 in addition to other major platforms, or Finalist, which runs on mainframe, Unix, and Windows (but not OS/400), as their primary address-correction engine. If the primary product fails to accurately code an address, the secondary address-correction engine kicks in, providing the maximum amount of coverage. For Group 1's iSeries customers, which account for just a fraction of the 3,000 installations between the two organizations, the only caveat is that, in order for DualCoder to work, all three products--including CODE-1 Plus, Finalist, and the integration code--must run on the same platform, which likely eliminates the iSeries as a candidate. However, this may change, as Group 1 and Pitney Bowes are considering opening up Finalist to other platforms, including OS/400, depending on the feedback it receives at the companies' respective user conferences coming up, Konow says. Pitney Bowes acquired Group 1 Software last summer for $321 million.