But Wait, There's More

Microsoft to Pay Gateway $150 Million to Resolve Lingering Anti-Trust Claims

Microsoft will pay Gateway $150 million as part of an agreement to resolve anti-trust issues stemming from the initial anti-trust lawsuit filed by the states and Microsoft's competitors in the late 1990s. In an agreement announced Monday, Microsoft will pay the Irvine, California, computer-maker $150 million over the next four years in exchange for Gateway dropping all anti-trust claims against Microsoft. Gateway--which once competed with IBM to be the number three PC-maker in terms of size, has seen its share of the PC market erode over the last few years primarily due to direct-sale giant Dell--says it will spend the money developing new products based on Microsoft's software. Microsoft also denies any liability to Gateway.

Free Support for Visual Basic 6.0 Ends

Despite the chorus of objections from Visual Basic 6.0 users, Microsoft has ended free support for that product. Effective April 1, mainstream support for Visual Basic 6.0 ended, and the extended support phase has begun. Mainstream support provided free telephone and online incident support, as well as hotfixes, whereas users will have to pay for these items under the extended support phase (although security fixes will still be provided free of charge). More than 2,700 developers, including 200 Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), signed a petition sent to Microsoft last month asking the company to extend free support for Visual Basic 6.0. However, Microsoft stuck to its stated product support lifecycle, which calls for an end to all Visual Basic 6.0 support in March 2008. There are several million Visual Basic developers around the world, with close to one half of them using Visual Basic 6.0, and more than one-third using Visual Basic.NET, according to studies.

HPC Edition of Windows to Ship Next Year, Server Chief Says

The high performance computing (HPC) edition of Windows has been delayed and won't ship until the first of next year, Microsoft said recently. Windows Server 2003, Compute Cluster Edition was expected to be available during the second half of 2005, but problems getting beta versions out the door led Microsoft to delay the product. "Windows Server 2003, Compute Cluster Edition, which will beta in the second half of this year and be available in the first half of 2006, is focused on personal and departmental segments of HPC," Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Windows server division at Microsoft, said in a PressPass Q&A called "Microsoft and Intel Chart a Course for 64-Bit Computing" that was posted to Microsoft's Web site Monday. Muglia said the "Compute Cluster Edition" will run on the new generation of x64 chips, and will tackle a new generation of engineering and scientific workloads, although not necessarily the "extreme scale-up systems, such as those found on the Top500 supercomputing list. This sort of high-end implementation is well suited for Itanium-powered servers."

New Program Helps ISVs With Development Issues

Microsoft yesterday launched a new program designed to help ISVs develop software for the Windows platform. Called the ISV Advisory Service, the new program provides software developers with consulting support, development advice and recommendations, code samples, application certification advice, application design reviews, and virtual workshops delivered over the Net. Members of the Microsoft Partner Program can receive various levels of service in the new program, depending on their degree of commitment to the partner program, and whether they are standard, Certified, or Gold members. One company that has already taken advantage of the new program is Railcar Tracking Company of Snoqualmie, Washington, which needed help in migrating its database application to SQL Server 2000. "I was new to SQL Sever 2000, but knowing we had the 10 free hours of advisory time made us confident about moving forward," says Jim Dalrymple, the company's primary developer. "Otherwise we were looking at having to pay for some expensive time from a consultant."

MSN Exits Contract with Major League Baseball

After one year together, Major League Baseball and MSN are breaking up, according to news reports from over the weekend. Microsoft was apparently not getting enough out of a two-year deal that gave it the right to broadcast real-time video Major League games over the Internet, which Microsoft reportedly paid MLB $40 million for last year. Prior to MSN, MLB had contracted with MSN's competitor, RealNetworks, to air the games, but RealNetworks dissolved that deal in 2003. Adding to MLB's woes, AOL-TimeWarner also recently cancelled a deal that gave it rights to broadcast the audio portion of baseball games over the Internet. MLB uses Java technology and Sun Microsystems Web servers under a two-year deal signed last year (see "Major League Baseball Re-Signs with Sun for Web Servers").

Microsoft Clears Last Minute Hurdle, Completes Groove Networks Acquisition

Despite a last-minute attempt to block it, Microsoft completed its acquisition of Groove Networks last week. Microsoft's acquisition of Groove Networks, which was announced last month, didn't sit well with some Groove Networks investors, including Michael Mathews, who filed a suit to block the acquisition, claiming it didn't serve the interests of smaller investors. Last week, a Delaware Chancery Court refused to grant a temporary restraining order against the acquisition, which cleared the way for the acquisition to proceed. Microsoft says it will continue to sell Groove's Virtual Office software as it looks for ways to more deeply ingrate the collaboration software with other products, including Microsoft Office and the Windows SharePoint Service portal. Groove founder Ray Ozzie, who invented the Lotus Notes software now owned by Microsoft rival IBM, takes the job of co-chief technology officer at Microsoft. Ozzie will work directly with Microsoft chief software architect Bill Gates and fellow Microsoft CTOs, Craig Mundie and David Vaskevitch, to help shape corporate-wide communication and collaboration offerings. Ozzie will continue to work from Groove's headquarters in Beverly, Massachusetts, which is 3,070 miles from Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, headquarters, but that distance shouldn't hinder productivity, considering the software being developed here.

Gartner Says Midrange Companies Are Gun Shy About IT Investments

The consultants at Gartner are hosting their annual Midsize Enterprise Summit in New Orleans next week, and they have released a sneak peek of some of the findings they plan to divulge at the event. According to Gartner's research, only about a third of the IT spending in midrange businesses is involved in directly improving business performance, while the remaining two thirds is spent on infrastructure (servers, storage, and networks) or basic utility applications (such as email, payroll, and accounting).

The effect of the concentration of IT budgets on basic infrastructure is that business managers, who never get a big budget to do innovative IT projects that might push new revenues, think of IT as a cost of doing business, a basic building block like people and buildings. "Many midsize business executives have become disenchanted with technology solutions that they do not perceive to deliver business value," says James Browning, research vice president at Gartner, who will be presenting at the Midsize Enterprise Summit. "This has led to low credibility in many cases, which carries a high price for IT departments--pressure on budgets and lack of resource commitments in an IT environment of scarcity."

No kidding. Gartner's solution to the problem? The same thing we have heard for years: IT managers have to better communicate the value that they can bring to the business, and they have to learn to speak the language of business, not technology.