Microsoft reaches RTM milestone for Windows 8.1 update

Computerworld - Microsoft has reached a critical milestone for its next update to Windows 8, which is slated to ship early next month, according to reports.

Although the Redmond, Wash. company has not publicly announced that Windows 8.1 Update 1 has reached "released to manufacturing" (RTM), a term Microsoft uses to define code that's completed and ready to ship to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) for installing on new devices, reports on The Verge and ZDNet this week claimed that the developers had given the operating system refresh the green light.

Those reports were at least partly based on one by notorious Russian leaker Wzor, who regularly gets ahold of early builds of Windows, including those destined for OEMs and other Microsoft partners. Wzor claimed that the RTM build had been compiled on Feb. 21, and was signed off Feb. 26.

According to Wzor and others, Microsoft will post Windows 8.1 Update 1 -- not an official title, as Microsoft has yet to disclose one -- on April 1 or April 2 on MSDN (Microsoft Developers Network), a subscription service where developers can obtain copies of Microsoft's software. The public release, said Wzor, is slated for April 7 or April 8.

April 2 is the more likely MSDN release date, as that's the opening day of Build, Microsoft's developer conference, in San Francisco. Likewise, April 8 is the likelier for the public launch, since that's the month's already-scheduled Patch Tuesday, when Microsoft ships its collection of security updates.

Microsoft has already disclosed some of the changes to debut in Windows 8.1 Update 1, including a general focus on making "the UI more familiar and more convenient for users with mouse/keyboard," as Joe Belfiore, the executive in charge of Windows Phone's and Windows 8's user experiences, put it a week ago.

But the company has not confirmed one change that could have the biggest, and longest-lasting, impact: A default switch to the boot-to-desktop option setting on non-touch hardware.

Some analysts have interpreted that as a major retreat from the "make-them-eat-Metro" strategy Microsoft applied to the original Windows 8 and the free follow-up of Windows 8.1, which launched last October. Both required users of the OS to pass through the Start screen and its colorful tile-based "Metro" user interface (UI); Windows 8.1 included the boot-to-desktop setting, but left it switched off.

Windows 8.1 Update 1 will retune the OS's hardware requirements. According to Belfiore, the update will run on devices with as little as 1GB of RAM and 16GB of flash memory storage space, a necessary change if the operating system is to become popular on the lowest-priced tablets or possibly on ultra-cheap notebooks.

Chromebooks, the inexpensive laptops powered by Google's browser-based Chrome OS, typically have as little as 2GB of RAM and sport 16GB of on-board storage. Microsoft has targeted Chromebooks in some of its "Scroogled" anti-Google advertisements, and while the notebook have sold only in small volumes so far, seem to have generated concern in Redmond. Few Chromebooks boast a touch-sensitive screen.

Windows 8.1 Update 1 will reportedly be delivered to users of Windows 8.1 via Windows Update, the consumer-level update service, and WSUS (Windows Server Update Services), the de facto corporate patching and update software, not through the Windows Store, as was Windows 8.1.

If Microsoft does release Windows 8.1 Update 1 on April 8, it will represent an explicit changing of the guard, as that date is when Microsoft will also ship its final public patches for the aged Windows XP, an operating system that the company has gone to great lengths to eradicate, so far with little success.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com. gkeizer@computerworld.com.

Read more about Operating Systems in Computerworld's Operating Systems Topic Center.

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Microsoft finally rolls out Skype-Outlook.com integration to all users

IDG News Service - After testing a preview version of the Outlook.com-Skype integration for almost a year in some markets, Microsoft has now made it generally available to all users.

The link lets users of the Outlook.com webmail service communicate with their Skype contacts via video and audio calls from within their email interface.

Microsoft made available a preview version of the integration in hand-picked markets starting in April of last year and at the time promised the worldwide availability of Skype for Outlook.com for the summer of 2013, so the integration is arriving with a significant delay.

To tie Outlook.com and Skype together, users need to merge their Microsoft and Skype accounts and install a browser plug-in that works with Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

"With Skype for Outlook.com, you can easily connect with your Skype friends right from your Outlook.com inbox, so you can go from chat or email to a video call with just one click," wrote Microsoft official Karen Tong in a blog post on Tuesday.

Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2014 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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OS upgrades: Cheap is better than pricey, free is better than cheap

Computerworld - The cheaper, the better.

Lowering the price of an operating system upgrade accelerates its uptake five-fold, but setting an upgrade free stomps on that pedal, boosting uptake as much as 12 times, data from an analytics company shows.

Microsoft has likely run those numbers too, and internally may be making the case that it's better to expand Windows-for-free to all upgrades, not just the more minor updates like Windows 8.1. (Don't let Microsoft catch you calling Windows 8.1 an "upgrade;" to them, it's an "update," and for financial reasons, even though it is free.)

The numbers game is admittedly a bit iffy, since it's comparing, well, apples and oranges, necessitated by comparing upgrades within Apple OS X world to those of Microsoft's Windows. But the results seem clear: cheap is better than pricey, free is better than cheap.

Free trumps all, in other words. Or as Apple's Craig Federighi, who leads software development at the Cupertino, Calif. company, put it last October: "Free is good."

Last month, OS X 10.9, aka Mavericks, accounted for 59% of all Macs running it and its two precursors, Mountain Lion and Lion, an increase of 4 percentage points from January, said California-based Net Applications.

(Unlike others, Computerworld stopped the in-Mac comparison at OS X 10.7, aka Lion, because Snow Leopard, or 10.6, has been nearly unaffected by the draw of the free Mavericks.)

Apple dropped the price of Mavericks to zero, giving it away to most, although not all, of its customers running Mountain Lion, Lion and even 2009's Snow Leopard. On the other hand, Mountain Lion, which came out in mid-2012, carried a price tag of $19.99, a third less than 2011's Lion.

That $20 price cut drove Mavericks adoption at a much faster pace, according to Net Applications' statistics, with Mavericks' user share -- a rough measurement of the percentage of the world's personal computers running a specific operating system -- 1.8 to 3.2 times higher in any given month than its predecessor, Mountain Lion, at the same point in its post-release life.

On average, over six months, Mavericks' share of it and its two precursors was 2.1 times higher than Mountain Lion's share of it and its two ancestors.

That's the power of free since, frankly, there's not a tremendous difference between Mavericks and Mountain Lion, which is Apple's doing and by design, as it creates evolutionary -- many say "minor" -- iterations.

Free has also accelerated Windows adoption, with Microsoft for the first time offering something more than a collection of fixes -- in its terminology, a "service pack" -- for a zero price.

When Windows 8.1 (free) was compared to Windows 8 (not free), the former clearly had a faster uptake pace. Last month, 40% of PCs running Windows 8.1 and its predecessor, Windows 8, ran the former, an increase of about 3 percentage points from the month prior.

Over the last six months, the no-cost Windows 8.1's share of the combined user share of it and Windows 8 was 7 to 20 times higher than that of Windows 8's share of it and Windows 7 at the same point in Windows 8's post-launch timeline.

On average over those six months, Windows 8.1's share of it and its precursor was 11.7 times higher than Windows 8's share of it and its ancestor.

(Microsoft charged $39.99 for a from-Windows-7-to-Windows 8 upgrade for several months; Windows 8.1 was free to anyone running Windows 8.)

Again, the power of free.

The same advantage held for lower-priced upgrades over those that cost more, although the edge to the former was not as dramatic.

Free operating system upgrades outperformed paid on both Windows and OS X in adoption rates, and less-expensive upgrades, like the $20 Mountain Lion, got a larger percentage of customers to move up than did pricier offerings like Windows 8. (Data: Net Applications.)Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

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Microsoft extends Dynamics ERP; adds support for Azure cloud

IDG News Service - Microsoft has completed a series of moves aimed at making its Dynamics AX ERP software a more viable option for large enterprises, and plans to showcase them this week during the Convergence conference in Atlanta.

Dynamics AX 2012 R3, the latest version of Microsoft's high-end ERP (enterprise resource planning) offering, will be available May 1 both in on-premises form and on the Windows Azure cloud infrastructure service, Microsoft announced Tuesday.

Customers will be able to run AX 2012 R3 in full production form, for development and testing, or as a disaster recovery instance in conjunction with their on-premises deployment, said Christian Pedersen, general manager of AX, in an interview prior to Tuesday's announcement.

"We're seeing a very positive reaction from enterprise customers around this, especially in environments where they're adopting Azure as an infrastructure service," Pedersen said.

Dynamics products have traditionally been sold exclusively by Microsoft channel partners around the world, who then tweak and customize the core software for customers' needs.

This won't change with the arrival of Azure support for AX, but Microsoft will nonetheless become more closely involved with customers' day-to-day operations.

New Azure-based application life-cycle services for AX will provide ongoing health monitoring of customer systems, identifying potential problems that need fixing. The services, which are similar to ones offered by SAP and Oracle, will be provided as part of customers' existing maintenance payments and are available for both Azure-hosted and on-premises deployments.

Early adopters of the service have been able to resolve problems in a "significantly" shorter period than before, and in two-thirds of the cases have done it on their own, Microsoft said.

AX 2012 R3 will also introduce a brand-new application and services framework geared toward rapid development of mobile apps.

Microsoft plans to showcase one such app, which gives delivery truck drivers a way to organize their stops and plan routes, during Convergence, Pedersen said. It will also discuss a new application for shop floor workers that allows them to send information about production jobs with touch-based Windows devices.

Partners who have begun using the new framework are showing "an incredible amount of creativity," Pedersen said.

Overall, Microsoft is making "credible moves" against the likes of SAP and Oracle in the ERP market, said analyst Frank Scavo, president of IT research firm Computer Economics. "They're not taking over significant market share, but they are being seen as an option for larger companies."

Microsoft is also planning to make a number of announcements related to CRM (customer relationship management) on Tuesday.

The next release of Dynamics CRM will be available in the second quarter and features new capabilities for marketing automation, social media monitoring and customer service, which were gained through the acquisitions of MarketingPilot, NetBreeze and Parature.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2014 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Open source challenges a proprietary Internet of Things

Computerworld - The only limit to the Internet of Things isn't imagination or technology. It's the vendors. Will your Whirlpool, Maytag or GE washer be able to communicate with your Samsung TV or Apple iPhone, Sears' oven or any other device?

Without interoperability, consumer devices, electronic appliances and sensor-equipped wearables won't recognize each other and communicate. It will make scenarios, such as this one, difficult:

You walk in the door of your house from a five-mile run and biometric sensors in your clothing automatically connect to the home network. Your workout data and health information is uploaded and analyzed by a cloud-based app that may also add this data to your electronic medical records. Meanwhile, this information is also used to automatically adjust room temperature to a more comfortable-post workout setting. A stereo system suggests music to match your relaxed mood. You settle in.

Dinner goes into the oven, and the workout clothes are tossed in a washer. A TV is turned on and the room lights automatically adjust. A message appears on the TV screen alerting you that dinner is ready, and another informs you that the wash is complete. A cellphone text message from a friend inviting you to see a movie appears on any number of multiple home screens.

There is no consumer electronics vendor large enough to force the interoperability that can do all the things in that scenario. But there are vendors large enough to frustrate the path to it by building an Internet of Things mostly around their products.

Into this electronics disconnect steps the open source industry, which believes it has the method, the process and the clout to drive the electronics industry toward a true interoperability. But does it?

We may know in less than 12 months -- at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next January -- whether an effort by the Linux Foundation to bring interoperability to the Internet of Things is going anywhere.

In December, the Linux Foundation, a non-profit consortium that promotes Linux adoption, created the AllSeen Alliance. It took a code stack developed by Qualcomm called the AllJoyn Framework and put it under its open-source umbrella.

This C++ code supports the major operating systems, chipsets and embedded variants. Any electronics or appliance maker, or even an LED light bulb maker that uses the AllJoyn code will have a basis for connectivity with another product that also uses the code.

At the 2015 CES you may see, if all goes well, marks on various electronics indicating their use of AllSeen. There may even be Intel Inside-like stickers on products.

Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation, believes that AllSeen will be adopted by vendors.

For vendors that want connectivity, the question is simple: Do device and appliance makers want to write software for every single product or smartphone "or do they just want to go download this code and put it into their product and know that it's taken care of?"

Having such code available will deliver the network effect and propel device interoperability, said Zemlin. "You are going to see a lot of products this year with this code in it," he said.

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Apple's CarPlay vs. MirrorLink: Is there a need for both?

Computerworld - Both MirrorLink and Apple's new CarPlay will eventually be able to duplicate some iPhone functions on your car's in-vehicle infotainment system, but MirrorLink can also handle Android, Windows and Blackberry phones. So do we need CarPlay?

As Mercedes Benz became the first car company to demonstrate Apple's new CarPlay interface for iPhone 5 and later models at the Geneva Motor Show, it also reemphasized its support for MirrorLink's OS-agnostic standard for the same purpose.

Mercedes is a founding member of the Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC), a group of automobile and mobile phones makers developing "MirrorLink," a uniform standard for the integration of smartphones into auto radio head units or in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems.

The goal of Mercedes-Benz, alongside the integration of iOS and Android-based devices, "is to offer maximum compatibility for smartphones with other operating systems," the carmaker said in a statement.

Along with MirrorLink, Google's recently launched Open Automotive Alliance (OAA), aims to connect Android phones and IVI systems. The OAA is also backed by Audi, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai and chip maker Nvidia.

"There's not going to be a single automaker just choosing CarPlay. It's short-sighted to do that," said Mark Boyadjis, manager of Infotainment & HMI systems at IHS Automotive.

A demonstration of the MirrorLink API in a Mercedes Benz.

Today, automakers such as Ford allow users to plug iPhones into USB ports and get limited access to apps such as iTunes and streaming music services such as Pandora through proprietary APIs. But MirrorLink and other industry standardization efforts are focused on creating OS-agnostic interfaces.

Like CarPlay, MirrorLink connects a smartphone to a vehicles IVI system via a USB cord and drivers immediately gain access to phone applications via the car's navigation screen and dashboard/steering-wheel buttons.

In 2011, Alpine's ICS-X8 IVI became world's first radio head unit to incorporate the MirrorLink standard. The IVI MirrorLinks with Nokia Android smart phones.

"What's very interesting, when we look at what Apple just put up on their website, that's what we've been doing for two years. The MirrorLink experience looks like [CarPlay]," said Alan Ewing, president of the CCC. "It really validated the approach we'd already taken. But, we think the best mousetrap should win."

Apple is not likely to join the CCC anytime soon, since Apple tends to choose proprietary solutions over shared ones. But the MirrorLink standard supports third-party app developers and could someday introduce a workaround, allowing iPhones to connect to IVIs.

""The Apple [CarPlay] is just one standard. Right now MirrorLink is not compatible with iPhone..., but it can be," Boyadjis said. "It's basically going to be a battle between iPhone, Android and Windows, as well."

MirrorLink is a device interoperability standard and API that basically mirrors smartphone apps on a vehicle's IVI system. The IVI must carry the MirrorLink API on a specific chipset in order to work with certain smartphones.

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Update: More top-tier Microsoft execs head for the door

Computerworld - Two of Microsoft's top executives will leave, the company confirmed today, signaling more change as it pivots to become a devices and services seller.

Tony Bates, currently the executive vice president in charge of business development and evangelism, and Tami Reller, who now heads all marketing for the Redmond, Wash. company, will step down.

On Monday, Microsoft published an email from CEO Satya Nadella confirming the news, which was initially reported Sunday by Re/code.

"Tony Bates has decided this is the right time for him to look for his next opportunity," Nadella wrote in this company-wide email. "[Tami Reller] will then take time off and pursue other interests outside the company."

The changes were not unexpected. Last month, Randy Ottinger of Kotter International, a Cambridge Mass. consultancy that specializes in leadership change and setting corporate strategy, predicted that Satya Nadella, the new CEO appointed Feb. 4, would craft his own team of top executives.

One of the first things on Nadella's to-do list, Ottinger said last month, was just that. "Who's on my leadership team, who is my cabinet? Who am I betting on to shape the future of the company?" Ottinger said, naming that work as No. 2 on Nadella's first-100-days list.

A new CEO, even one from inside a company, typically purges at least some of the senior executives, Ottinger said. Changing the guard will make the team Nadella's rather than have him accept people who were beholden to former CEO Steve Ballmer for their jobs.

"This was no surprise," agreed Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, in a Monday interview. "Nadella will want people who are loyal to him."

Bates' job will be given temporarily to Eric Rudder, who now leads the Advanced Strategy group. It appears Bates has already left the company, as his photograph and biographic sketch have been scrubbed from Microsoft's website.

Reller will be replaced by Chris Capossela, a corporate vice president who oversees the consumer channels group, but who has held several marketing positions in Microsoft in his 22 years with the company. Capossela is to assume all advertising duties as well as marketing.

Mark Penn, the longtime political and media strategist who was hired by Microsoft in mid-2012, will drop advertising and focus on new product and investment strategies, with a new title of Chief Strategy Officer. Penn is best known for creating the "Scroogled" campaign that took shots at Google with a series of attack ads.

From Nadella's email, it sounded like Reller had been pushed out. "I have decided we need a single leader running marketing for the company, and have asked Chris Capossela to take on this role as EVP [executive vice president] and Chief Marketing Officer, reporting to me," Nadella said. "I have talked about the premium we need to place on getting very, very focused on things that we can uniquely do. Tami Reller agrees with the go-forward approach of a single marketing leader and will support Chris through his transition into his new role."

Reller held the title EVP Marketing prior to today.

Who's next? Tony Bates and Tami Reller, both members of Microsoft's senior leadership team that report directly to CEO Satya Nadella, are on their way out the door. Julie Larson-Green will also lose her spot on the team when she takes a new job in the company. (Image: Microsoft.)Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

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Update: Microsoft reacts to XP upgrade critics with free file transfer tool

Computerworld - Reacting to criticism from customers that upgrading from Windows XP was "impossible," Microsoft today announced it would give away a limited migration tool to help people move to a newer operating system.

The tool, PCmover Express for Windows XP, is one of several migration utilities from Laplink, a Bellevue, Wash. company whose offices are near those of Microsoft.

Microsoft will also begin nagging XP users to upgrade through an on-screen message that will appear starting Saturday.

According to Laplink, the version of PCmover Express that Microsoft will offer was created specifically for the give-away.

Windows XP will receive its final security updates on April 8. After that users will face an uncertain future, as cyber criminals are expected to take advantage of the lack of patches to hijack defenseless PCs.

Microsoft cast the offer as another way to help customers ditch XP.

"As the end of support for Windows XP on April 8 nears we're continuing to focus on ensuring customers are aware of the deadline and helping them to migrate to a modern operating system such as Windows 8.1," said Brandon LeBlanc, a Microsoft marketing communications manager, in a blog post Monday.

More to the point, the move was a response to scathing criticism customers leveled at Microsoft after LeBlanc proposed four weeks ago that they help others upgrade from XP or assist them in picking out a new PC running Windows 8.1. Those users pointed out that what Microsoft called an "upgrade" required people to back up the hard drive before wiping it clean, then restore their data and settings, and reinstall all their applications. "There is a major problem with [Microsoft's] suggestion. You (Microsoft) have made Windows 8 and 8.1 incapable of upgrading from Windows XP," noted someone identified as "nephilim" in a comment added to LeBlanc's Feb. 7 plea for help. "I simply can't upgrade anyone, including myself, to Windows 8. It's impossible."

The free PCmover Express transfers files and users' settings only from an XP PC to one running Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1. It does not migrate any applications, just files and user settings, a ploy to prod people to pony up for PCmover Professional, which will transfer an unlimited number of applications from the old PC to the new machine, as well as migrate files and settings.

ÿÿÿÿSeveral caveats apply: "Antivirus and Anti-Spyware programs will not be moved to your new PC," noted Laplink as one.

Meanwhile, PCmover Professional will transfer an unlimited number of applications from the old PC to the new machine. Several caveats apply: "Antivirus and Anti-Spyware programs will not be moved to your new PC," noted Laplink as one.

LeBlanc also said that starting March 8, customers running Windows XP will begin seeing an on-screen nag that reminds them of the retirement deadline. "The notification will reoccur on the 8th of every month unless disabled by the user," said LeBlanc.

One expert was less than impressed with Microsoft's free PCmover Express offer.

"That might be a good short-term move," said Gene Grabowski, an executive vice president at Levick, a Washington, D.C. firm that specializes in crisis public relations and corporate reputation messaging. "But they should have spent some money building their own. That they didn't tells me that strategically, they had no plan. [And] that sends a bad message to their customers."

An English language version of free PCmover Express will be available for download from Microsoft's website later this week. Versions in French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish will hit that URL later this month, said LeBlanc, with others -- Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Korean and Russian -- at a later, undefined date.

To migrate files, settings and applications with Pcmover, users will need a network (wired or Wi-Fi), or a Laplink USB or high-speed Ethernet cable.

This nag message will start showing up on Windows XP desktops March 8 as a reminder that the 12-year-old OS will receive its final security updates in less than a month. (Image: Microsoft.)

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com. gkeizer@computerworld.com.

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Read more about Operating Systems in Computerworld's Operating Systems Topic Center.

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Facebook's Messenger app now supports Windows Phone

IDG News Service - Facebook has made its Messenger app available for Windows Phone 8, a bonus for Microsoft as it seeks to increase the number of applications available for its smartphone OS.

The app lets users see who's online for a private or group chat, and lets them decorate messages with pictures and stickers, according to a blog post made Wednesday. Users can also share their location, and contacts are automatically added to the app.

For now, some features available on the Android and iOS versions -- such as the ability to record messages and send photos privately -- are missing on the Windows Phone app. The pop-up chat heads Facebook has implemented on Android are also missing.

The availability of apps on Windows Phone has been a problem for Microsoft when competing with Apple's iPhones and the Android camp. At an event in conjunction with Mobile World Congress, Joe Belfiore, who runs Microsoft's Windows Phone platform, highlighted recent additions such as Instagram, Vine, Waze and Mint.

The arrival of these apps is more than a coincidence: It's a result of Microsoft working with third party app developers and slowly growing phone sales, according to Paolo Pescatore, director of apps and media at market research company CCS Insight.

"They are very much needed. Microsoft has been trying to bridge the gap with iOS and Android, but frankly the rate of development hasn't been as fast as it should have been," Pescatore said.

The company still needs to convince or help developers of many local video and entertainment apps to create Windows Phone versions, according to Pescatore. For that to happen, Microsoft and its partners need to sell more phones, he said.

The Mobile World Congress event also detailed the company's plans to make Windows Phone a better fit for low-end smartphones and presented new hardware partners, including Foxconn, Karbonn, Lenovo, LG Electronics and ZTE. With Microsoft soon closing its acquisition of Nokia's handset division, Windows Phone is at a critical juncture.

"Microsoft needs to move faster and be more decisive, instead of sitting on its hands all the time. The Windows Phone 8 platform is a good one or two years behind Android and Microsoft needs to close that gap with utmost urgency," said Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics.

Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2014 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Ballmer regrets not aping Apple sooner

Computerworld - In his first public appearance since he stepped down as Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer again acknowledged that the company missed the boat on mobile.

But this time he put a different spin on his answer, evoking the business model of Microsoft's arch rival, Apple.

"The thing I regret is that we didn't put the hardware and the software together soon enough," Ballmer said, referring to smartphones specifically, but mobile in general.

Putting hardware and software together is Apple's business model, begun decades ago with the Mac then continued with the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010, that relies on the company creating both, controlling both from first to last.

Microsoft only picked up the hardware-software bug, at least in a major way, with its Xbox line. In general computing, however, it didn't make a move until mid-2012, when it unexpectedly announced the Surface line of tablets, which it said it had designed, had manufactured and would start selling later that year, when Windows 8 debuted.

Since then, the company has put down $7.4 billion for Nokia's handset business and to license a large patent portfolio. When that deal closes, probably within weeks, Microsoft will have added smartphones to its hardware-software strategy.

That means Microsoft is seven years behind Apple, and four years behind Samsung, the South Korean behemoth that has raked in billions in revenue from its Android-powered phones and tablets.

In more general terms Tuesday, Ballmer also copped to a lost decade.

"If you look at things in the last 10 years, I think it's probably fair to say that there are things that did not go as well as we intended them to," said Ballmer to a packed crowd of students at the Said Business School, University of Oxford. His hour-long Q&A was later posted on YouTube.

"We would have a stronger position in the phone market today if I could redo, for example, the last ten years," Ballmer added.

Yesterday's no-details mulligan on mobile was not Ballmer's first. In August, he implied that it was Windows Vista -- the operating system that was three years late to market -- that led to a failure to capitalize on the shift to mobile.

"I would say probably the thing I regret most is the, what shall I call it, the loopedy-loo that we did that was sort of Longhorn to Vista," Ballmer told long-time Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet. "I would say that's probably the thing I regret most. And, you know, there are side effects of that when you tie up a big team to do something that doesn't prove out to be as valuable."

Vista, which was released to retail in early 2007, has been judged a failure, one of Microsoft's few in the operating system market, and to its detriment, Windows 8 has increasingly been compared to Vista.

A month later Ballmer was more specific at his final meeting with Wall Street analysts on Microsoft's campus.

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Microsoft's OneDrive for Business now an option with Office Online

IDG News Service - Microsoft has introduced OneDrive for Business, the new name for SkyDrive Pro, and announced that companies can adopt the cloud storage service as a standalone product, without having to sign up for Office 365 or SharePoint Online.

OneDrive for Business is a service where employees can store, share and sync personal work files. Starting April 1st, companies will get access to the service as part of Office Online, the free, browser-based version of Microsoft's productivity suite formerly called Office Web Apps.

Companies that use OneDrive for Business as part of Office Online can get 25GB of storage for each employee, for US$5 per user per month, according to Microsoft. They can also buy additional storage capacity if they need it.

"With the new offering, businesses of all sizes can get started with a full-featured and intuitive file sync and share service that includes Office Online, so employees can collaborate on Office documents in real time via a browser or using their Office desktop applications," Julia White, general manager of technical product management for Office 365, wrote in a blog post Monday.

OneDrive for Business has been available at no extra cost with most editions of Office 365, the cloud email and collaboration suite that includes online versions of Exchange, Lync and SharePoint, and with the standalone SharePoint Online service.

Other enhancements announced on Monday include a revamped user interface that gives prominent placement to the most commonly used OneDrive for Business features on a menu strip near the top of the page, and a new view that lists folders of sites a user follows.

Microsoft also improved the OneDrive for Business search engine with results that are auto-suggested as users type their queries and with the ability to act on results from the results page, including sharing them with other users.

Microsoft made the announcement at its SharePoint Conference, which runs through Thursday in Las Vegas.

Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2014 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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5 tips for data manipulation in Excel

Computerworld - If you work with data much, you don't need a statistical model to predict that the odds of consistently getting data in the format you need for analysis are pretty low. Those who do a great deal of data cleaning and reformatting often turn to scripting languages like Python or specialty tools such as OpenRefine or R.

But it turns out that there's a lot of data munging) you can do in a plain old Excel spreadsheet -- if you know how to craft the proper formulas.

In a presentation at the recent 2014 Computer Assisted Reporting (CAR) conference, MaryJo Webster, senior data reporter with Digital First Media -- a newspaper group in New York -- shared some of her favorite Excel tricks. The goal of these tips, Webster said: Learn at least one new thing that will make you say, "Why didn't I know this before?"

You can extract the year, month and day into separate fields from a date field in Excel by using formulas =Year(CellWithDate), =MONTH(CellWithDate) and =DAY(CellWithDate). Splitting dates this way -- by year, month and day of month -- works in Microsoft Access as well, Webster said.

In addition, you can also get the day of the week for any date in Excel with =WEEKDAY(CellWithDate). The default returns numbers, not names of the days of week, with 1 for Sunday, 2 for Monday and so on.

To display the name of the weekday instead of a number, apply a custom format to the cells with the weekday numbers, using Format cells > Custom; then type ddd in the Type text box to get three-day abbreviations or dddd for the full day name.

If you have someone's date of birth, you can find his or her current age on whatever day you open the spreadsheet with the =DATEDIF() and =TODAY() functions. TODAY(), as you might guess, gives the current date. DATEDIF() gives the difference between two dates in units of years ("y"), months ("m") or days ("d"), using the syntax:

=DATEDIF(Date1, Date2, Unit of measure)

So, to get current age in years, use the formula:

=DATEDIF(CellWithBirthday,TODAY(), "y")

Note that the years unit returns ages in whole numbers and does not round up.

See an example below.

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Microsoft to launch next Office for Mac in second half of 2014

Computerworld - Microsoft today said that it would launch a new version of Office for Mac before the end of the year, but won't discuss details until the second half of 2014.

In an interview with Computerwoche -- literally, "Computerweek" -- a Microsoft Germany official said that Office for Mac had been delayed because the development team, dubbed the Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU), had been folded into the larger Microsoft Business Unit (MBU), the division responsible for Office on Windows, in the first quarter of 2011.

Thorsten Hübschen, business group lead for Microsoft Office in Germany, spoke to Computerwoche -- like Computerworld owned by IDG -- at CeBit 2014, the massive computer trade show running this week in Hanover, Germany.

Hübschen said Microsoft would reveal more information about Office for Mac in the second half of this year.

The next Office for Mac is already late by past Microsoft practice. The average timespan between Office for Mac editions -- going back as far as Office v. X -- has been 1,088 days. But as of today, it has been 1,232 days since the launch of Office for Mac 2011.

Historically, Microsoft has hewn to a three-year development cycle for both Office on the Mac and the far-more-popular Office suite for Windows, with a new version of the former following the newest of the latter by several months at a minimum.

Office for Mac 2011, for instance, followed Office 2010 on Windows by 134 days, or just over four months. Office for Mac 2008, however, came 351 days, or nearly a year, after the debut of its Windows sibling, Office 2007. But even the longer lag time of the latter has been exceeded: Office 2013 for Windows launched Jan. 29, 2013, 406 days ago.

It's likely that the next Office for Apple's OS X will be titled "Office for Mac 2015," as Microsoft typically slaps the next year's date on an Office edition that launches in the second half of a calendar year.

If Microsoft waits until later this year to ship Office for Mac 2015, it will be cutting it close: The Redmond, Wash., company supports Mac editions of Office for just five years, half the support lifecycle of the Windows' suite, and Office for Mac 2011's retirement date is set for Jan. 12, 2016. Customers may have little more than a year to migrate to the newest edition before Microsoft stops patching Office for Mac 2011.

Microsoft also shuttered the Mac Office-specific blog it maintained for years at the site where it touts and sells the productivity suite. "As of today, no new posts will appear," the blog stated Monday. Future posts will be published on the more inclusive Office Blogs website, where Office on Windows and Office 365 dominate.

The MacBU blog shutdown was part of a January refresh of all Microsoft's blogs that focused on Office topics, a company spokeswoman said.

Microsoft neither confirmed nor denied Hübschen's comments on Office for Mac release timing. "The team is hard at work on the next version of Office for Mac," the spokeswoman said in an emailed reply to questions.

This article, Microsoft to launch next Office for Mac in second half of 2014, was originally published at Computerworld.com.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

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US-CERT urges XP users to dump IE

Computerworld - People who plan to run Windows XP after Microsoft pulls the patch plug should dump Internet Explorer (IE) and replace it with a different browser, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) said Monday.

US-CERT is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and regularly issues security warnings and threat alerts.

"Users who choose to continue using Windows XP after the end of support may mitigate some risks by using a Web browser other than Internet Explorer," US-CERT said in a Monday bulletin. "The Windows XP versions of some alternative browsers will continue to receive support temporarily. Users should consult the support pages of their chosen alternative browser for more details."

US-CERT's advice was not new: Security companies and experts have said the same before.

Because Microsoft ties support for Internet Explorer (IE) to the underlying operating system's end date, people running Windows XP will also not receive patches for IE7 or IE8, although others, including customers running the same browsers on Windows Vista and Windows 7, will continue to receive fixes.

IE6, which debuted several months before XP in 2001, will be retired from all support next month.

With IE patches ending, security professionals have urged people sticking with XP to run a browser that will receive bug fixes, like Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox and Opera Software's Opera.

That anything-but-IE advice stems from on the fact that Windows malware often enters a PC by exploiting a browser vulnerability. Exploits of unpatched bugs, described as "drive-by attacks," only require the user to browse to a malicious or compromised website, where attack code has been pre-planted.

Chrome will be patched until at least April 2015, Google pledged last October, leaving the door open to a later stop date.

However, Mozilla declined to specify a patch-until date when asked Monday.

"We listen to our users closely, and right now many of them are on XP and expect to stay on that platform. We have not announced any end of support for Firefox on XP at this time," said Chad Weiner, director of product management, in an email response to questions.

Mozilla typically discusses impending support stoppages on its planning forum months before it discontinues updates for an operating system. Developers have not begun talking there about dropping support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or SP3.

And Mozilla often supports an OS long after its maker has stopped: The last version of Firefox that ran on Windows XP SP1, the patch roll-up Microsoft quit supporting in October 2006, was Firefox 12, which shipped in April 2012.

Previously, Opera has issued statements along the lines of Mozilla's but it did not immediately reply to questions today, including whether it has set a firm end-of-support date for Windows XP.

Current XP users are most likely running IE8, the latest browser supported by the OS, because in early 2012 Microsoft began automatically upgrading users to the newest version of IE supported by a given operating system.

According to measurement firm Net Applications, IE8 accounted for 37.3% of all instances of Internet Explorer used in February. IE6, the version originally released with XP, accounted for 8% of all copies of Internet Explorer, a high percentage considering that Microsoft had gone to great lengths to eradicate that version.

Chrome, Firefox and Opera can be downloaded from the websites of Google, Mozilla and Opera Software.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

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Cloud Wars Heating Up in 2014

CIO - Last December, Google launched its new cloud platform. In January 2014, Amazon Web Services offered free trials for about 100 of its most popular cloud services. And, in February, Microsoft named former Cloud and Enterprise Group chief, Satya Nadella, its new CEO.

Cloud Wars Intensify

All these changes signal a growing intensity to the "Cloud Wars," as these three tech giants muscle for dominance in the lucrative cloud market.

"Helping customers keep an eye on costs, performance and return on investment going to be a huge differentiator." -- Seth Robinson, CompTIA

While there's no evidence that any one vendor will emerge as a clear winner, their moves are indicative of the importance of the cloud to both large enterprise vendors and small startups, and a measure of how ubiquitous the cloud has become in today's business landscape, says Seth Robinson, CompTIA's director of technology analysis.

[Related: 2014 Forecast for Cloud Computing]

"Cloud providers are definitely trying hard to gain marketshare, and they are offering more options than ever," says Robinson. "While cloud infrastructure has thus far been dominated by Amazon, we see a scramble by other providers, both big and small, to get into that market," he says.

Cloud Vendors Relying on Name Recognition

Large providers like Microsoft and Google, are relying on their name and brand strength to help grab customers who are late to the cloud, Robinson says. While many smaller businesses and start-ups may be willing to rely on less-well-known cloud service providers, many enterprises want the perceived comfort of sticking with a big name provider, Robinson says.

"Middle- or late-comers to the cloud are going to be most familiar with the traditional IT vendors like Google, Amazon and Microsoft, and it'll be natural to them to see these big companies' products and feel more secure evaluating and purchasing these solutions," Robinson says.

But that reliance on well-known brands will only increase competition, as differentiation becomes key to gaining marketshare, according to CompTIA's IT Industry Outlook 2014 report.

[Related: 10 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2014]

While smaller providers will continue to compete on price, Amazon, Google and Microsoft will emphasize features that separate them from the competition, whether that's a reliance on legacy systems, easing companies' transition to the cloud, or helping with administration and management of cloud solutions, Robinson says.

"Cloud providers will certainly compete on price, but will also offer unique benefits, such as ease of transition or access to bare-metal resources. On the flip side, managing many different cloud solutions will be a significant challenge for many organizations. Understanding cloud usage and making transitions between providers when needed will be areas where companies will require outside expertise," according to CompTIA's report.

"Helping customers keep an eye on costs, performance and return on investment going to be a huge differentiator," he says. "Having the management and monitoring capabilities, being able to choose the right solution for customers' business and tapping into that broad base of knowledge that many customers just don't have," he says.

Still a Need for On-premises Products

And there will remain a need for on-premise solutions as enterprises continue to wrestle with security concerns in the public cloud, according to the report. The research shows approximately 24 percent of companies have moved applications back to on-premise systems after an initial cloud transition.

[Related: 3 Ways Enterprise IT Will Change in 2014]

"There's still room for on-premises solutions, which will be another area for competition," Robinson says. "Once businesses make that first move to the cloud, we find they often make secondary moves back to on-premise because of security and reliability concerns - so they end up with a hybrid model, with some applications residing in a public cloud and some in on-premise solutions," he says.

CompTIA's research cites security concerns as the major reason for enterprises' backtracking, indicating that the most sensitive applications will remain on-premise for the foreseeable future.

"That's a major boon for these large providers who maintain an investment in legacy systems," Robinson says. "It gives them numerous product channels and options to keep and gain new customers and help them make the transition to the cloud."

Sharon Florentine covers IT careers and data center topics for CIO.com. Follow Sharon on Twitter @MyShar0na. Email her at sflorentine@cio.com Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline and on Facebook.

Read more about cloud computing in CIO's Cloud Computing Drilldown.

This story is reprinted from CIO.com, an online resource for information executives. Story Copyright CXO Media Inc., 2012. All rights reserved.

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At SharePoint, Microsoft talks up ambitious enhancements for Office 365

IDG News Service - Microsoft didn't disappoint with the new and improved capabilities it announced and demonstrated for Office 365 this week, but how well they work in the real world remains to be seen.

At its SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft laid out its vision for making Office 365 a more intelligent collaboration suite via new social interactions, APIs (application programming interfaces) and machine learning capabilities.

The centerpiece of the announcements was Oslo, an upcoming application designed to tap into the new machine learning capabilities of Office 365, called Office Graph, that allow it to understand the connections between people and documents.

Oslo, which was demonstrated at the event and is scheduled for release in the second half of the year, will surface and display prominently for people the colleagues, content and files they are most engaged with and that thus deserve the most attention.

The app arrives at its conclusions by processing and analyzing a wide variety of data and actions in Office 365, such as Exchange Online email activity, files stored in OneDrive for Business, IM and audio/video communications conducted via Lync Online, and team and person-to-person interactions on SharePoint Online and Yammer.

By displaying the documents and colleagues that are most relevant to people at any given time, Oslo will provide insights to help people focus their work priorities, according to Alan Lepofsky, a Constellation Research analyst.

"Oslo shows you things you didn't know were there," he said. "It provides a very personal experience for each individual."

Oslo is just the first application being built to take advantage of the Office Graph information, so it will be interesting to see what other tools Microsoft and third-party developers come up with, Lepofsky said.

It's likely that Oslo will be followed by applications tailored for people in specific professions and industries, and by software that could leverage the Office Graph to offer next-generation project management tools, he said.

In the Office Graph, as well as in a new Groups feature and "inline" social interaction capabilities announced for Office 365, one can see the strong impact of Yammer on the suite, said TJ Keitt, a Forrester Research analyst.

"The significance is the Yammer roadmap is alive and well," he said via email. "The concept of a network that links people to content was at the core of what Yammer wanted to deliver."

Microsoft bought Yammer -- then a hot vendor of cloud enterprise social networking software -- in mid-2012 for US$1.2 billion. It has been progressively integrating it with SharePoint Online and other Office and non-Office products to improve employee collaboration.

"That Microsoft has encouraged and embraced this vision shows their acquisition of Yammer wasn't just a technology grab: They really wanted Yammer's thinking to influence the development of the entire Office portfolio," Keitt said.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2014 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Perspective: Microsoft risks security reputation ruin by retiring XP

Computerworld - A decade ago, Microsoft kicked off SDL, or Security Development Lifecycle, a now-widely-adopted process designed to bake security into software, and began building what has become an unmatched reputation in how a vendor writes more secure code, keeps customers informed about security issues, and backs that up with regular patches.

But the Redmond, Wash. company, which just touted SDL's 10-year history with a flashy, anecdote-filled online presentation, seems willing to risk torching that hard-won reputation by pulling the plug on Windows XP.

Microsoft plans to ship the final public patches for Windows XP on April 8. After that, it will not deliver fixes for security vulnerabilities it and others find in the 13-year-old operating system.

The result, even Microsoft has said, could be devastating. Last October, the company said that after April 8, Windows XP would face a future where machines are infected at a rate 66% higher than before patches stopped.

"After April [2014], when we release monthly security updates for supported versions of Windows, attackers will try and reverse engineer them to identify any vulnerabilities that also exist in Windows XP," said Tim Rains, director of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group. "If they succeed, attackers will have the capability to develop exploit code to take advantage of them."

Microsoft has justified its stoppage of Windows XP patches by reminding everyone that it has supported the OS longer than any others, which is true: Its normal practice is to patch an operating system for 10 years. And it has argued that Windows XP is old, outdated software that is less secure than its newer operating systems: Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.

Again, true.

The problem that Microsoft has only occasionally touched on is that Windows XP powers a massive number of personal computers around the world. According to Internet measurement company Net Applications, 29.5% of the globe's PCs ran XP in February. Using estimates of the number of Windows PCs now in operation, that "user share" translates into approximately 488 million systems.

Four hundred and eighty-eight million.

If every PC sold in the next 12 months was one destined to replace an existing Windows XP system, it would take more than a year and a half -- about 20 months -- to eradicate XP. Windows XP isn't going anywhere.

Even if one discounts the 70% of the approximately 300 million XP machines in China that are not regularly updated with existing patches -- the 70% statistic comes from Microsoft -- that still leaves 278 million machines.

Microsoft has never faced this situation before, with a soon-to-be-retired OS running a third of all the Windows PCs worldwide. So on one hand it's not surprising that it has stuck to its guns, and is pushing XP into the sunset and forgetting it.

But by doing that, it could hurt itself as much as the customers who end up with an infected XP system.

There's the real possibility that large-scale infections of Windows XP will paint the Windows brand as insecure, fulfilling the implicit prophecy the company made late last year. To most people, Windows is Windows is Windows, with no distinction between XP and the newest, locked-down 8.1. And for those people, Windows is Microsoft because it's the best known of the company's software.

So if post-April headlines appear that shout, "Windows under massive attack," Microsoft's reassurances that the bug can be exploited only on XP, that newer editions of Windows are safe to use, will be lost amidst the noise.

Outside its own software, Microsoft has other reasons for worry. As the company has often said, it's not just Windows that it must keep secure, it's the entire Windows ecosystem, the gamut of software that runs on the platform. A bug in a third-party program, such as Adobe's like-a-sieve Flash Player, which has had to be patched 18 times in the face of ongoing attacks since 2010, reflects poorly not just on Adobe but also on Microsoft. That's because Windows powers 90% of the world's PCs.

That's one reason why Microsoft has reached out to third-party developers -- Adobe being just one -- to help them craft their own SDL-like processes, a fact last week's retrospective trumpeted when it said its SDL guidance had been downloaded more than 1 million times since 2008.

Co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates made the connection in an all-company email he sent in January 2002, the call to action memorandum that ultimately led to SDL. "Our new design approaches need to dramatically reduce the number of such issues that come up in the software that Microsoft, its partners and its customers create," Gates said. "Trustworthiness is a much broader concept than security, and winning our customers' trust involves more than just fixing bugs and achieving 'five-nines' availability. It's a fundamental challenge that spans the entire computing ecosystem, from individual chips all the way to global Internet services (emphasis added)."

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Mozilla shelves Metro Firefox, cites user apathy toward Windows 8

Computerworld - Mozilla on Friday abruptly canceled the release of its touch-enabled Firefox browser for Windows 8, just four days before it was to ship and after two years of work.

Firefox for Windows 8 Touch, the browser destined for Windows 8's "Metro" user interface (UI) -- the part of the OS that relies on colorful tiles, mobile-style apps and touch -- will not be released March 18 as part of Firefox 28 as originally planned.

And in a strong signal of Microsoft's struggle to convince customers that Windows 8 is the right OS for the times, Mozilla blamed the operating system and its Metro mode.

"We've been watching Metro's adoption," said Johnathan Nightingale, vice president of Firefox, in a Friday blog. "From what we can see, it's pretty flat. On any given day we have, for instance, millions of people testing pre-release versions of Firefox desktop, but we've never seen more than 1,000 active daily users in the Metro environment."

Those anemic numbers haven't been enough to properly test Firefox on Metro, Nightingale continued, which meant that bugs would invariably slip through the cracks. "That's going to mean lots of bugs discovered in the field, requiring a lot of follow-up engineering, design, and QA effort. To ship it without doing that follow-up work is not an option," he said.

And with such low turn-out for the Metro Firefox, what was the point?

"When I talk about the need to pick our battles, this feels like a bad one to pick: significant investment and low impact," said Nightingale.

The cancelation of Firefox on Metro put a match, more or less, to two years of work by Mozilla's engineers and designers, although Nightingale said that the code would be mothballed, available at some later date if Metro suddenly got a growth spurt.

Mozilla began work on the Metro edition in March 2012. It shipped a preview in October 2012, several weeks before Microsoft launched Windows 8. At that time, Mozilla's schedule said the Firefox app might appear as early as January 2013. But the ambitious timetable was revised several times, until release plans finally firmed up and the March 18 date was nailed down.

Ironically, just as Mozilla was set to ship Metro Firefox, Microsoft was preparing a second round of changes that deemphasize the touch UI. Windows 8.1 Update, a follow-on to last year's Windows 8.1, will likely launch April 8. Although Microsoft has repeatedly reaffirmed its commitment to Metro, the retreat from its original strategy -- to force the UI on users -- may have spooked Mozilla.

Nightingale pointed out that Mozilla had to carefully choose where it commits to compete and where does not. "We still need to focus on the projects with the most impact for our mission; the massive scale of our competitors and of the work to be done requires us to marshal our forces appropriately," Nightingale said.

Of the major browser makers -- Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Opera Software -- only Opera recorded less revenue than Mozilla in 2012, the last year that figures were available for all five. And Mozilla has dedicated considerable resources to Firefox OS, the browser-based mobile operating system that it hopes will put it at the smartphone table. Mozilla cited Firefox OS development expenses as one reason why it's considering pushing advertisements to new users of Firefox on the desktop and why it's handed its browser identity project to volunteers.

Even so, pulling the plug on Firefox Metro was a stunning turnabout for Mozilla, which two years ago said that it had play to win. "It is extremely important that we deliver an awesome Firefox experience on Metro, one that is tightly integrated with the platform, fast, and feature rich," wrote Brian Bondy, the Mozilla engineer who led the Metro development team, in April 2012, six months before Windows 8's debut. "Windows is by far the platform with the most users and which has the biggest effect on market share."

The fallout from the decision has begun: Also on Friday, Bondy, who worked at Mozilla since 2011, announced he had left the company and was joining Khan Academy, an online education firm.

Nightingale echoed Bondy's 2012 expectations Friday, but in hindsight.

"In late 2012 ... [Windows 8] looked like the next battleground for the Web. Windows is a massive ecosystem and Microsoft pushes its new platforms hard," said Nightingale.

Instead, while Microsoft has claimed it has sold 200 million Windows 8 licenses and even backed off the "let-them-eat-Metro" strategy, users have continued to pan the Metro UI, the quantity and quality of Metro apps, and Microsoft's decision to mash two UIs into one OS.

Mozilla's move will be seen a vote of no confidence in Windows 8, even though some at Microsoft may welcome the news because it leaves Internet Explorer with only Chrome as a Metro rival.

"Shipping a 1.0 version [of Firefox on Windows Touch], given the broader context we see for the Metro platform, would be a mistake," said Nightingale.

Ouch.

Mozilla has shelved Firefox on Metro because few use the touch-based UI in Windows 8.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

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Red Hat to take on Microsoft with .NET hosted service

IDG News Service - Challenging Microsoft's Windows Azure on its own turf, Red Hat is ramping up services that would offer Microsoft .NET and SQL Server capabilities on its OpenShift platform as a service (PaaS).

Code to enable the Microsoft services is being provided by Uhuru Software, a company started by a number of former Microsoft executives and engineers that specializes in rendering Microsoft software as cloud services.

The Microsoft services will not be available immediately, and Red Hat has not set a date for when the capabilities will be ready, either on OpenShift itself, or as part of OpenShift Enterprise, a package for running OpenShift services within an enterprise, said Joe Fernandes, who leads product management for OpenShift.

When it does go live, customers of Red Hat's OpenShift PaaS will be able to use copies, or "cartridges" in Red Hat's parlance, of the Microsoft .NET runtime and Microsoft SQL Server database system.

Both will run on top of Windows Server. Windows will run either as a virtual machine, or directly on the servers natively. Administrators can interact with the Microsoft cartridges through a standard command line SSH (Secure Shell).

When these services are available, OpenShift users will be able to join .NET and SQL Server capabilities with other non-Microsoft services within the same workspace. A developer could, for instance, use a .NET cartridge to run an application's front end, and link it to a MySQL cartridge that would provide the database services for that application. The entire application could then be managed through the OpenShift console.

While Microsoft itself offers .NET and SQL Server as a service on its own Windows Azure cloud, along with many open source technologies, OpenShift could offer a few advantages over Azure, Morgan said. For one, the OpenShift code can be deployed in the enterprise, allowing organizations to set up hybrid clouds that span across Red Hat's OpenShift service and their own internal services.

Also, Azure does not yet offer Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as an option (though it offers other Linux distributions).

The OpenShift services will use cgroups, a feature built into the Linux kernel, to ensure each service gets its allotment of CPU and memory resources. They will also use the SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux) module to ensure each service is securely isolated from other services running on the same machine.

The Uhuru code for OpenShift is open source, and is being developed on OpenShift Origin, the Red Hat open source code base that the company uses to run its cloud services.

The Uhuru code still needs to be tested across a wide user base, and a few features still need to be developed within the software, before it will be commercially ready, Morgan said.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2014 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Oracle reverses decline in hardware revenue during Q3

IDG News Service - Oracle's third-quarter revenue rose 4 percent to US$9.3 billion while net income increased 2 percent to $2.6 billion, buoyed by growth in new software licenses and cloud subscriptions as well as a long-anticipated rise in hardware product revenue.

Hardware systems product sales, which had declined steadily since Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, were up 8 percent to $725 million in the quarter ended Feb. 28, while hardware systems support revenue increased 5 percent to $598 million. New software licenses and cloud subscription revenue rose a combined 4 percent to $2.4 billion.

Software license updates and product support revenue jumped 5 percent to $4.6 billion.

"Oracle Cloud Applications and Engineered Systems are both rapidly growing, billion dollar run-rate businesses," Oracle Chief Financial Officer Safra Catz said in a statement. The company has focused its marketing efforts on such systems, which include the Exadata database machine, while de-emphasizing sales of lower-margin commodity servers.

Oracle's engineered system line is experiencing rapid growth, "while throughout the industry traditional high-end server product lines are in steep decline," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said in a statement.

Profit margins on engineered systems fell slightly, but that was due to the fact that Oracle is "packing more memory" into the latest models without raising prices, Catz said during a conference call Tuesday. However, Oracle makes significantly more money from the many Oracle software licenses customers load onto the systems than from the hardware itself.

Oracle will cross the 10,000 mark in sales of engineered systems over the next few months, Ellison said during the conference call.

While engineered systems revenue growth has been strong since Oracle launched the first Exadata in 2008, those sales represented a relatively small percentage of total hardware sales until recently, Ellison said. Now, engineered systems account for more than 30 percent of hardware product sales and soon will cover half, he said.

Meanwhile, Oracle's quarterly cloud application revenue "is now approaching $300 million," company President Mark Hurd said in a statement. "All of our strategic Cloud Application Suites, including Fusion Enterprise Resource Planning, Fusion Human Capital Management and Fusion Customer Experience, posted triple-digit revenue growth."

Oracle recently launched release eight of Fusion Applications, which first became generally available in 2011, Hurd said during the call. The release includes some 1,000 new features, and Oracle plans to roll out a similar number in release nine, which is due later this year, he added.

The company is seeing strong growth in "organic Fusion," and not just from the application companies it has acquired more recently, such as Eloqua and Taleo, Hurd added.

While Fusion offers customers the option of both on-premises and cloud deployments, the trend has been "cloud, cloud, cloud," Hurd said.

Cloud subscription contract sizes are growing as well, with more than 65 seven-figure or eight-figure deals in the quarter, according to Hurd.

He chalked up Oracle's SaaS (software as a service) revenue growth to experience.

"We thought we knew a lot a year ago, a couple years ago," Hurd said of Oracle's cloud strategy. "We just know a lot more now."

Oracle is also banking on uptake of its new 12c database. Later this year, the company will release an in-memory option for 12c that it says will provide dramatic performance improvements without the need to rewrite applications. On Tuesday's call, Ellison indicated the release could come within several months.

Oracle is keen to get the in-memory option to market in order to fend off challenges from the likes of SAP, which wants to convince customers now using Oracle's database for their SAP installations to switch over to its HANA in-memory database.

Still in nascent stages are Oracle's entries in IaaS (infrastructure as a service) and PaaS (platform as a service), which will compete with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, respectively.

Oracle has completed pricing for its IaaS service, and it will be "pretty much equivalent to Amazon," Ellison said. As for PaaS, Oracle expects many customers to "move a lot of their existing applications into Oracle's cloud," he said.

Oracle also plans to have dedicated sales teams for each service, with some 500 to 1,000 hires planned around the world during its next fiscal year, Ellison said. "We need specialist sales teams that are used to competing with Amazon."

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris' email address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2014 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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