Microsoft this week demonstrated Release 2 of its Office Communications Server 2007 at VoiceCon in Amsterdam. The release, which is currently in private beta testing, is expected to be available for purchase in February 2009.

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Sun on Monday unveiled OpenOffice 3.0, the personal productivity suite that's targeted as the open source alternative to Microsoft Office. On Wednesday, the OpenOffice.org site had a notice that read: "our website is struggling to cope with the unprecedented demand for the new release 3.0 of OpenOffice.org.

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Microsoft Subnet blogger Alex Lewis writes: Yesterday Mike Nash announced the official name for "Codename: Windows 7" on the Vista team blog... Wait for it... Windows 7!!!  This will be a rare time where Microsoft has chosen to keep the internal codename for a project as the RTM "public" product name. Personally, I'm not sure I understand the strategy.

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Microsoft is looking to spoil Apple's new MacBook party by claiming that Mac buyers pay 'Apple taxes'.

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Issuing patches monthly or quarterly means IT managers are bombarded with fixes that they need to evaluate and apply as they race against hackers who may be looking at ways to attack systems that are vulnerable - if they hadn't done so already. Microsoft, which tomorrow is expected to issue 11 patches - four of them rated critical, expected to add an "Exploitability Index" to each of the fixes.

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The Microsoft buying BlackBerry maker Research in Motion speculation has resurfaced a year after the speculation was first talked about.

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Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Ning, Digg, MeetUp, blogs, etc.,  -- the number of social networking sites and tools is exploding. Social networking is the killer app of the Internet for everyone – not just the texting teenybopper crowd.

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It is Jason Hermitage's job to convince enterprise IT folks that Windows Server 2008 is an eye-popping operating system and that they should start planning their migrations now. But what are the features that Hermitage, director of  Windows Server Marketing, uses to win over IT folks opinion?

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Yahoo investor Mithras Capital LP has proposed that Yahoo sell itself to Microsoft for $22 a share. While that price is far lower than the $33 a share Microsoft had at one time offered for Yahoo, it does represent a premium over the $12.66 a share that was Yahoo's price as of close of trading Thursday. Microsoft has said it is no longer interested in Yahoo but investors continue to hold out hope that Microsoft will change its mind.

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Much is said about how Google is attacking Microsoft in its cash-cow, Office applications. But another side to the same story is that some 97% of Google's revenue comes from ads and its stock has dropped about 50% so far this year, reports Bloomberg.com. Investors realize that the search giant needs to diversify if it is to continue on its meteoric rise in power.

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We've selected the winner of September training giveaway from Microsoft Subnet and partner New Horizons. Robert Dambergs has won a free Microsoft training course of his choice worth up to $2,500. He correctly answered this trivia question: What are the names of three bloggers that write for Microsoft Subnet? Answer: Mitchell Ashley, Ron Barrett, Tyson Kopczynski.

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Microsoft turned out to the bright star in the Web search marketing game in the third quarter compared to arch rivals Google and Yahoo, according to Web researcher AdGooroo. In its latest quarterly report, AdGooroo said Microsoft LiveSearch has grown its active advertiser base by almost 32% in one year.

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Microsoft Subnet is happy to announce a great addition to our staff of bloggers: Andrew Mikols. Mikols is an IT consultant and career coach but he is best known as the founder of MCP-Careers.com, a site is wholly focused on finding jobs for Microsoft certified professionals (MCPs).

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UPDATED 10/10: Kilimanjaro does refer to a bundle of features that will be included in SQL Server, but which will be a smaller, more minor release (aka R2). The promise is that this upgrade should arrive in early 2010.

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If you needed another argument in favor of open source, here it is. The money you spent on license fees for proprietary software has funded years of who-cares lawsuits between software vendors. A case in point is a post from Groklaw yesterday regarding some documents that Microsoft subpoenaed last month.

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Windows in the cloud isn't all vaporware, only Microsoft's version of it is. Last week, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels' announced that Amazon's cloud server, EC2, now supports Windows Server and with that, it runs many of the most popular Windows apps. (EC2 customers can run ASP.NET Web sites using Internet Information Server with Microsoft SQL Server as the database, for instance.)

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Now here's a news item that will either delight or befuddle you.

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UPDATED: Microsoft is denying a hiring freeze, a second report from IDG News Service states.

"It is not true that we have instituted a hiring freeze," said Lou Gellos, a Microsoft spokesman. "What is true is that we are evaluating hiring as we always do and we might make projections that are different than perhaps we had at the beginning of the year." 

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Here is news from the ongoing "Windows Vista Capable" lawsuit that could bring a smirk to your face, as reported by SeattlePI.com. Lawyers have petitioned the court to allow them to use Microsoft's own Windows Update to contact the potential 15 million folks who could be plaintiffs against Microsoft in the class action suit.

In a filing today, attorneys at Gordon Tilden Thomas & Cordell in Seattle say that Windows Update would provide a nifty low-cost way to find potential members for the class. The suit alleges that Microsoft misled consumers by encouraging PC makers to declare their computers as "Vista ready" prior to the release of Vista (using "Windows Vista Capable" stickers) even though some of these PCs could run only a stripped down version of the operating system.

In February the case was granted class action status, but there's a problem. How can the lawyers find and contact potential members of the suit? SeattlePI.com reports that lawyers want Microsoft to send an informational update through the Windows Update system that says something to the affect of:

If you purchased a computer certified as 'Windows Vista Capable' and not also bearing the "Premium Ready" designation, your rights may be affected by a class action lawsuit. Click here for more detailed information.

On top of that, lawyers want Microsoft to send this update labeled as "important."

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With the cute acronym of WoW, Microsoft and Cisco have today delivered Windows Server 2008 on WAAS. The WoW appliance is now available for order, says the Windows Server Division blog.

Announced in February, WoW marries Cisco’s Wide Area Application Services with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and is geared for the branch office. Low-cost Linux servers have become a popular way for branch offices to combine a server and a router into a single piece of hardware. But the one-two punch of a Microsoft/Cisco device could be an attractive alternative, especially as this appliance functions in reverse -- a Cisco box is running Windows Server 2008, rather than a software router running on an application server. Cisco's WAN optimization lets an IT department stream applications from a central location, yet perform as if they are running locally at that branch, the vendors promise.

Cisco also says that an Enterprise License of the box is optimized for many popular Microsoft applications including: Microsoft Exchange (MAPI), Microsoft Windows file sharing (CIFS), SharePoint and Windows print services.

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Six months into its Open Source Census project, OpenLogic has come up with some interesting results about Windows users for Microsoft. On Sept. 30, the Open Source Census project revealed updated statistics that showed, among other things, that open source was a "significant" percentage of the software being run on Windows machines. No one would be surprised at that given the popularity of Firefox (found on 85% of the machines scanned), Samba and others. But the documentation that this census is providing clearly shows a vibrant open source community for Windows exists.

Let's note that Microsoft is a sponsor of the census and that the first report on results in August (taken two months after the census launched), showed that more than half of the open source software found was found on Windows machines. Since this latest press release no longer specifies that 50%-plus number, a logical conclusion would be that as more machines are scanned, far less than 50% of them are running Windows.

Let's also note that not very many machines have been scanned -- in six months only 2,235 machines have participated, according to the census's own reports. (Interestingly, the press release was quick to point out that 300,000 open source packages were found, but never mentioned the small number of machines involved). Those likely to participate are those likely to love open source and use it for their operating system, too.

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Microsoft Subnet and Cisco Subnet and have brand new giveaways for you this month. From Microsoft Subnet, enter to win a free Microsoft training course from Global Knowledge (worth up to $2,995) and 15 copies of Networking with Microsoft Windows Vista. From Cisco Subnet enter to win a free BP gas card worth $300, and 15 copies of iExec Enterprise Essentials, the official print companion to the Cisco Entrepreneur Institute's new iExec Enterprise Essentials curriculum.

* Enter to win a Microsoft training course from Global Knowledge worth up to $2,995 to be given to one lucky reader. The winning reader can choose any five-day (or shorter) Microsoft course in the United States from the Global Knowledge catalog. Training is offered in hundreds of U.S. cities. Entry details can be found here.

* Enter to win one of 15 copies of the hot title Networking with Microsoft Windows Vista: Your Guide to Easy and Secure Windows Vista Networking by Paul McFedries. Plus read Paul McFedries's guest blog written exclusively for Microsoft Subnet. Entry details can be found here.

Microsoft Subnet remains a proud partner with New Horizon's Learning Centers, too. Check out the New Horizon's catalog of Microsoft classes here.

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wasn't awarded the highest total compensation package in fiscal 2008 - that prize was enjoyed by COO Kevin Turner who raked in a total compensation deal worth $10 million, up from almost $8.5 million last year, according to Microsoft's proxy statement. Ballmer's total compensation was $1.35 million. He has for a number of years declined a larger compensation package but instead prefers to reap his rewards through increasing Microsoft's value. Ballmer owns 4.51% of the company and his slice was worth $10.25 billion as of 4 p.m. PT Monday, reports Brier Dudley in the Seattle Times.

Another interesting snippet from the proxy filing, as noted by Dudley, is the agreement that Microsoft would buy the homes of Turner and CFO Chris Liddell if they couldn't sell their houses quickly enough when they relocated. Microsoft took a hit of $2 million on Liddel's abode and $254,000 on Turner's pad, reports Dudley.

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Microsoft Monday slapped antiscareware lawsuits against two businesses, Branch Software and AlphaRed, and their product, Registry Cleaner XP, reports Internetnews.com. Scareware are pop-up ads that offer to scan users' PCs for problems and directs users to Web sites where they can download software fixes for payment. Microsoft teamed up with the Attorney-General of Washington State, Rob McKenna to put the lawsuits in motion. "We will not tolerate scams to trick consumers into buying software to solve problems that don't exist," McKenna told reporters. Microsoft said it has seven lawsuits against such scareware.

Visit the Microsoft Subnet home page for more news, blogs, podcasts.
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Will Google be the death of Microsoft? Hard to imagine
17 job-hunting resources for Windows pros
Top 5 strategies for surviving a recession
Under the hood of Hyper-V (master list of links).
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Just how far will Microsoft go to prevent Google from stealing its customers? A flight in July from Seattle to Cincinnati, Ohio to Procter & Gamble's HQ by Microsoft's COO Kevin Turner, who persuaded the soap manufacturer to halt its testing of Google's personal productivity software as a potential replacement for Microsoft. Turner returned with a bigger three-year contract, reports Bloomberg. "Losing a Procter & Gamble would be something where I don't think I'd sleep well,'' Turner is cited as saying. "I want to make sure that anybody that knows anything about it would also not sleep well.'' Turner promised P&G an early peek at plans for Web-based software and gave the company the flexibility to shift between those and standard applications, reports Bloomberg.

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Lots of ink these days about how Microsoft wants to eat Google for breakfast and is instead choked on the search giant. Our sister site Google Subnet has even gone so far as to wonder whether Google is Microsoft's white whale and will actually be the death of the largest software maker in the world. While anything is possible, it is hubris on Google's part to think that Microsoft will be catastrophically wounded by chasing a search business. Look at the numbers. True, Google is a strong company with a great balance sheet but it is dwarfed by Microsoft in this regard. Google ended fiscal 2007 with about $16.6 billion in revenues and $5.1 billion in net income from operations (an astounding 31% of revenue converted to profit). That is nothing to sneeze at especially when you consider the company's amazing five-year growth rate. It ended 2002 at about a half billion in revenue. Plus Google is sitting on over $14 billion in cash.

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that he is cautiously pessimistic that software makers (including Microsoft) will face tough times from the U.S. economic crises. Technology spending had already begun to slump before the discouraging news began raining down from Wall Street in the last two weeks. Ballmer told Bloomberg that it would be "really imprudent" for software industry leaders not to brace for at least some impact.

But in typical Ballmer style, he noted that Microsoft will use such a slump to ``invest more in our future than the other guys we're competing with,'' according to the story. An obvious presumption would be that he plans to continue his acquisition spree. With hot IPOs out of the question, young up-and-coming companies should be more willing to negotiate for a buyout. These hints also come days after Microsoft announced it will be buying back $40 billion worth of its own shares, issuing its first commercial paper and selling as much as $6 billion in debt. Whether it's equity, debt or IT products you want, Microsoft wants you to invest in it. You will have the comfort of knowing that the company was the first in a decade to be granted Standard and Poor's tip-top rating, says Bloomberg.

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In an unscientific poll of readers, we asked if VMware would go the way of Netscape. Seems as if the jury is out, but that slightly more readers think VMware will stand up to the competition just fine. Here are the results of the poll as of September 25. Want your say? Add your vote to the live poll below, too.

Visit the Microsoft Subnet home page for more news, blogs, podcasts.
More blog post from the Microsoft Subnet posts:
17 job-hunting resources for Windows pros
Top 5 strategies for surviving a recession
Under the hood of Hyper-V (master list of links).
Subscribe to all Microsoft Subnet bloggers.
Sign up for the bi-weekly Microsoft newsletter. (Click on News/Microsoft News Alert.)

Caught up the bad economy? Need a new job? There is some good news. Because Windows is still the predominant operating system in the corporate world, IT professionals with Microsoft skills and certifications remain in demand. (We'll bow to Microsoft-speak and use the generally accepted term "MCP" from here on, meaning "Microsoft certified professionals.") Unfortunately, as the job-seeking market floods with MCPs, you may need a fresh approach for your search before you can land that suh-weet offer. To that end, we've compiled a list of Microsoft-specific resources and some off-the-beaten track ideas to help you network with potential employers, find a recruiter or locate the perfect job listing.

Details begin on Page 2 of this post. But to make the list easier to navigate, here's an alphabetized quick-link guide.

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As is being widely reported, Microsoft will slim down Windows 7 by moving some applications previously included in Vista to online SaaS offerings that can be downloaded as Windows Live programs. The first to go from embedded apps in the OS to online offerings will be e-mail, photo editing, and movie making, CNET News reports.

This is a step in the right direction for Microsoft who has, over the years, embedded every conceivable productivity application into the operating system. Microsoft has a real opportunity with Windows 7 to execute (and execute well) on a slow cutover to cloud-centric software. If users can maintain the Windows apps they have been using for years, while being able to pick and choose which services they want as embedded applications in their operating system, Microsoft will go a long way toward warding off more mass defection to alternative operating systems like Mac and Linux. The key is that the cloud services Microsoft offers must be easy to use and work reliabily well while also attending to the security and management needs of the enterprise. This is Microsoft's market to keep or lose. The average person doesn't want to change their daily work habits because their software company if choice. has become too hard to work with. The average worker wants to like Microsoft.

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