Why Microsoft and Citrix need each other

Desktop virtualization company Citrix made news last week with an overhaul of its major product lines and the introduction of “Project Olympus,” a cloud infrastructure stack based on open source software. But pretty high up in CEO Mark Templeton’s keynote at Citrix Synergy Conference 2011 in San Francisco was a big shout out to Microsoft.

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Privacy regs won’t kill innovation so stop whining

The founder of the Reputation.com Web site criticized Internet industry giants who claim that any regulation to try to protect the privacy of consumers online would stifle innovation. A Microsoft executive at the Privacy Identity Innovation Conference 2011 agreed, but only up to a point, warning that at this early stage in the digital age, the wrong regulation can have “a chilling effect.”

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Microsoft faces reality with open source outreach

Making another stop on its "We Love Open Source" tour, Microsoft’s Sandy Gupta told attendees at an open source conference in San Francisco Monday that the company will, for the first time, support interoperability of its software with the non-commercial version of Linux -- interoperability had previously been limited to commercial Linux -- and specifically that Microsoft’s virtualization platform is

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Open source not just mainstream, it’s mainstreamier

I had to chuckle when I saw the news release headline “Open Source Now Mainstream,” because that’s been the theme of every open source conference I’ve covered for the last five years. But when Michael Skok, general partner at North Bridge Venture Partners and chair of the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) 2011 that begins today in San Francisco, says open source is now mainstream, he can back it up.

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Windows malware threatens bank accounts

This story has been updated with new information.

Web access security provider Trusteer has identified a Microsoft Windows malware platform that it says has “morphed” into a threat that attacks North American financial institutions and their customer accounts. The trojan, dubbed “Sunspot,” has been in circulation for a while but only recently developed financial fraud capabilities, according to a blog post today by Trusteer’s Chief Technology Officer Amit Klein.

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Apple, Google execs squirm before Senate privacy panel

Executives of Google and Apple were called to task for mistakes made in how they protect the privacy of consumers using location-based applications on their smartphones and tablets at a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing Tuesday. Apple had to admit to a glitch in the iOS for Apple iPhones and iPads that stored location information when location services were supposedly blocked, and Google had to admit that it doesn’t require third party application providers to establish and disclose a privacy policy.

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Researcher: Windows Phone 7 will be No. 1 smartphone by 2015

This story has been updated with new information.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 will be the No. 1 selling smartphone OS by 2015, surpassing Google Android, according to a report by Pyramid Research released on Friday.

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HTC, Samsung sell nearly 20 million mobile phones in the first quarter

HTC and Samsung are making a killing selling mobile phones, mostly thanks to Android. Nokia, sadly, is lagging, but not out of the picture. But because of the sheer volume of phones these three sell, the future could be good for Windows Phone 7 as HTC, Samsung and, soon, Nokia, offer WP7 handsets.

The iPhone isn’t struggling. It looks as if market share gains by these players came mostly at the expense of RIM’s BlackBerry devices.

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Microsoft security expert warns over SharePoint data at risk

A Microsoft security expert warns that users of Microsoft’s SharePoint are increasingly putting sensitive, highly regulated data in the collaboration platform with little security and auditing. Worse yet, the audit tools in some versions of SharePoint are so convoluted as to be practically useless.

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Five myths about Windows 7 migration debunked

An executive of Unisys is urging more enterprises to migrate to Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system by arguing, somewhat counterintuitively, that it’s not as easy a decision as some make it out to be, but it’s still a smart move.

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Microsoft comes out looking good in iPhone tracking flap

Microsoft says it doesn’t store location tracking history on its smartphones. Furthermore, Microsoft details its WP7 privacy policy, not in legalese written in dense 8-point type buried in its Terms of Service, but in a plain English Q&A format on a Windows Phone Web page titled “Location and my privacy.”

What we have here is a rare case where Microsoft gets to wear the white hat compared to black hat (and turtleneck)-wearing Steve Jobs.

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Getting the federal government into the cloud remains a lofty goal

A study out this week from VMware shows there are billions of dollars to be saved by the U.S. government adopting cloud computing and there’s an ambitious initiative by the government to make it happen, but that budget constraints, security worries and a certain amount of cynicism may impede its progress. The government’s Cloud First initiative has the potential to benefit companies like VMware, as well as Microsoft, if they can get the government to make the necessary investments.

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$72 billion SaaS company doesn’t use the cloud for its own IT

NES Financial moved $72 billion in financial transactions for its banking and other customers in 2010 using a software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model. The company knows cloud computing yet it keeps its own IT assets on its own premises, not on Azure or any other cloud infrastructure. Its operating system is Windows Server, its database is SQL Server and its software applications are developed on the .NET Framework.

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Microsoft provisions Systems Center Essentials for the cloud

“Every time something bad happens in the world like a volcanic eruption, an earthquake, a tsunami, there’s a tremendous peak for us for processing power,” said Peter Zoll, CIO of statistical model maker I-MAG STS Corp. “We need a lot of processing power because we have hundreds of millions of equations to deal with … [so] the cloud is a godsend.”

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Truste wants to add tracking in IE9?

Truste, a company focused on protecting online privacy and security, is defending itself against complaints from a privacy group about its role in the creation of a Tracking Protection List (TPL) for users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 Web browser.

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How Active Directory can help protect against rogue network admins

With RSA still wiping the egg off its face from last week’s attack, and Gucci on the hook for $200,000 worth of damage from a fired network admin, it’s time for companies to double-down on their efforts to protect corporate networks. Security consultant Randy Franklin Smith says that Active Directory can become one your best defenses.

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Microsoft wants to friend you on Facebook for tech support

In a classic case of going where your customers are, Microsoft is now inviting users of the Office workplace productivity software suite to go to a specially-made Facebook page to get tech support. In a recent blog post, Microsoft introduced Facebook Help Desk for Office, at which users can type in a question about Office components such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel and get answers.

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Bing's latest market share still anemic (and why customers should care)

Why can’t Bing gain any traction? Despite its innovation and a reported $100 million marketing budget, Microsoft’s Bing search engine can’t even break through to a consistent 4 percent market share. The latest search market share numbers show Bing with a minuscule 3.91 percent share to Google’s 84.64 percent. Over the last 15 months, Bing’s share has bounced up and down between 3 percent and 4 percent.

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A scenario where Windows Phone 7 could prevail

Microsoft has been unable to boast hot sales of smartphones running its new Windows Phone 7 operating system, prompting comparisons to the Kin debacle of 2010. But a new analysis of the initiative bodes well for WP7 and Microsoft in due time. Randall Stross, a Silicon Valley author and professor of business at San Jose (Calif.) State University, lays out the scenario on how WP7 will succeed in a column in Sunday’s New York Times.

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Fire sale on Windows Phone 7

AT&T this week cut the price of two Microsoft Windows Phone 7 handsets after having already cut the price in half a few months earlier, another bad sign for the beleaguered mobile OS. To be sure, discounting is par for the course in the mobile handset market and retailing in general, but it’s also a common indicator of a problem: We’ve gotta move this stuff.

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