The prospect of a settlement between the US federal government and Microsoft in the antitrust case against the software giant has grown stronger, as US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson appointed a mediator to the case.
As the first phase of a lengthy litigation comes to a close, the question of whether Microsoft is an illegal monopoly looms over the company's ongoing business practices and its overall role in the emerging electronic-business economy.
Microsoft chairman and CEO Bill Gates has acknowledged that Microsoft must improve its application server technologies within Windows NT Server and the forthcoming upgrade, Windows 2000.
The US Army has switched its Web site from Microsoft's Windows NT servers to WebStar servers running Apple's MacOS.
Microsoft put a happy face last week on its decision to delay the release of Release Candidate 2 (RC2) of Windows 2000, insisting the move would not hinder the company's efforts to ship final code by the end of 1999.
Microsoft Corp. plans to make Windows "Web-centric" by issuing a set of so-called Internet APIs, which will help developers write Web-based applications for Windows, according to company executives.
Microsoft is investing billions in the telecommunications industry in order to facilitate further software sales, chairman and chief executive officer, Bill Gates said yesterday.
Microsoft's senior vice president Jim Allchin, who is heading up the development of Windows 2000, has acknowledged that the just-released Beta 3, although feature-complete, needs plenty of work before it can be considered a finished product.
When NorthPoint Communications goes public in a few weeks, Microsoft will make a $US30 million investment in the Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) provider, according to officials from the two companies.
Criticised in the past for its "Windows now, everybody else later" approach, Microsoft will release the latest version of its browser, Internet Explorer 5.0, on March 18 for a wide range of platforms, the company announced yesterday.
Microsoft is dealing with more woes surrounding Service Pack 4 (SP4) of Windows NT Server 4.0. The software giant is working on an SP4 installation problem that affects users with specific configurations, and plans to issue a fix this week. Additionally, Microsoft support-line engineers compounded worries for some customers by describing the fix as a "major re-release" of the service pack.
Novell has announced plans to roll out version 2.0 of Novell Directory Services (NDS) for Windows NT, a more versatile iteration of the directory service that will branch out into branch offices and departments.
With many customers voicing dissatisfaction about the Windows NT prices they must pay for Windows Terminal Server (WTS), Microsoft is rethinking the cost structure of its thin-client solution.
Only three Microsoft products are not year-2000 compliant, the software giant's millennium guru said while unveiling the company's Year 2000 Resource Center, but Internet Explorer has enough "minor" year-2000 issues to warrant a change in the way the company issues fixes.