The new language is to be a part of Microsoft’s new Oslo development and service-oriented strategy, incorporating features from XAML while being textual and domain-specific. M is to be used directly with 2 other components to be released with M along with Visual Studio 2010: Quadrant, a tool for building models visually, and a repository for storing and viewing models in an SQL database
Microsoft, which is making the Kilimanjaro upgrade at a business intelligence conference in Redmond, Wash., also plans to show its efforts at integrating its Datallegro acquisition with Windows Server and SQL Server.
"To the extent the world moves to Web-based software, that's very hard for Microsoft -- it completely unlocks their grip on your desktop,'' said Sarah Friar, a Goldman, Sachs & Co. analyst in San Francisco. "Within Microsoft, people just pooh- pooh that idea. There's a huge complacency within the company.''
Microsoft is now taking the threat from Google quite seriously: In July 2008 COO Kevin Turner was dispatched to consumer-products giant Procter & Gamble to dissuade P&G from moving to Google Apps—and ditching Microsoft
Microsoft is offering a new service to allow you to do the same type of data mining in the plugin online. Simply upload your Excel spreadsheet of data and you have all the same functionality online that you did in the plugin.
First SPSA. Now this. Microsoft is dying from the inside, and the folks sucking it dry have zero motivation to change things. It's working out pretty damn well for them.
If you have gotten a chance to try an early build of SQL Server Reporting 2008 Reporting Services, you know that one of the changes in the product is the removal of the Internet Information Services (IIS) dependency.
With Microsoft and Sun (along with Linux players) bundling virtualization with their server software, and ongoing improvements in open source virtualization offerings such as Xen, I've predicted before and I now predict more than ever that VMware has to radically change its business model.
That is how Microsoft acted a decade ago, and that, increasingly, is how Google is acting. Half the time, the company doesn’t even realize how egregious its behavior has become, which is why it feels so misunderstood when it is criticized
What's so ironic is that if Microsoft started thinking about the user again, instead of thinking about protecting their business, they could do great things. There are many problems yet to be solved in online software, but they won't be solved without bold leaps into the future.