Business Objects and Microsoft To Make War in the Midmarket

Seeing a huge market opportunity to sell business intelligence software to companies with 100 to 1,000 employees and $100 million to $1 billion in revenue, Business Objects today announced a major new-product family and larger initiative aimed at catering to midsized companies. The midmarket now buys $2.1 billion worth of BI software each year, according to IDC, and Business Objects says that figure is growing 12.5 percent per year — 50 percent faster than BI sales growth among large enterprises.

To cater to the tighter budgets and leaner IT staffs of midsized companies, Business Objects is introducing Crystal Decisions, a “holistic” product that will be offered in Standard, Professional and Premium editions. The Standard edition, which includes reporting, query and analysis, is being released today starting at $20,000. The Pro and Premium editions, which will add data integration and performance management capabilities, will debut in the second and fourth quarter, respectively. All three editions will be able to deliver data, reports and analyses within Microsoft Office and SharePoint.

Read the full story (Intelligent Enterprise)

Microsoft launches SharePoint Services 3.0

Microsoft has announced a new version of its services add-on for the SharePoint collaborative working platform. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, is an add-on product for existing SharePoint-based applications that adds a basic web development environment for developing intranet and workgroup or departmental portal sites, and expands the collaboration and content-sharing capabilities of the SharePoint platform. SharePoint Services 3.0 is also one of the underlying technologies behind Microsoft’s Office Live small business online services which launch in the UK in January.

Read the full story (ITPro UK)

Microsoft Talks Up SharePoint For Search

First, slated for some stage time in Munich will be Office SharePoint for Search. The intranet search software was discussed at the Worldwide Partner Conference last summer, but there hasn’t been much detail disclosed around it, says Davide Vigano, worldwide market lead for Microsoft Small and Midmarket Solutions and Partner group (SMS&P) Well, here are a few factoids: The software will index up to 1.5 million documents for $7,000 with no client access licenses (CALs) required. Microsoft’s goal is to unify desktop and intranet and Internet search where Microsoft lags far behind leader Google. For customers wanting to go beyond the 1.5 million document limit or to search line-of-business applications, will need to go to full-fledged SharePoint Server he said.

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SocialPoint On Sharepoint

This morning we released SocialPoint, or Socialtext running on SharePoint. At first, this may seem counter-intuitive for a company like Socialtext. SharePoint is coming out with wikis and blogs in their 2007 version, why embrace and extend? Let me give you my personal reasons.

First of all, the humanizing of Microsoft has changed my attitude about the convicted monopolist. I believe that great people can work to change organizations, not just from Ray Ozzie on down. I’d rather be part of communities of change. I’ll still be a stalwart critic of the organization, but know I will have constructive conversations as a result.

Second, I believe that our Open Source solutions cooperating with Microsoft may grow the Open Source community as a whole. Most people won’t see this in Microsoft’s best interest. I do. Some people won’t see this in Open Source’s best interest. I do.

Third, SharePoint 2007 is an incumbent entry into the market that validates and grows the category. There is an increasing role for the best-of-breed wiki in the long term. Markets reward choice.

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Vignette allies with Microsoft for rich content management

Content management software provider Vignette Corp has struck an alliance with software giant Microsoft Corp to build Web-based media applications on Office and SharePoint. Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft will leverage Vignette’s web content management software to deliver rich multimedia content on Windows PC and Internet-enabled mobile devices, set-top boxes and Xbox video games consoles. For example, content cataloged and stored Microsoft’s Office and SharePoint Server 2007 systems will be made accessible to these devices via Vignette’s content management products.

Read the full story (CBR Online)

Business intelligence at a whole new level promised by Microsoft and i2

Sophisticated advanced planning and scheduling software developer i2 is to develop supply chain analytics and business decision support systems with Microsoft. The pair are to develop i2’s supply chain management suites on the Microsoft.Net Framework, integrating with Microsoft Office and the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Server 2003, SQL Server and Office SharePoint Server. Dubbed i2 Intelligence, the analytics software is to harness Microsoft Office as its main user interface. In fact, it will also work with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, Microsoft’s business intelligence (BI) technology and i2’s new-generation supply chain management solutions.

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Microsoft Forefront Explained

Businesses today often deploy a conglomeration of security solutions from different vendors to protect different aspects of the network. Sometimes these products play well together, other times they don’t. Conflicts can be difficult to troubleshoot, management is made more complex and confusing by the need to learn different interfaces and run multiple management consoles, and total costs may be difficult to assess. Server and client security may be addressed separately, with different products.

Despite these difficulties, a single monolithic solution may not be the answer, either–especially if you’re concerned about scalability. A more scalable and more cost effective approach is a set of security products that are specifically designed to integrate with one another. That’s exactly what Microsoft is attempting to do with their Forefront family of security products. It’s an ambitious effort, but many in the IT industry are still a little confused as to exactly what Forefront is and what it does. Let’s try to untangle some of the confusion and look at how Forefront can form the basis of an integrated and highly scalable business solution.

Read the full story (Tech Republic)

EMC Teams with Microsoft for content management

EMC and Microsoft have strengthened their partnership in the world of content management with the announcement of a new alliance. The hi-tech power couple is set to introduce new content and archiving products that enable tighter integration between the EMC Documentum ECM platform and Microsoft applications, specifically Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration portal. EMC says it will debut new software that integrates its Documentum platform with multiple Microsoft solutions and platform technologies, including Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, SQL Server 2005, and enterprise search solutions. Microsoft provides content management capabilities in SharePoint Server 2007 today, but the new alliance will allow SharePoint users to transparently tie in with the enterprise ECM capabilities of the Documentum platform. Users will be able to access the Documentum platform natively from within the SharePoint Server 2007 and the Microsoft Office system user interface.

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Microsoft, Symantec Dueling for SharePoint Security

Microsoft has announced the beta release of “Forefront Security for SharePoint” a revision of the MS-acquired Sybari “Antigen for SharePoint Server” product, that brings needed security to SharePoint (MOSS 2007) and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0. Forefont, a package of security add-ons, will be implemented to protect SharePoint/MOSS from viruses and other malicious software. “As business customers use collaboration software to connect internal users, customers and partners in an increasing variety of ways, they want to maintain the highest level of protection for critical business information,” said Margaret Arakawa, senior director of Security and Access Product Marketing at Microsoft.

Read the full story (CMS Wire)