14 DAY TRIAL // On Monday, Microsoft received the first major hit since the competition with Google was officially confirmed: the market researcher Millward Brown Optimor presented a new study that had the Mountain View-based company as a leader. According to the research, Google is the most powerful brand in the entire world, managing to beat worldwide names such as Coca Cola, IBM or Toyota. Microsoft was placed only on the third position with $55 billion while the search giant Google granted the first place with no more than $66.4 billion. The two companies were separated by an offline company, General Electric with an impressive number: $61.9 billion.
"Peter Walshe, global brands director at Millward Brown, told silicon.com: "Google is an absolutely phenomenal brand in the sense that it is very clear what it stands for and it has perceived leadership and innovation." Walshe said one of the key drivers to improve a company's brand is innovation and that's where technology brands tend to score very well. "People are rating technology brands as exciting, as brands they like and as brands they admire," he added," Silicon.com reported.
Tuesday represented an exciting day for the software giant after Microsoft made an important step into the enterprise domain with a new solution meant to protect computers against hack attempts. Forefront Client Security, the application announced in October 2005, is a result of the Sybari Software acquisition, a company that was bought by Microsoft two years ago. Although a trial version of the software solution was available for more than 5 months, the company's representatives announced the final version of Forefront Client Security scheduled for the upcoming months.
"Our client product is shipping in the next month or so. It really does do hygiene, security, antivirus, all the way down to the client level. This is a major investment for us. It is a very serious investment for us. We know if you choose to adopt these products, they instantaneously become mission-critical in your environment," Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Chief Executive, said according to News.com.
Some time ago, when Microsoft announced its plans to develop a new Windows operating system, they decided to name it Longhorn and made it the successor of the famous XP. However, the plans were quickly changed and Longhorn became Vista, the latest version of the well known Windows application. Although the product was renamed, the Longhorn concept was continued and Microsoft made it the next generation Windows Server that is scheduled for the second half of 2007. On Wednesday, the software giant released the third beta version of Longhorn that is available for free to all users.
"As they take it for a test drive, our customers and partners will find we made some vast improvements in Windows Server 'Longhorn' to help them reduce costs and adapt to changing business needs. Between early adopter customers and Microsoft IT, we have hundreds of servers running in production environments today. If there's one message we want to send today, it is get ready, download and evaluate," said Bill Laing, general manager of the Windows Server Division at Microsoft, according to a press release published by the Redmond company.
On Thursday Microsoft wanted to praise two of the most famous products ever designed by the company and presented the recent profits earned by them. Although both Windows Vista and Office 2007 were recently released, they managed to record an impressive number that boosted the company's earnings. "Microsoft said Thursday that it earned $4.93 billion, or 50 cents per share, on revenue of $14.40 billion for the three months ended March 31. That compares with net income of $2.98 billion, or 29 cents per share, on revenue of $10.9 billion for the same quarter a year earlier," News.com reported. As you know, Vista was released on January 30, 2007 and was presented as the most secure version of the operating system including several utilities to protect the user.
In comparison with Windows, the security features of the Office suite were rarely improved, making the product vulnerable to attacks. That's why the parent company Microsoft prepares a Service Pack 3 for Office 2003 that will implement all the security features currently added to Office 2007 to the previous version. "Service Pack 3 for Office 2003 will be focused on security. We're trying to take what we learned from building Office 2007 and bring as much as we can to Office 2003," said Joshua Edwards, a technical product manager for Office at Microsoft, in an interview with CNET News.com, the same publication reported.
Because the security features of our application are more and more important for all the users, Microsoft issued a new malware protection center on Friday that will inform clients about the latest threats. "Welcome to the Microsoft Malware Protection Center Portal Preview. This portal will officially launch in early July and will have additional features such as malware sample submission. We welcome your feedback on the portal preview and on additional features you would find useful," the new website says to the new visitors. In the recent period, the security of our computers was often threatened by a lot of malicious attempts, no matter if they were viruses or hack attacks. As usual, the Microsoft products were the ones affected by the flaws, the Windows operating system and the Office suite being just two of the solutions patched with new security updates.
