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Once upon a time, there were two competing standards for XML-based document formats. The big bad company that everybody loves to hate created an XML-based format for its Office Suite and called it Office Open XML (OOXML – also referred to as OpenXML), even producing converters for the many business customers that were working [...]

Continuing the series on Microsoft licensing, I’m going to look at how to buy Microsoft software. Basically, there are three ways to buy a license:

Full packaged product (FPP) – purchased from a retailer and typically a single box contains a single license.
Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) – software supplied with a computer and which “lives [...]

Continuing the series on licensing Microsoft software, in this post I look at the various security products that Microsoft offers. Many of these products are the result of acquisitions, so it may help to look at the old and new product names:

Sybari Antigen is now integrated into Forefront Server Security and Forefront Client Security.
FrontBridge [...]

I’ve written previously about Microsoft’s software licensing rules for server virtualisation but in this post, I’ll pick up on a few areas that I haven’t specifically covered before.
Just to summarise the situation with regards to Windows:

Windows Server 2008 standard edition and later includes the right to run one virtualised operating system environment (OSE).
Windows Server 2003 [...]

I’ve started to use Flickr recently (I’ve had an account for 3 years, but I haven’t done much with it until now) and tonight I started to upload a selection of my photos.
I used the Flickr Uploadr tool and then set to work adding location details and generally familiarising myself with the site. [...]

Last week, I wrote about licensing Microsoft Server products but I deliberately ignored Microsoft’s family of systems management products. This post continues the series on Microsoft licensing, taking a look at the licensing considerations for the main System Center products.
System Center products that rely on SQL Server for database functionality, for example System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007 and System [...]

A few days back I gave the strongest hint that I could without breaking any NDAs that Microsoft’s Windows virtualization product group were about to release something special . I couldn’t say what at the time but it’s no longer a secret – RC1 of Hyper-V is available for download.
This second release candidate is [...]

Ask anyone who travels a lot on business and they’ll tell you it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. After a while, every hotel room is pretty much like the last one. Driving gets tiring. Trains run late. And airports are my idea of hell.
Most of my travel is within [...]

I was just packing up my stuff for another few nights away from home and thought it was about time I backed up my photos (been a bit slack on the backups again recently…).Unfortunately, Mac OS X didn’t want to burn a DVD for me, reporting that:This disc could not be used because the disc [...]

Those who thought (as I did until a few weeks back) that there would be no more Virtual Server development as Microsoft focuses its efforts on Hyper-V may be interested to hear that they have just announced an update for Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, providing host and guest support for Windows Server 2008, Windows [...]