Elizabeth Montalbano

The broad availability of the Windows Vista client OS has been pushed back to next year, Microsoft Corp. Co-President of the Platform and Services Division Jim Allchin announced Tuesday. Microsoft, however, plans to release Vista to business partners through its volume licensing program in November 2006, he said in a conference call.

Sun Microsystems Inc. will lose its top software executive to Adobe Systems Inc., the company confirmed. John Loiacono, who succeeded Jonathan Schwartz as executive vice president of software at Sun when Schwartz was promoted to president and chief operating officer (COO) in April 2004, will take on the role of senior vice president of Creatives Group at Adobe, according to a Sun spokeswoman. His last day at Sun will be March 24.

Microsoft Corp. has signed up the first commercial open-source vendor for its Shared Source licensing program, the company announced last month at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco.

Microsoft Corp. responded to a written report filed by the South Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) that outlines the agency's December 2005 decision to fine the company and order it to offer two different versions of Windows in South Korea. The FTC's decision is not supported by facts and if it is allowed to stand it will have "a negative effect on Korean consumers and Korean innovation," Microsoft said.

In an unexpected move, Microsoft Corp. Thursday posted on its Web site its formal response to the European Commission's Statement of Objections, complaints made in the European Union's (EU's) antitrust case against the company.n

In a blow for Dell Inc., the company confirmed it has lost a services deal with Dutch electronics giant Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV that was valued at up to US$700 million.

Microsoft Corp. released Monday a test version of its next release of e-commerce software, which it plans to deliver in July. Integration with back-end systems will be a major theme for the next release of Commerce Server, the first upgrade to the product since 2002, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft Corp. is set to unveil its long-awaited branding, packaging and pricing for the next version of Office, which is expected to be available later this year.