Joris Evers

Riding a tide of desktop domination, Microsoft Corp.'s latest foray into presence is expected to kick-start corporate adoption of IM. Lateness to market, however, has analysts skeptical as to how the offering will compete against those of longtime collaboration players such as IBM Corp.

Microsoft Corp. never ditched Outlook Express, the company said last week, hoping to end speculation about the future of its free e-mail client.

In the wake of a widespread Internet worm, Microsoft Corp. is weighing options to get more users to secure their computers, including automatically applying security patches to PCs remotely, the company said Thursday.

Microsoft Corp. won't release a second service pack for Windows XP until the second half of next year, giving users more responsibility for applying individual patches and updates.

Microsoft Corp. has priced its Project 2003 products and plans to release the project planning and management software to manufacturing on Monday, entering the final phase before commercial availability of the products, the company said Wednesday.

BMC Software Inc. has entered the enterprise Linux arena with a series of new products.

Zone Labs Inc. is jumping into the instant messaging (IM) security fray, but unlike most vendors Zone Labs will first target consumers and wants to secure IM on the desktop instead of the server.

Microsoft Corp. is set to announce pricing and licensing details for its Office Live Communications Server 2003 on Monday, entering the final stretch for delivery of the enterprise instant messaging (IM) product by the end of the year.