Stuart J. Johnston

Microsoft’s enterprise IT customers got access to its Web-based Office web Apps on May 12, when the company released the corporate version of Office 2010. Now, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has released a free version of Office Web Apps that may well appeal to small business owners and other budget-constrained organizations. The announcement comes a week […]

Many small business owners would like the same kind of project and task management systems that much larger companies take for granted — but price and complexity often holds them back. Producteev, a small business software company, hopes to change that reality with Producteev 2, the firm’s new task management service. The product’s goal is […]

VM6 Software announced it will begin shipping version 2.1 of its VMex virtualization system for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB) on June 7. The package, which runs on top of Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Hyper-V hypervisor technology, provides desktop and server virtualization tools aimed at SMBs — particularly, for small business computing where projects are constrained […]

After Microsoft put its Response Point small-business phone system onto “engineering maintenance” a year ago, the company this week is killing off the ill-fated package for a lack of sales. “Despite favorable initial response from customers and channel partners since launch, we have not seen the necessary demand materialize to sustain Response Point as a […]

In an important first step in advancing their strategic alliance, Microsoft and Yahoo said on company blogs that they plan to transition Yahoo’s advertising customers over to the software titan’s adCenter system in time for the holiday shopping season. Failing that, however, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) will then shoot for early 2011 […]

Microsoft announced an alliance with ChangeBase, an application-compatibility tool vendor, which will let IT professionals and servicing partners for small and medium businesses test and fix issues with programs that balk at running under Windows 7 — without resorting to Windows 7 Professional’s “XP Mode.” One of the advantages of using the tool, dubbed AOK […]

A recent survey of more than 500 Microsoft Small Business Specialist partners in five major IT markets found that they expect some 63 percent of their small and midsized business (SMB) customers to spend more on IT this year than last year. That’s a 38 percentage point jump from 25 percent planning to increase spending […]

Microsoft has begun beta testing a new automated end-user support system that aims to simplify finding and eliminating tech support problems for both end users and small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB). Dubbed the Microsoft Fix It Center, it includes the Fix It Button technology that the company debuted last year, which gives users the option […]

Source: Microsoft (Click for larger image). It’s spring and Bing is busting out all over, to paraphrase the hit song from Carousel. To show it’s serious, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Thursday previewed several new features and updates coming to its Bing search engine this spring and summer at the Search Engine Strategies 2010 Conference in New York. […]

Microsoft officials confirmed Friday that they are looking into reports of radically shortened battery life on some laptops after installing Windows 7. Although a few users reported similar problems during Windows 7’s beta test cycle last summer, particularly with some netbooks, wide availability of Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) new OS following its October consumer release seems […]

There’s one perk that Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer likes to exercise, as much as the CEO’s handlers might like him to stifle some of his out-of-the-blue statements. The head of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) can announce anything he wants, even unrealistic ship dates for important products. Last week, in a speech to the Nashville Technology Council at […]

Despite assurances last week that it would be ready on time, Microsoft missed Monday’s deadline for replacing copies of Office and Word that contain a feature that a federal appeals court ruled last month infringes tiny i4i’s patent. Instead, the software giant ended up pulling offending versions of the products when the injunction kicked in. […]