Elizabeth Montalbano

When Microsoft releases the next version of its productivity suite, Office 2010, it will be into a very different competitive landscape than the one Office 2007 faced in late 2006.

Back then Google Apps had limited availability, and hardly anyone had heard of hosted applications provider Zoho. IBM had not yet released its free productivity software, Symphony, and while many people liked the idea of OpenOffice.org, compatibility issues with other applications kept it on the margins of most mainstream office environments.

Navigating Microsoft's complex rules and programs for software licensing has been notoriously difficult for businesses -- a pain point not lost on the company, which for years has said it is trying to simplify the process for customers.

But remarks made recently by Microsoft's top executive, as well as suspicions raised by customers and software consultants, suggest that Microsoft keeps its licensing complicated for a reason, and that it has no plans to make it any simpler in the foreseeable future.

HTC and Samsung are at the head of the line of U.S. handset vendors offering Windows Mobile 6.5 phones, the first smartphones based on Microsoft's new OS that are meant to finally give Microsoft-powered phones features that are on par with those available in Apple's iPhone.

At an event in New York Tuesday Microsoft also launched its Windows Marketplace for Mobile with 246 applications now available in the mobile apps online store, a small number in comparison to the tens of thousands of applications available on Apple's App Store for the iPhone.

Former Microsoft open-source chief Sam Ramji has joined cloud-computing startup Sonoa Systems, taking over product strategy and business development at the Santa Clara, California-based company.

In his last job at Microsoft, Ramji was responsible for fostering more interoperability and collaboration with the open-source community as head of its Platform Strategy Group. Last month he also took a position as interim president of the CodePlex Foundation, an open-source group formed out of his work at Microsoft. However, when the foundation and Ramji's role in it were unveiled, he said he was leaving Microsoft Sept. 25 to join a cloud-computing startup, though he did not specify which one.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer put on his sales hat Tuesday and made a case for why businesses should upgrade to Windows 7, despite an economy in which many IT budgets have been frozen or are lower than in years past.

"It's a different environment today than the environment we all sat in a year-and-a-half ago," Ballmer told a roomful of business customers at an event in San Francisco.

Microsoft has launched a program that gives Web development professionals the chance to get free software and technical support to help them get new businesses off the ground.

Web development companies with less than 10 employees can apply for the new WebsiteSpark program, which was unveiled at the PICNIC conference in Amsterdam Thursday.

Microsoft's Business Division oversees one of its most successful products, the Office productivity suite, as well as the company's lucrative server and enterprise software businesses. However, like the rest of the company, the division has not been immune to the pressure of the recession, and revenue fell 13 percent in the quarter ending in June.

Business Division President Stephen Elop, however, said in an interview with the IDG News Service that he's confident the unit can overcome the pressures that face the business. These include not only the economy but also competition in the productivity and collaboration software market from Web-based applications from Google and others. To answer this challenge, Microsoft is set to offer Web-based versions of its Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote software as part of the Office 2010 launch early next year.

Microsoft on Monday demonstrated a new tool for its Bing search engine that will allow advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their ads with online users.

Speaking at the IAB MIXX Conference and Expo 2009 in New York on Monday, Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft's Online Audience Business group, showed off what he called a "user-level targeting" tool that allows Microsoft to see which search-based ads that appear in the Bing search engine are getting the most traffic and from where.

About a year or so ago there was an amusing bit of writing circulating on the Web that deconstructed Shakepeare's "Hamlet" into a series of Facebook-styled newsfeeds.

Written by Sarah Schmelling, the piece imagined humorous status updates and activities "Hamlet" characters might have posted on Facebook, had there been such a thing in 14th-century Denmark.

Adobe has agreed to buy Web analytics company Omniture for US$1.8 billion in cash, the companies said Tuesday.

The price San Jose, California-based Adobe is paying for the company, which is $21.50 per share, is at a 45 percent premium over Omniture's average closing price for the last 30 trading days, Adobe said.

In a last promotional run-up to the Windows 7 release next month, Microsoft is urging business customers to start their upgrades now with examples of customers already using the software, and another acknowledgement that the company learned lessons from how it handled Vista's release three years ago.

Microsoft has devoted an unprecedented level of time and attention to making sure business customers will have a smooth migration and reap financial benefits from the new OS, said Microsoft Senior Director of Product Management Gavriella Schuster, in what is likely to be the last of a series of interviews with reporters as the company prepares to release Windows 7 worldwide on Oct. 23.

Microsoft has won an appeal to overturn a US$358 million award it had been ordered to pay to Alcatel-Lucent in the latest ruling on an ongoing patent-infringement dispute that began in 2003.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the ruling of a federal jury in San Diego that Microsoft infringed on the so-called "Day" patent at issue in the case. However, the court said there is not enough evidence to uphold the damages the lower court had awarded Alcatel-Lucent, according to its decision, which is posted on its Web site.