Stories by John Fontana

Microsoft exceeds goal of 5,000 layoffs

Microsoft has more than made good on its plan from a year ago to eliminate 5,000 positions by the middle of June 2010, the company reported as part of its quarterly 10Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

VMware to buy Zimbra

VMware is to buy Yahoo's Zimbra open source messaging business in order to expand its stake in the platform-as-a-service market.

Ten years of ... Steven Anthony Ballmer

Ten years ago on January 13, 2000, Microsoft's Bill Gates turned over the CEO reins to Steve Ballmer, who emphasised then that the internet would be the target for much of the company's new software development efforts.

Syncplicity unveils service to centralise data, backup

Online data management vendor Syncplicity has released the Business Edition of its service that includes data collaboration, file management, backup and automatic synchronisation between desktop and cloud applications.

Microsoft Exchange set; SharePoint, OCS to follow

Microsoft Monday shipped the final release of <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2009/110909-microsoft-exchange-2010.html?ts0hb&amp;story=msboom">Exchange 2010</a>, ushering in not so much the latest version of its messaging server but the first updated piece of its unified communications and collaboration platform.

Red Hat delivers stand-alone hypervisor, management tools

Red Hat Tuesday made good on its promise to deliver a stand-alone hypervisor and a set of management tools as its <a href="https://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/090309-red-hat-virtualization.html?page=2">gears up</a>  to go toe-to-toe with VMware and Microsoft to become a top-tier provider of virtualization and cloud computing infrastructure.

Microsoft opens Outlook format

Microsoft says it will provide patent- and licence-free use rights to the format behind its Outlook Personal Folders opening e-mail, calendar, contacts and other information to a host of applications such as antimalware or cloud-based services.

SharePoint 2010 features Groove client

LA VEGAS -- Four years after buying Ray Ozzie's <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/community/free-sharepoint-tools">Groove,</a> Microsoft is making its most significant dive into the technology using the client software to create an offline data store and workplace for <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/101909-windows7.html?hpg1=bn">SharePoint</a> users.

Ballmer: Sidekick outage ‘not good’

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer characterised the recent Sidekick data loss episode as &#8220;not good,&#8221; and said he believes all the data will be recovered, but added that Microsoft will have to be more forthcoming in explaining to enterprise customers why a similar situation won&#8217;t occur with Microsoft&#8217;s online services.

Sidekick implosion: Was it sabotage?

The Sidekick implosion, which <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/101109-microsoft-loses-sidekick-users-personal.html?fsrc=netflash-rss">wiped out user data</a>, may have been the result of sabotage, according to blogger and author Daniel Eran Dilger, who quotes "insiders" familiar with the situation.

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