Taking a page from major enterprise software providers like Oracle and SAP, Microsoft announced Business Ready Customer Care, an initiative that includes major enhancements to its maintenance and support program for Microsoft Dynamics, ERP and CRM, applications.

The customer support initiative does three things: Extends for five years the time over which Microsoft will support its products; offers more creative financing solutions for buying its CRM and ERP products, and promises to create a more transparent environment for its channel partners and their customers about future upgrades and products.

Microsoft and Phase One announced a strategic alliance to explore ways to improve digital imaging solutions for professional photographers and enthusiasts. The companies will work together to develop solutions for the Microsoft Windows platform that further innovation in the digital photography space. The alliance combines Phase One’s industry expertise with Microsoft’s widely used platform technology and includes technology sharing and intellectual property assets as well as joint marketing.

A Freemont, Calif. couple was among a handful of defendants sentenced to prison Oct. 23 for defrauding Microsoft out of more than $29 million by illegally obtaining discounted software. Husband and wife team Mirza and Sameena Ali, ages 60 and 53, respectively, received five years in prison and were ordered to pay more than $20 million in restitution to Microsoft and forfeit roughly $5 million after being convicted last year of a host of charges, including money laundering and 30 counts of conspiracy, mail fraud and wire fraud.

Co-defendant Keith Griffen, 56, of Oregon City, Ore., was sentenced to two years and nine months for his role in the scheme and ordered to pay more than $20 million to Microsoft after being convicted of nine counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, and wire fraud.

The trio were involved in a scheme to purchase more than $29 million worth of software that was steeply discounted for academic institutions, and selling it to non-academic entities, in violation of the Microsoft agreement. These convictions were the result of "Operation Cyberstorm," a two-year undercover investigation into software piracy and related crimes by agents from FBI, IRS and REACT Task Force.

Microsoft has made progress in getting its Windows software to work on a low-cost laptop computer for poor children that currently runs on rival Linux software, an executive said on Thursday. The software company is now working to adapt a basic version of Windows XP so it is compatible with the nonprofit One Laptop per Child Foundation’s small green-and-white XO laptop.

IBM recently has spun out a free, standalone suite of productivity software included in the latest version of Lotus Notes. At about the same time, Google announced plans to add a presentation application to Google Docs, its hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) suite of collaboration and communications tools.

In addition to Symphony, IBM unveiled Lotus Notes as a hosted service meant for the small- to midsize business market. Microsoft, meanwhile, is responding to the demand for Web-based apps by expanding its Web-based offerings. In late September, Microsoft announced Office Live Workspace, now in beta testing and open to anyone who registers. This lets users save more than 1,000 Office documents to one place and access them through the Web. It also allows them to share them with others in a password-protected, invitation-only online workspace.

The UK computer agency Becta is advising schools not to sign licensing agreements with Microsoft because of alleged anti-competitive practices. The government agency has complained to the Office of Fair Trading.

It says talks with Microsoft have not resolved "fundamental concerns" about academic licensing and about Office 2007 and the Vista operating system.

If you’re a convicted identity thief, you’ve got about a 50 percent chance of avoiding jail time. That’s one of the findings of a new study of closed US Secret Service case files, released by Utica College’s Center for Identity Management and Information Protection. This is the first time researchers have been allowed to sift through the Secret Service’s data. The study’s authors based their findings on an analysis of 500 closed Secret Service cases.

A vastly powerful new supercomputer is on the loose. With more than a million CPUs and a petabyte of RAM, it completely dwarfs its next-largest competitor, IBM’s BlueGene/L, which contains a paltry 128,000 processing cores and 32 terabytes of memory. And the new supercomputer is growing larger every day.

There’s just one problem. This powerhouse isn’t run by a university, or IBM, or a government agency. It’s the Storm Worm botnet, capable of sending staggering amounts of spam and viruses around the globe, and launching devastating attacks against security researchers or anyone else who might oppose it.

Microsoft released research showing an acceleration in the number of security attacks designed to steal personal information or trick people into providing it through social engineering.

Microsoft’s most recent Security Intelligence Report, a comprehensive analysis of the threat landscape, shows that attackers are increasingly targeting personal information to make a profit and are threatening to impact people’s privacy. The report found that during the first half of 2007, 31.6 million phishing scams were detected, an increase of more than 150 percent over the previous six months. The study also shows a 500 percent increase in trojan downloaders and droppers, malicious code used to install files such as trojans, password stealers, keyboard loggers and other malware on users’ systems. Two notable families of trojans detected and removed by the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool are specifically targeted at stealing data and banking information.

At a symposium with more than 400 of its higher education customers at its Redmond, Wash., campus, Microsoft introduced the integration of Microsoft Office Live Workspace into its Microsoft Live@edu suite of services for universities. Office Live Workspace, a new Web-based feature of Microsoft Office that lets people access and share their documents in a familiar online environment, will enable each Live@edu user to upload Microsoft Office documents and grant collaboration permission to other students and educators, allowing universities to give their students and educators a new, free option for organizing research or class assignments or working with classmates or colleagues.