As Microsoft starts providing software solutions in new areas, like the High Performance Computing and security space–it is once again turning to partners to help it gain traction and market share in those markets. While the Redmond software maker pays tribute to its loyal existing partners, who generate more than 90 percent of this revenue, the company is also trying to woo a new set of partners to help leverage new markets. This is the first in an series of articles that examines Microsoft’s strategy of gaining market share and driving new solutions to market through its partner base.

Security researchers at software maker MessageLabs contend that malware writers, hackers and other cyber-criminals are combining multiple forms of IT threats in an attempt to amplify their efforts. In the company’s latest IT security intelligence report, MessageLabs experts said that criminals are converging their attacks across multiple communications channels, such as e-mail, instant messaging networks and Web sites, and are also pulling together information-gathering techniques, including spyware, spam and phishing schemes, as they seek new ways to menace businesses and consumers.

HyperOffice has introduced HyperShare for Outlook, software tools that make it easier for growing businesses, employees, clients, partners and suppliers to work together as a team, plan projects, share and edit documents, schedule meetings, and stay connected via email–without the cost and complexity of Microsoft Exchange. Built into HyperOffice at no added cost, HyperShare extends the power of Outlook and operates as an alternative to Microsoft Exchange. For companies using Outlook but not yet sharing calendars, contacts, documents and tasks, HyperShare for Outlook delivers the communication and collaboration tools that growing organizations need–POP3, SMTP, Web mail, shared calendaring, shared address books, document management and support for Outlook, Netscape, Thunderbird, Eudora and other email clients–without the pain of buying, installing and maintaining Microsoft Exchange.

Microsoft has introduced Private Folder 1.0, free software that lets people store sensitive data on their home or work computers in a password-protected folder. Private Folder 1.0, which is saved to a person’s desktop, aims to shield private data from others when they have access to someone’s computer or account. The potential fallout from IT administrators remains to be seen, should their colleagues opt to hide sensitive data in a private, password-protected folder. Microsoft does not offer support for the software.

The European Commission plans to raise the ceiling of future fines on Microsoft to $3.82 million a day if the company continues to defy an antitrust decision, a diplomatic source said Monday. He was speaking as European competition regulators met to discuss the amount of a fine the European Union’s executive arm will impose on the software giant for failing to comply with the 2004 decision that it abused its dominant market position. The Commission, which is the European Union’s executive arm, declined to comment.

The European Commission confirmed on Friday it would debate antitrust sanctions against software giant Microsoft at a regular meeting on Wednesday. "The Commission on Wednesday should be discussing the Microsoft issue and if we have to apply sanctions for (Microsoft) not having respected decisions from March, 2004," the EU executive’s spokesman, Jonathan Todd, told the daily news briefing on Friday. The European Union’s Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said on Thursday she could see no way around fining U.S. software giant Microsoft for breaching the bloc’s antitrust rules.

Sonasoft announced the availability of its new version of SonaSafe for Exchange Server. This release contains many advance features including dynamic mailbox backups, enhanced replication and recovery capability. Sonasoft provides a high-availability solution, protecting data from hardware/software failures and human errors. SonaSafe application maintains the redundant, standby server by continually updating the data with that retrieved from the primary system. The standby system can take over instantly in the event of primary system failure. The standby system can be on-site, or located at a remote site for protection against natural or man-made disasters.

Microsoft has reworked the PC assessment tool in Windows Vista after fielding complaints from hardware makers–but the changes may not be enough to completely quell concerns. In May, the software maker promised to make changes to the Windows System Performance Rating tool, which aims to assess how capable a machine is of harnessing the upcoming operating system’s new features. Critics were unhappy with the way it presented scores and how it came up with its ratings.

Though you may have been "googling" people for years, the verb you were using was technically slang, until recently. On Thursday, Merriam-Webster announced its latest update, and the new science and technology words added to the venerable dictionary include agritourism, biodiesel, mouse potato, ringtone and spyware. And google is defined as a transitive verb meaning "to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web." While the entry retains capitalization in explaining the word’s etymology–"Google, trademark for a search engine"–the verb google is lowercase.

Microsoft’s move to set up an open-source project that will allow translation between its Office Open XML format and the OpenDocument Format is a welcome first step, but not a long-term solution to the problem, industry players said on July 6. They were responding to Microsoft’s announcement of the Open XML Translator project, which will be posted on SourceForge, the open-source software development Web site. The goal of the project is to allow open participation and the free use of the software, with the source code available under the BSD license.