Last wednesday, the 16th December, 2009, the European Commission finally settled outstanding issues with Microsoft relating to the provision of browsers on new PCs sold in the EU.

The disagreement has been outstanding since the proposal was made in July by Microsoft. In october the EU agreed to market test the browser proposal from Microsoft which allows a choice screen on new PCs. The new owner will have the option as to which of the main 5 browsers they would like to install as their internet interface. The deal would allow the user to not have Internet Explorer on their machine at all. This is a major break through as, until this agreement, the IE software has always been installed and is extremely difficult to rtemove completely from the computer.

The deal, which will allow the ‘choice’ screen for five years in Europe, has satisfied both sides and in a statement Microsoft said it was ‘pleased’ with the deal. The European
competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement ‘ Millions of European consumers will benefit from this decision by having a free choice about which Web browser they use. Such choice will not only serve to improve people’s experience of the Internet now but also act as an incentive for Web browser companies to innovate and offer people better browsers in the future.’

Although many consumers still prefer what they are used to, Internet Explorer, the need by a growing number to actively remove IE has been a difficult and tiresome task. Many users have other favorites and no longer want the IE software running on their machines. The other popular browsers being Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. This ruling and agreement allows a more level field of play for all browsers and therefore wider consumer choice.

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Software company SAP has outlined their product and technology vision for the next five years.

At the annual SAP Influencer Summit in Boston, they highlighted integrated business analytics, on-demand computing, cloud architectures, flexible pricing, mobile and in-memory computing. They stated cloud-based extensions to applications will allow customers to avoid difficult upgrades while tapping new capabilities.

Chief technology officer at SAP, Vishal Sikka, said in-memory computing and analytics, increasing numbers of mobile workers and the need for rapid deployment are the key trends driving SAP’s strategy for the next five years. Business analytics will continue to be integrated with SAP’s products. Sikka said, “Limitless amounts of data can be analysed with the ability for users to ask questions.”

They also plan to develop applications and extensions which would allow wireless users to collaborate and use data on the fly, due to the rise in mobile computing and social networking.

SAP executives will be meeting with the SAP User Group Executive Network (Sugen) which represents 12 user groups around the world. The discussions are likely to stress SAP’s agreement with Sugen to increase enterprise support prices only if it can show it has delivered business benefits to the customers.

The software supplier has appointed a task force to get more feedback from organizations and user groups.

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Six security bulletins have been issued by Microsoft for the month of December, which brings the total for 2009 to 74, compared to 77 in 2008 and 78 in 2006.

Three of these bulletins were rated “critical and two “important.”
The security update for the year fixes 12 vulnerabilities, with the most urgent one being a zero-day flaw in the Internet Explorer web browser.

Dave Marcus, director of security research at McAfee Labs said any of the critical vulnerabilities could let an attacker gain full control over a vulnerable Windows computer. He said, “Business users need to have a risk management strategy in place to prioritise the patches.

MS09-072 is the most critical of the three critical patches, affecting all versions of Internet Explorer, said Matthew Walker, regional director UK & Ireland at Lumension. “This, combines with updates issued by Apple for Java for OS X, Adobe’s Flash Player and AIR, makes this month particularly important for IT departments to shore-up patches and protect against web-borne malware threats.”

MS09-072 is likely to have the greatest impact on end users as it affects all IT environments using Internet Explorer (6, 7 and 8), specifically impacting Windows 7, Vista and XP which will all require a restart, said Walker.

MS09-071, affects Windows Server 2008 and requires a restart.

Walker stated, “Although Microsoft’s exploitability scale for this bulletin is less severe, as Windows Server 2008 is most commonly deployed in support of mission critical applications, this update has the potential to be severely disruptive to business operations.”

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