Microsoft began a US$500 million marketing campaign on Thursday to stir enthusiasm among corporate customers for its new products and grab business from IBM, its biggest rival in the business technology market.
Microsoft's marketing drive and its strategic assault on IBM comes as it prepares to roll out a series of new products in the second half of this year, led by Windows Vista and Office 2007. The company is positioning the new desktop offerings as a kind of dashboard for managing businesses, especially when linked to other new Microsoft programs for worker communications and collaboration, searching company databases, business intelligence and customer relationship management.
The new products, taken together, can help companies reduce costs, increase worker productivity, and hasten the pace of innovation, Steve Ball-mer, Microsoft's chief executive, told a gathering of corporate customers and industry analysts in New York.
The networked style of work is a departure from the way most office workers have used Microsoft desktop software in the past -- as personal productivity programs for reports, spreadsheets and presentations, which are then passed around by e-mail attachments.
The Microsoft approach, Ballmer said, is to offer new software tools for what he called "the next wave of improvement in business operations." That path, he insisted, is very different from that of IBM, which he portrayed as mainly a services business whose consultants help companies and then depart.
"We're talking about giving people in business the tools to be more productive every day," he said. "IBM is talking about a project."
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday criticized the nuclear energy referendum scheduled for Saturday next week, saying that holding the plebiscite before the government can conduct safety evaluations is a denial of the public’s right to make informed decisions. Lai, who is also the chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), made the comments at the party’s Central Standing Committee meeting at its headquarters in Taipei. ‘NO’ “I will go to the ballot box on Saturday next week to cast a ‘no’ vote, as we all should do,” he said as he called on the public to reject the proposition to reactivate the decommissioned
US President Donald Trump on Friday said that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) told him China would not invade Taiwan while Trump is in office. Trump made the remarks in an interview with Fox News, ahead of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “I will tell you, you know, you have a very similar thing with President Xi of China and Taiwan, but I don’t believe there’s any way it’s going to happen as long as I’m here. We’ll see,” Trump said during an interview on Fox News’ Special Report. “He told me: ‘I will never do
The Legislative Yuan yesterday approved an aid and recovery package authorizing the government to allocate up to NT$60 billion (US$1.99 billion) for regions hit by Typhoon Danas and subsequent torrential rains last month. Proposed by the Executive Yuan on Aug. 7, the bill was passed swiftly after ruling and opposition lawmakers reached a consensus in inter-party talks on relief funding and assistance for disaster-stricken areas. The package increases the government’s spending cap from the originally proposed NT$56 billion to NT$60 billion, earmarked for repairing and rebuilding infrastructure, electricity systems, telecommunications and cable TV networks, cultural heritage sites and other public facilities.
FLEXIBLE FORCE: Only about 10 percent of small drones reach their target, an expert said, which is why it is important to make it easier to procure large numbers of drones The military is planning to recategorize military drones as “consumables/munitions,” rather than as aircraft, to speed up the procurement process, the army said yesterday. The Army Command Headquarters said the decision was made because drones, like munitions, need to be rapidly replaced, and thus should be categorized as consumables/munitions “to meet the army’s practical needs.” The headquarters’ confirmation came after the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) early yesterday reported that the army was about to make the classification change based on the example of the US, which is Taiwan’s biggest arms provider. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced a
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