Toronto — In a spirited and thunderous address, the head of Microsoft Corp. admitted that the company has much more work to do to improve software security, even as it rolled out several new products and strategies for combatting software viruses, which are attacking global information systems with greater frequency and sophistication.
“We're not perfect, we're not where we need to be, but we have velocity and purpose,” Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft, told several thousand people at a conference in Toronto.
Speaking for more than an hour, Mr. Ballmer also launched an impassioned attack on open-source software, tried to answer concerns about the long wait for the next Microsoft operating system, and fingered software that helps run small businesses as a multibillion-dollar growth opportunity.
Microsoft's latest security efforts include an appliance called an Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) server that plugs into a network of computers to guard against attack. The company also said it plans to add a feature to its Windows Server 2003 that will block infected computers from connecting to a network and spreading a virus. The product, called Network Access Protection, should ship next year, Mike Nash, a vice-president of security, told the conference.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told the Toronto Partner Conference that merger talks with SAP did not suggest his business strategy isn’t working. (Katsumi Kasahara/AP)
Microsoft has also streamlined the process of issuing updates that fix flaws in products already bought by customers. The number of people using Microsoft's automatic update for Windows surged by 400 per cent during the past 10 months, Mr. Nash said.
Along with security issues, one of the largest concerns for the Redmond, Wash.-based company is the competitive threat from open-source products, such as the freely available Linux operating system. Mr. Ballmer told the audience of hardware, software and consulting companies that resell Microsoft's products that the only way they can make money today is to partner with commercial software firms.
“Technology innovation has happened much, much more from commercial software developers than from open source,” he said, adding that big companies also have marketing muscle and resources to support their products. “Who's going to stand up and support open source? At least, with us, it's clear who you have to come and pound down on. There's a clear line of responsibility.”
In a scripted question-and-answer session, some participants wanted to know whether the company's much publicized courtship with SAP AG, the German business software giant, meant Microsoft was looking to overhaul its line of business management software. Nothing about the merger discussions, which eventually fell through, should be taken as a mark against Microsoft's existing business management software, Mr. Ballmer said.
Partners also wanted information about the timeline for Microsoft's next operating system, Longhorn, and advice on how to ease the expensive transition from one platform to the next.
Mr. Ballmer said the road to improvement will be “lumpy” and admitted “these lumps are disruptive to our partners.” Microsoft is not ready to provide a shipping date on Longhorn yet, he said.
