Stories by John Fontana

Microsoft plans to invest heavily in its cloud platform but expects to see little revenue for two to three years, Bob Muglia, the president of the server and tools business, said Tuesday.

Cyclist Floyd Landis, stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title after a positive drug test, is now being labeled a computer hacker by France, which has issued a warrant for his arrest.

Microsoft Tuesday said it will deepen ties between its Visual Studio development tools and the secure applications development processes first developed inside the company and now available to outsiders.

Microsoft has more than made good on its plan from a year ago to eliminate 5,000 positions by the middle of June 2010, the company reported as part of its quarterly 10Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Microsoft shouldn't be shaking in its boots after this week's unveiling of the Apple iPad, but the tablet computer could give the software giant fits in the future with its potential to define important device form factors as well as shape user attitudes toward alternative operating systems and cloud-based application adoption.

Free is becoming a popular form of software for CIOs, with nearly two-thirds of companies using it on their desktops and with applications, according to a new survey.

Despite platform improvements coming in Microsoft's SharePoint 2010 server, the software is likely to be overkill for users seeking to meet isolated and specific requirements, according to a study by Forrester Research.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the company is staying in China even though rival Google is talking about pulling out following a cyber attack on its systems.

Ten years ago on Jan. 13, 2000, Microsoft's Bill Gates turned over the CEO reins to Steve Ballmer, who emphasized then that the Internet would be the target for much of the company's new software development efforts.

Facebook Tuesday joined the Apache Software Foundation as a Gold sponsor, looking to cement its commitment to open source and pledging to help drive the group into the future.

VMware is poised Tuesday to further redefine its cloud strategy by buying Yahoo's Zimbra open source messaging business in order to expand its stake in the platform-as-a-service market.

For Microsoft, 2010 is a platform building and marketing year with no less than the future success of its cloud strategy hanging in the balance, according to observers.

Microsoft doesn't have a business model problem in the mobile market, but its phones are skewed toward business users at the expense of consumers and are not as modern as they need to be, Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, told financial analysts Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Microsoft's demonstration Wednesday of "Slate PCs" made by HP, Pegatron, and Archos is by no means its first attempt to help develop such a form factor. The Slate PC seems to be identical to a Tablet with only the name changed. In fact, the Tablet PC has long been a pet project for Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who showed the first Tablet PC prototype in 2000 at the now-defunct Comdex trade show in Las Vegas.

MSI and Novell will ship in February the first netbook based on the SUSE Moblin open-source Linux operating system. The pair is showing the device at this week's CES event in Las Vegas.