Stories by: Elizabeth Montalbano

A report from Forrester is warning customers to consider carefully how they plan to use Microsoft's Office SharePoint Server product, which they say can wreak havoc in an IT organization when used as a custom application development platform.

Microsoft has released an update to Windows Home Server that fixes a data-corruption problem some users were having with the software.

With the possibility of a Yahoo acquisition still uncertain, Microsoft is pouring hundreds of millions of additional investment dollars into its Online Services Business (OSB) in an aggressive effort to compete with Google in online advertising.

Microsoft's revenue rose 18 percent for both its fiscal 2008 fourth quarter and year, but the company's Online Services Business (OSB), under scrutiny due to heated negotiations to purchase Yahoo's search business, continues to falter.

While it still would present some integration challenges, AOL might be easier for Microsoft to absorb than Yahoo from a cultural and political perspective now that Microsoft's battle for Yahoo has gotten so ugly.

Microsoft's revenue rose 18 percent for both its fiscal 2008 fourth quarter and year, but the company's Online Services Business (OSB), under scrutiny due to heated negotiations to purchase Yahoo's search business, continues to falter.

Microsoft has agreed to purchase Zoomix, a small Jerusalem company that provides data-quality technology, to bolster its SQL Server business, the company confirmed Monday.

Microsoft's proposal made Friday to purchase Yahoo's search business was actually the idea of Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock, and Yahoo has publicly "mischaracterized" the discussion surrounding the proposal, Microsoft said Monday.

The leaders of the ISO and the IEC have recommended the rejection of appeals from four countries that protested a vote approving OOXML, an XML-based document format submitted by Microsoft as an international standard.

Microsoft Tuesday revealed pricing for its forthcoming hosted business productivity services and unveiled its channel model for allowing partners to resell those services. However, while the company painted a rosy picture for the partner opportunity around its evolving software-plus-services business model, not all of its partners were thrilled with the idea of Microsoft competing with them in that market.

Microsoft plans to release a new Windows server OS aimed at midsized businesses as well as the next version of its small-business server software worldwide on Nov. 12, the company said Monday.