Developers also got a preview version of the code for the new server operating system, which Microsoft says will be heavily influenced by its experience running Windows Azure, the cloud based operating system that Microsoft runs in its own data centers.

“As the person who leads Windows Server and Windows Azure engineering, I have had the experience of building and operating a cloud platform,” VP Bill Laing said in a blog post. “We have been able to apply many of our insights from Windows Azure to Windows Server 8. … Windows Server 8 will be a big leap forward, especially in terms of helping IT organizations progress beyond virtualization to build private cloud services.”

As with the desktop version, Microsoft did not say when Windows Server 8 will ship.

Microsoft’s top executives are also due to meet with Wall Street analysts later in the day, with Kara Swisher joining me in Anaheim to cover that part.

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The move is no doubt a blow to Intel’s meager Itanium business, but it’s surprising that Oracle waited this long. Both Microsoft and RedHat announced they were jumping ship last year. Microsoft said last year that Windows Server 2008 R2 would be the last operating system to support Itanium. RedHat dropped its support with the release of Enterprise Linux 6.

From an operating system standpoint that leaves HP-UX, Hewlett-Packard’s variant of Unix as the only real option, which makes some sense since HP sells nearly all the Itanium-based servers on the market.

It’s also a bit of a turn of events. As CNet’s Stephen Shankland points out, it was only five years ago Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said “There is no more important platform for Oracle than HP and Itanium.”

That of course was before Oracle owned Sun Microsystems. Since then, and after former HP CEO Mark Hurd left to become an Oracle co-president, Ellison has turned bashing HP into something of a hobby. It wasn’t hard to detect a bit of a sneer as Oracle’s press release pointed out that in his strategy remarks last week, HP CEO Léo Apotheker didn’t mention Itanium once.

Intel had gone to a great deal of effort to develop the 64-bit server chip, and at the beginning of the last decade portrayed it as a significant leap forward in server computing. The problem was that it wasn’t backward compatible with existing software written for Intel’s standard x86 chips, and so software meant to run on Itanium systems required extra work or had to developed separately.

This caused the kind of controversy that only computer scientists could love and prompted one of the more interesting chapters in the decades-old rivalry between Intel and its much smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices. AMD suggested a very different approach to 64-bit computing by simply extending the standard x86 platform. Software initially developed for standard 32-bit chips could run without any of the extra work on a 64-bit system. The industry liked it, and within a few years AMD had implemented the idea on its Opteron server chips. During 2005 and 2006 AMD built up enough momentum to take away some of Intel’s share of the server market.

Under pressure, Intel changed its mind and, beginning in 2004, started putting out its own x86-compatible 64-bit chips. Its Intel64 technology is now a standard across its server, desktop and notebook chips. And it got most of its share of the server market back with its Xeon line.

Despite the fact that it never really caught on, Intel is still putting out Itanium chips, though it’s really a niche product. It updated the line last year with the Itanium 9300. It also has two future chips in the family still in the pipeline, one codenamed Poulson, the other codenamed Kittson. Time will tell if either ever see the light of day. Few companies buy servers built around Itanium chips.

HP was an early partner in the chip’s development, just last week announced a new Itanium-based blade system, and continues to sell its Itanium-based Superdone line. However the HP unit responsible for selling those systems, Business Critical Systems, is showing no sign of progress. In its most recent quarter, revenues fell slightly to $555 million from the year-ago period.

And while it will continue to run existing Oracle installations and still enjoy Oracle support, these machines won’t be able to run future versions of Oracle’s database. That’s not going to help HP sell any more of these boxes.

According to a post on Microsoft’s corporate security blog, the vulnerability resides in something called MIME HTML or MHTML, which allows certain Web content to be rendered in a browser or other applications, such as an email program. As with so many other vulnerabilities that have come before it, an attacker sends you an HTML link to trigger a script in Internet Explorer that could do bad things, like collect user information.

The easiest fix? Use Firefox or Google’s Chrome browser, which are unaffected. But for those devoted to IE, Redmond is suggesting that people turn off the ability to handle MHTML until a fix is ready. How to do that? There’s a helpful FixIt button, in yet another blog post on the subject, that downloads the software needed to enable the temporary measure.

The vulnerability was first disclosed on a Chinese Web site last week. So far, there’s no evidence that anyone has gone to the trouble of carrying out an attack using this method, but hey, with zero-day vulnerabilities, you never know.

“Microsoft has proposed a consumer ballot screen as a solution to the pending antitrust case,” the Commission said in a press release. “The proposal recognizes the principle that consumers should be given a free and effective choice of Web browser, and sets out a means–the ballot screen–by which Microsoft believes that can be achieved.”

Microsoft (MSFT), for its part, described the move as “a big step forward in addressing a decade of legal issues and would be good news for European consumers and our partners in the industry.”

Below, the EC’s statement in full.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Brussels Palace of Justice Apparently Has Only Single Courtroom
• Great Move, EC. Now We Have to Download IE Ourselves…
• If Windows Didn’t Ship With IE, How Would You Download Firefox?
• Microsoft’s Browser Move to Make Windows Even More Annoying
• European Commission Announces Microsoft Antitrust Fine Ultimate Edition™

MEMO/09/352

Brussels, 24th July 2009

Antitrust: Commission welcomes new Microsoft proposals on Microsoft Internet Explorer and Interoperability

The European Commission can confirm that Microsoft has proposed a consumer ballot screen as a solution to the pending antitrust case about the tying of Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser with Windows. This followed extensive discussions with the Commission which centred on a remedy outlined in the January 2009 Statement of Objections (see MEMO/09/15) whereby consumers would be shown a “ballot screen” from which they could–if they wished–easily install competing web browsers, set one of those browsers as a default, and disable Internet Explorer. Under the proposal, Windows 7 would include Internet Explorer, but the proposal recognises the principle that consumers should be given a free and effective choice of web browser, and sets out a means–the ballot screen–by which Microsoft believes that can be achieved. In addition OEMs would be able to install competing web browsers, set those as default and disable Internet Explorer should they so wish. The Commission welcomes this proposal, and will now investigate its practical effectiveness in terms of ensuring genuine consumer choice.

As the Commission indicated in June (see MEMO/09/272 ), the Commission was concerned that, should Microsoft’s conduct prove to have been abusive, Microsoft’s intention to separate Internet Explorer from Windows, without measures such as a ballot screen, would not necessarily have achieved greater consumer choice in practice and would not have been an effective remedy.

Microsoft has also made proposals in relation to disclosures of interoperability information that would improve the interoperability between third party products and Windows and Windows Server. Again, these proposals require further investigation before the Commission reaches any conclusion as to the next steps.

Microsoft’s proposals will be published in full on its website.

The Commission has no further comment at this stage.

At an event in London today, Ballmer said Microsoft (MSFT) will debut its own “cloud operating system” at its Professional Developer Conference at the end of this month. “We need a new operating system designed for the cloud and we will introduce one in about four weeks, we’ll even have a name to give you by then,” Ballmer said. “But let’s just call it for the purposes of today ‘Windows Cloud.’ Just like Windows Server looked a lot like Windows but with new properties, new characteristics and new features, so will Windows Cloud look a lot like Windows Server.”

Ballmer offered few details beyond that, saying only that it will enable “light editing” of Office documents. Presumably, that means Microsoft still doesn’t see products like Office moving entirely off desktop PCs and onto the Internet any time soon. I imagine we’ll be hearing quite a bit about Software plus Services later this month.

That’s some heavy rhetoric. Certainly, it’s representative of the distaste with which Microsoft (MSFT) has viewed Linux and Linux vendors like Novell (NOVL) for the past decade.

So to hear back in Nov. 2006 that Microsoft was partnering with Novell to offer sales support for Novell’s SUSE Linux and cooperate with its old rival on Linux-Windows interoperability was astonishing–a bit like discovering that Stalin really sent Trotsky to Mexico for a nice vacation or that Itchy has shacked up with Scratchy.

And the unlikely partnership continues to astonish to this day. On Wednesday, the two companies expanded their interoperability agreement, with Microsoft agreeing to buy and resell up to $100 million in enterprise support subscriptions for Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server OS. That’s in addition to the $240 million Microsoft has already agreed to buy.

Odd, isn’t it, to see Microsoft marketing Linux like this? Odder still, to see Novell in an alliance with the company that hoped to “slaughter” it. So why did Novell agree to it? “Novell’s benefit is obvious, if not self-destructive,” Joe Wilcox explains over at Microsoft Watch. “The deal allows Novell to exist in the shadow of Windows Server, sustaining on its table scraps. Microsoft can offer customers that simply must have some Linux servers a sanctioned source for good tools ensuring interoperability with Windows Server.”

That’s some heavy rhetoric. Certainly, it’s representative of the distaste with which Microsoft (MSFT) has viewed Linux and Linux vendors like Novell (NOVL) for the past decade.

So to hear back in Nov. 2006 that Microsoft was partnering with Novell to offer sales support for Novell’s SUSE Linux and cooperate with its old rival on Linux-Windows interoperability was astonishing–a bit like discovering that Stalin really sent Trotsky to Mexico for a nice vacation or that Itchy has shacked up with Scratchy.

And the unlikely partnership continues to astonish to this day. On Wednesday, the two companies expanded their interoperability agreement, with Microsoft agreeing to buy and resell up to $100 million in enterprise support subscriptions for Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server OS. That’s in addition to the $240 million Microsoft has already agreed to buy.

Odd, isn’t it, to see Microsoft marketing Linux like this? Odder still, to see Novell in an alliance with the company that hoped to “slaughter” it. So why did Novell agree to it? “Novell’s benefit is obvious, if not self-destructive,” Joe Wilcox explains over at Microsoft Watch. “The deal allows Novell to exist in the shadow of Windows Server, sustaining on its table scraps. Microsoft can offer customers that simply must have some Linux servers a sanctioned source for good tools ensuring interoperability with Windows Server.”