Microsoft settles with Sun to tune of $1.95bn

Rethink IT, May, 2004

The big news from Microsoft was, of course, its $1.95bn settlement with Sun over licensing and antitrust issues (see feature on page 10). This tended to overshadow other news that could be equally significant for some companies' day-to-day IT planning--the further delay of the Longhorn Windows upgrade.

Microsoft is likely to delay the broad beta release of its next generation Longhorn operating system until next year as it aims to bolster security in Windows XP

Work on XP will delay the Longhorn beta, according to News.com, as Microsoft looks to make security its top priority following a year of viruses, denial of service attacks and other problems on the XP platform. New security features are planned later this year for XP and Windows Server 2003.

Previously, Microsoft had said Longhorn would beta this summer but has new reassigned many of its developers to the XP project. Some minor features promised for Longhorn will be cut and rolled into a future Windows release, to accelerate time to market.