It gives Azure Big Data capabilities and advanced data analytics and a better shot at competing with rival clouds like Amazon’s EC2 and Google’s Ap Engine.

Users can build MapReduce jobs. Microsoft said a Hive ODBC Driver and Hive Add-in for Excel would enable data analysis of unstructured data through Excel and PowerPivot.

Would-be users have to submit a form and Microsoft will pick the testers it wants based on use cases. Microsoft gave no indication when the widgetry would be more than a preview.

It’s part of an upgrade that includes SQL Azure Database tickles and simplified Azure billing and management.

The size of the database can now top out at 150GB, up from 50GB without costing more and it’s supposedly easier to scale-out a “virtually unlimited” elastic database tier.

A downloadable SDK has JavaScript libraries and a run-time engine for the Node.JS framework, with support for hosting, storage and service bus.

It’s for creating and scaling web apps that run on the Azure Windows Server.

The added language support means Microsoft wants Azure to appeal to developers beyond the .NET walled garden.

With the SDK Microsoft says Azure can integrate with other open source applications, including the Eclipse IDE (an updated plug-in), MongoDB and Solr/Lucene search engine. Access to Azure libraries for .NET, Java and Node.js is now available under an Apache 2 open-source license and hosted on GitHub.

The update offers a free 90-day trial and spending caps with views of real-time usage and billing details at Azure’s new Metro-style Management Portal.

Pricing has been adjusted. The maximum price per SQL Azure DB is $499.95.The price per gigabyte of large SQL Azure databases have been cut 67% and data transfer prices in North America and Europe have been reduced by 25% to 12 cent a GB. Asia-Pacific data transfers that were 20 cents a GB, are now 19 cents a GB, 5% cheaper.

Evidently it’s trying to freeze the market before its PC empire is utterly chipped away by the upstart Apple and Android.

Microsoft is supposed to be “re-imagining” all its widgetry “from the chipset to the user experience” to run on or through the cloud, an exercise that’s supposed to equate to re-imagining Microsoft itself while Windows remains at its core and every business is cloud-optimized and tied together.

Backward-compatible with Windows 7, on which it is based but requiring less memory, Windows 8 is both a leap into OS-disenfranchising cloud services and a tablet catch-up – at least for ARM tablets. It made no firm promises about Intel tablets but reassured the crowd that the highly rated ARM development is keeping pace with its Intel development although Microsoft didn’t show it.

Windows 8 is supposed to bring a fully fledged multi-tasking operating system to the tablet along with a battery that can last all day.

One enamored blogger tweeted, “Hello, Windows? This is iPad. You Win.”

It’s also supposed to run on x86 desktop and laptop PCs and there’s a high-end-scaling Windows 8 Server in the offing. Unlike Apple it’s all the same stuff.

Windows 8 introduces a new smartphone-like, icon-ditching, tile-based “Metro-style” interface (see below) built for touch, finger-swiping and pinching that can also respond to a mouse and a keyboard (but still supports voice and a stylus).

Behind the tiles are live feeds of, say, photos, e-mails and news.

There’s “touch browsing” too complements of Internet Explorer 10 (two version, a Flash-free one for Metro, one for desktops).

Seeking feedback, Microsoft wants ISVs to build full-screen apps to the new interface that lack the usual menus but has yet to confirm there will be a Metro-style Office. It’s possible the old familiar Windows desktop will run Office and other traditional programs but that would mean Office doesn’t run on ARM and that would mean trouble. Older apps may have to be tweaked or rewritten to run on ARM.

Microsoft handed out 5,000 free development-only Intel i5-based Samsung tablets running Windows 8 at Build and said 500,000 copies of the pre-beta Developer Preview of Win8 were downloaded the first day it was available online. Once loaded on a tablet, it’s supposed to offer instant-on; PCs may take a few seconds.

There are three iterations of Windows 8: a 32-bit OS, a 64-bit OS and the 64-bit OS with developer tools. The 64-bit client OS includes Hyper-V.

Programmers can use HTML5, JavaScript, CSS, C#, Visual Basic, .NET, Silverlight, XAML and C++ to build Windows 8 apps. Other languages are reportedly coming although the preference for Metro apps is HTML5 and JavaScript.

Rumor has it Microsoft could have a one-and-only beta ready in time for the Consumer Electronics Show in January, followed by a single Release Candidate and then RTM the stuff.

According to CEO Steve Ballmer, 500 million PCs should be ripe for Win8 upgrades next year. Windows users however are still in the midst of upgrading to Windows 7, which has sold nearly 450 million copies, though sales have been down the last three quarters.

There will of course be an integrated online Windows App store where developers can sell their wares either through direct downloads or through the developers’ own sites.

Windows 8 data will be synced across devices and with Microsoft’s Skydrive.

Apple is expected to respond.

See http://dev.windows.com for downloads.

The terse, unexplained “Rücknahme” or “withdrawn” note was first noticed by PC World.

The news ignited widespread wishful thinking and claims that the patent consortium had fallen apart.

It’s apparently just happenstance that the Microsoft-organized consortium, otherwise known as CPTN Holdings LLC, pulled back the papers seeking regulator approval right after the Open Source Initiative (OSI) complained asking the authorities to investigate producing more of a “we don’t trust them” screed than a clear-cut theory of harm. Apparently it’s a case of bureaucratic lethargy on both sides of the pond at Christmastime.

Microsoft told us, “This is a purely procedural step necessary to provide time to allow for review of the proposed transaction.” It wouldn’t go any further. Not a wit. And everybody else was conveniently out of pocket and didn’t return calls.

Free Software Foundation Europe counsel Carlo Piana dug up a Novell Revised Proxy Statement filed recently with the SEC saying:

“The parties to the merger originally filed their respective notification and report forms pursuant to the HSR Act with the FTC and DOJ on December 1, 2010 and the initial 30-day waiting period would have expired on December 31, 2010. In order to provide the DOJ with additional time to review the information submitted by the parties, Attachmate is voluntarily withdrawing its HSR Act notification form, effective December 31, 2010 and intends to re-file for the same transaction on or about January 3, 2011. The effect of this re-filing will also be to extend the waiting period under the HSR Act to a date 30 days from the date of the re-filing, unless earlier terminated or extended by the DOJ requesting additional information from the parties.”

Presumably it’s of a piece with what’s going on in Germany and presumably CPTN will re-file.

Novell is depending on CPTN’s $450 million to deliver the promised $6.10-a-share acquisition deal to its stockholders. Without it, the Attachmate deal is only good for $1.75 billion, way below the $2 billion Novell rejected last year from hedge fund Elliott Associates, whose reportedly unexpected bid put the flagging, hard-to-unload Novell on the block.

See http://www.bundeskartellamt.de/wDeutsch/zusammenschluesse/zusammenschluesse.php.

Bloomberg and then the Wall Street Journal reported as much right before Christmas. They indicated that they had heard from unnamed sources that the Windows widgetry was a specially tailored but full-featured modular version of the famed resource-hogging operating system.

Microsoft said it’s working with ARM merchants Texas Instruments, Nvidia, Qualcomm as well as ARM itself. Microsoft and ARM cut an expanded licensing deal this past summer.

Microsoft indicated the widgetry would involve the native ARM kernel; native drivers and applications; hardware-accelerated HTML5 and graphics. Apparently Office can run natively on ARM.

The operating system will also run on Intel and AMD x86 System on a Chip (SoC) architectures (which promise to produce a motherboard the size of a Saltine).

It will take Microsoft anywhere from 24-36 months to put such a thing out although it has reportedly been working on the AMD port for a while, long enough to have a primitive UI-lacking demo.

Our own sources called the OS Windows 8, due in 2012. Microsoft wouldn’t call it Windows 8 during a press conference Wednesday afternoon. It only identified it as the “next generation of Windows” or “the next version of Windows,” suggesting there could be a name change.

The All Things Digital blog pointed out that hardware makers will have to create ARM-compatible drivers, which takes time. Microsoft downplayed the drive effort.

However, the port actually involves not just the OS but the middleware, firmware and applications and to complicate matters each ARM chip is incompatible with the others while Microsoft is reportedly targeting mainstream consumer software, which makes the whole exercise literally 100 times harder, our own sources say.

They remember that Microsoft rarely makes a schedule but say the plan is to have a beta in late 2011 and a product in 2013.

The development, which speculators figure will cost $100 million, is completely unsurprising. Microsoft wants in on the battery-powered smartphone and tablet phenomena where the ARM chip is now dominant and Apple and Android hold sway. But all kinds of devices are going online. Everything from sewing machines to cars, refrigerators and TVs are starting to connect to the Internet.

The Motley Fool pointed out last month that the new Windows Phone 7 runs on Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor, which uses the ARM architecture, and that a version of Windows Embedded Compact runs on ARM but ARM can’t support multi-tasking or hardware virtualization.

Microsoft, which pioneered the tablet although you’d never know it from Apple’s runaway success, has moved to non-x86 chips before but they didn’t have staying power.

ARM’s success suggests the vaunted Wintel PC duopoly could be at an end, already chipped away by Intel’s support of Linux. ARM eventually means to challenge Intel’s lock on the server business, offering a lower-power solution for cloud and data centers. All Things Digital said the development could impact notebooks and netbooks as much as slates.

Although Microsoft wasn’t at all clear, Bloomberg figured Wintel apps will have to be ported and poorly ported one will run “extremely slowly.” ARM, however, is a natural for cloud-based apps.

Of course Intel and AMD are rushing to make low-power versions of their x86 chips that’ll squeeze into handhelds.

Apple, which developed a small version of its Mac OS for its ARM handhelds, sold a reported 7.46 million iPads from April until the end of September, making it dominant in tablets; and 50 million tablets are supposed to sell in 2011.

Microsoft said before Christmas that 1.5 million Windows Phone 7-bearing cell phones moved in the first six weeks of launch, but only into distribution channel according to Reuters.

Microsoft has spent years looking for ways into the very high-end server market and it has previously ploughed an unknown amount of money into companies like TurboHercules that have been trying to nibble at the edges of IBM’s huge mainframe monopoly.

The software side of mainframes is estimated to be worth $25 billion.

Whatever money Microsoft put in TurboHercules for whatever exchange of equity, the start-up would still like to talk to other potential investors. Its widgetry can run mainframe apps on x86 machines.

Because of IBM restrictions – and its patent threat against TurboHercules – including a couple IBM swore it would never assert – the company has been limited to serving as a cheap governance-mandated disaster recovery vehicle for entities like state and local governments that can’t afford a pricey back-up mainframe. It would like to do more, such as replace lower-end mainframes that are no longer supported.

It figures it can handle chores like mainframe education, training, demonstrations, pre- and post-processing, data preparation, archiving, development and testing as well as disaster recovery. It claims it’s unlikely to dislocate IBM’s mainframe cash flow.

IBM has blamed Microsoft and its “satellite proxies” like T3T, once the world’s second-largest mainframe systems integrator and another Microsoft investment, for the pickle it’s in with the regulators but one of the EC’s investigations into what looks like discriminatory behavior toward competing suppliers of maintenance services is purely the agency’s idea.

The EC is supposed to be investigating T3 Technologies and TurboHercules’ charges that IBM illegally ties its mainframe hardware to it mainframe operating system.

This time through Microsoft released a statement saying it “shares TurboHercules’ belief that there needs to be greater openness and choice for customers in the mainframe market. Customers tell us that they want greater interoperability between the mainframe and other platforms, including systems that run Windows Server. For that reason, we continue to invest in companies like TurboHercules to develop new solutions for our mutual customers.”

The bulk of corporate data worldwide still lives on mainframes and IBM is effectively the only mainframe maker left. The business is estimated to represent about 230% of IBM’s revenue and 40% of its profits.

At the same time Novell said it’s also selling certain unidentified intellectual property to a thing called CPTN Holdings LLC, a consortium of equally unidentified technology companies organized by Microsoft, for $450 million in cash, a payment that’s cozily reflected in the $2.2 billion Attachmate is paying.

Less the $1.03 billion Novell told the SEC it has in the bank and the $450 million for what Novell told the SEC was 882 patents, Attachmate’s price works out to a mere $720 million.

The Microsoft-side of the news immediately sent people to the Patent and Trademark Office where they could find only 461 patents in Novell’s name going back to 1992. They also found 287 patent applications.

Presumably the IP sale will terminate Novell’s lingering antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft over WordPerfect. Microsoft’s only got a year left on its pledge not to press patents right against Novell’s Linux operating system, but, more importantly, it’s got a problem with Google and Android, enough that it sued Motorola over its Android phone.

It took Novell more than two days for its chief marketing officer John Dragoon to say on the company’s web site that Novell’s Unix copyrights will stay with Novell. God knows it wasn’t answering the phone.

Anyway, the two transactions are expected to close in Q1 and it appears that Novell will actually be the surviving entity owned by Attachmate by way of a “reverse triangular merger.” (See http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20101124103213556.)

Attachmate is owned by an investment group led by Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thoma Bravo.

Novell has been looking for a buyer since March 2 when little-known Elliott Associates LLP offered to buy the joint for $5.75 a share, a price then valued at $2 billion. The offer, which Novell claimed was too low, especially since Elliott would have gotten the billion dollars Novell has in the bank, sent it scampering to find an alternative, which has proven no easy matter despite purported interest from some 20 concerns.

The Wall Street Journal claimed a couple of months ago that VMware was interested in buying Novell’s second-string Linux operating system SUSE. Now there is speculation that Microsoft wanted to stop VMware from getting its hands on SUSE and competing against Microsoft’s server-virtualization combo.

In an unusual turn of events, Attachmate issued its own separate press release about the acquisition saying that Elliott Management Corporation, father of Elliott Associates, would become an equity shareholder in Attachmate by virtue of its stock position in Novell.

According to Yahoo’s financial site Elliott owns 7.03%, making it Novell’s second-largest institutional investor.

The press release included a statement from Elliott, again raising questions about whether Elliott was a stalking horse and setting one to wondering if Microsoft wrote the entire playlet.

Elliott is quoted as saying that it’s “pleased to have been a major catalyst in this transaction, enabling Novell’s shareholders to realize substantial shareholder value. Novell has a robust product set that we believe will create a significant value opportunity as part of the Attachmate Corporation portfolio of products.”

The $6.10 a share that Attachmate and its owners have put on the table is said to represent a 28% premium to Novell’s closing price right before the Elliott offer and a 9% premium to Novell’s closing price Friday.

Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian released a statement saying, “After a thorough review of a broad range of alternatives to enhance stockholder value, our board of directors concluded that the best available alternative was the combination of a merger with Attachmate Corporation and a sale of certain intellectual property assets to the consortium. We are pleased that these transactions appropriately recognize the value of Novell’s relationships, technology and solutions, while providing our stockholders with an attractive cash premium for their investment.”

Novell deferred further comment.

Microsoft’s deputy general counsel of intellectual property and licensing Horacio Gutierrez issued a statement saying, “We are pleased to be a part of the acquisition of certain intellectual property assets of Novell. Microsoft looks forward to continuing our collaboration with Novell into the future, to bring mixed-source IT solutions to customers.” Then Microsoft shut up.

The Seattle-based Attachmate plans to operate Novell as two business units – Novell and SUSE – and said it “will join them with its other holdings, Attachmate and NetIQ.”

Attachmate, which is supposed to compete with such as IBM, sells software to manage access to enterprise applications and databases including information stored on mainframes. Its products cover terminal emulation, host connectivity, fraud management, legacy system upgrades, security and applications integration. SUSE claims to have a corner on the Linux-on-mainframe market.

Novell will have to pay Attachmate $60 million if it gets an unimaginably better offer. Novell told the SEC that “In certain other circumstances upon termination of the merger agreement by Novell, Attachmate will be required to pay Novell a reverse termination fee equal to $120 million.”

Provisions have been made for the patent deal to go ahead even if Attachmate doesn’t wind up with the rest of Novell and even if the substitution acquirer wants them. Worst case CPTN will still get a royalty-free, fully paid-up patent cross-license covering all of Novell’s patents and patent applications.

Attachmate is going to be looking for $425 million equity financing and $1.09 billion in debt financing to buy Novell. From what the SEC was told apparently it’s got some commitments. Looks like it’s counting on using Novell’s piggybank because Novell told the regulator that “Attachmate has represented to Novell that the net proceeds contemplated by the equity funding and debt commitment letters, together with cash and cash equivalents available to Attachmate (including cash available to Novell and its subsidiaries), will in the aggregate be sufficient for the consummation of the merger upon and in accordance with the terms and conditions of the merger agreement.”

That’s when the New York Times came out and blogged that it knew from employees and consultants who were involved or simply knew that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Shantanu Narayen, the CEO of Flash-wielding, Apple-banned Adobe, met recently at Adobe’s offices in San Francisco for “secret” talks, and that they talked mostly about Apple’s control over smartphones and how Microsoft and Adobe could join forces in an anti-Apple front and that one of the ways of doing that would be for Microsoft to buy Adobe.

Well, a 3Par-sensitized stock market went nuts, and bid Adobe stock up 17% until trading was halted by volatility-minded circuit breakers. Adobe closed up 11.5% at $28.69 for a market cap of $14.8 billion.

Adobe PR didn’t deny the meeting; it just wouldn’t discuss it.

One source told the Times that Microsoft had courted Adobe a few years ago but got spooked on antitrust grounds. Such concerns supposedly don’t exist anymore.

Then the Wall Street Journal waded in with the observation that Adobe would be better off teaming up with Google because Microsoft is a smartphone loser and between Adobe’s recent Omniture web analytics acquisition and its Photoshop and Dreamweaver web site-designing software, the fit with Google is more natural.

Sunday was the end of the World Cup so Microsoft decided to play off the theme with videos of fans in the pubs singing OLAY, OLAY, OLAY but instead sang O Cloud, O Cloud, O Cloud, not exactly your bonding IBM theme song.

Just to be clear this is a partner conference full of people who buy Microsoft products and resell them in their markets. And the cloud SCARES THE CRAP OUT OF THEM.

What came across loud and clear is that Microsoft is not going to miss this round of IT transformation.

Steve Ballmer gave the keynote and reiterated the key dimensions of the cloud, something that he spoke about back in March but for most of the partners this was brand new.

Later I found out from a group of Microsoft executives that Microsoft has mandated that 90% of its products be cloud-focused by the end of the year. They felt that they had reached 70% by the conference, a lot of it focusing on Azure and pushing key products to be SaaS.

The key dimensions of the cloud according to Ballmer are:

1. Creates opportunities and new responsibilities.
2. Cloud learns and helps you to learn, decide and take action
3. Cloud enhances social and professional interactions
4. Cloud is going to drive server advances that run on the cloud
5. Cloud wants smarter Devices – which was a big play for fat clients!!!

What’s important about this is that Microsoft is defining what the cloud will be for many of its customers. And it’s doing everything it can to bring the partner community along with them. If you look at the competition, Amazon, Rackspace, Google there’s no room for the partner. This is what scares them. Microsoft is giving partners a chance to jump on board.

The big announcement was the Azure appliance, which is a preconfigured Azure platform to be installed at a client’s physical site alleviating the concern for security and data proximity. There was not a lot of information and I got the distinct impression the thing was only baked over the last week or two but a number big vendors committed to building or using Azure appliance namely HP, Fujitsu, Dell, and – surprise – eBay.

The Azure appliance lets Microsoft extend its cloud solutions to its partners. And by announcing that some larger partners would open Azure-hosted data centers they fulfilled the vision. This is where Microsoft has made an amazing move on the cloud chessboard, at least Check!

They are going to give partners of all sizes and levels a way to host, collocate with a hosting company or buy from Microsoft cloud services for their clients. With the installed base of Microsoft products this could rapidly propel them to the front of the cloud line especially in the SMB areas where partners play.

Still the mood was skeptical because the cloud changes the game on the partner. Where they used to compete only at a local level against other VARs or VADs now they have to compete on a national, even international level with every cloud provider. Welcome to the brave new world. Either get on board or become the next BlockBuster video stunned by Netflix!

Of course there were plenty of the traditional upgrade announcements the most important being Windows 7 and Windows Server. During the discussion a new message about Windows caught my ear – “Make the Windows experience a vital and LOVED part of users’ lives!” Something Vista didn’t do!! According to Microsoft 1.1 billion PCs run Windows and 70% still run XP at work but at home they run Windows 7 (of course they didn’t mention Mac). The user experience at home is superior to the user experience at work. So Windows 7 upgrades for 2010-2011 is a high priority.

During a demo session Microsoft showed different flavors of laptops, desktops and of course had an iPad-like device they called a slate. Not sure why this got so much attention in the press other than the clear message that there will be full-blown slates (Pads) that run Windows 7, phones that run Windows 7 Mobile, and that life will be great with Windows on a Pad. There was nothing too shocking as there was very little to talk about.

As far as ISVs, a lot of them are coming on board with the Azure and cloud strategy. Some of course are waiting to see what happens and the ones that have to provide secure access and on-site premise solutions are moving slowly. But according to Microsoft 10k customers are using the Azure platform. And for something that’s only been shipping this year that’s an impressive number.

On the show floor after the keynotes, I talked with a number of hosted Azure providers from all niches. They mostly support the cloud direction and the Azure program. Of course Microsoft gave them the software free to run and opened a marketplace for applications so why not jump on board. I had an interesting conversation with New World App’s about its niche play in the government with managed security and disaster recovery. It’s extending its partnership with Microsoft by offering Azure for government applications.

It appears that Microsoft buttering up ISVs and resellers by pledging Business Investment Funds (BIFs) – development dollars – to get them to come over. This is the key – apps bring volume and volume brings apps. So a jumpstart is a great model.

Microsoft intends to take some of the billions it’s got in the bank and become a leader if not the leader in the cloud. Everyone’s jumping on the cloud but they’ve jumped out in front. Well done.

They position VMware as a server virtualization company with little skill or interest in the desktop that’s using View, its desktop virtualization product, as a “sweetener to sell server virtualization” and screwing up the customer and the VDI market in the process.

Poor experience with View has purportedly led to stalled VDI implementations and failed pilots so to remove this ostensible logjam that’s delaying the widespread adoption of the virtual desktop Microsoft and Citrix are offering a Cash for Clunkers-style deal officially called Rescue for VMware VDI.

Users covered by Microsoft’s Software Assurance program can trade in 500 VMware licenses for Citrix XenDesktop and Microsoft VDI Suite and use the stack for free for the next year. By then, they reason, companies should have figured out their desktop strategy.

Citrix and Microsoft have also concocted a VDI Kick Start program to tempt users new to VDI to try their stuff first by cutting the price of XenDesktop VDI Edition and Microsoft VDI Suite Standard Edition to $28 a user for the first 250 user for a year or a total of $7,000, roughly a 50% discount.

The user gets Hyper-V, App-V and System Center virtual machine manager; and the XenDesktop delivery solution with its HDX high-definition user experience and image management for optimizing storage and the ability to use any device, anywhere, LAN or WAN.

And just to make certain it’s driving its point home, come July 1, the beginning of its fiscal year, Microsoft will be canceling those separate, arcane, headache-inducing $23-a-desktop-a-year VECD or Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop licenses it’s demanded of its Software Assurance customers to access their Windows operating system in a VDI environment.

They’ll also get full roaming rights so they can use their desktops from any device anywhere without paying for each and every widget.

Starting this summer virtual access – even complements of VMware – will be a “Software Assurance benefit.” Unless you’re using thin clients that haven’t paid the Windows tax; if you’re running thin clients or aren’t covered by a Software Assurance plan the best you can expect is a few bucks off the price; instead of $110 a year per device, it’ll be $100.

Microsoft has also fiddled with the Windows XP Mode on Windows 7 Professional and up so it’s no longer dependent on the virtualization technology in the desktop’s chip. It was altogether too confusing, Microsoft admits, and made it hard for people to run their old XP programs on the new operating system, suggesting it could be holding back some Windows 7 upgrades.

Citrix also come away with a new technology deal with Microsoft though it won’t be making any money off of it, well, not directly. Microsoft is going to use the high-definition HDX technology in Citrix XenDesktop to enhance and extend the RemoteFX widgetry that’s supposed to turn up in Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1, whenever that happens. The Citrix widgetry, however, won’t turn up in the thing until six months after the service pack ships.

RemoteFX, the graphics acceleration for virtual desktops Microsoft got when it bought Calista Technologies and its Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) improvements in 2008, is supposed to make using a virtual desktops and applications an utterly local-style, rich 3D, multimedia experience.

According to independent desktop virtualization maven Brian Madden the RemoteFX-HDX tie-up will make XenDesktop, most of whose deployments are on VMware ESX, more beholden to Hyper-V and give XenDesktop a real reason to run on Hyper-V. Madden figures VMware is working on a PC-over-IP retort.

Microsoft also means to fiddle with the Dynamic Memory in the Service Pack so users can adjust the memory of a guest virtual machine on-demand and maximize server hardware.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Citrix announced a new version of its desktop widgetry XenDesktop 4 Feature Pack 1.

The new release, available March 24, builds on recently announced XenDesktop scalability enhancements, enabling customers to host 100,000 shared virtual desktops concurrently from a single location, shortens virtual desktop and application log-on times up to 5x and simplifies application management by incorporating all the capabilities of the recently announced XenApp 6 as an integrated feature, including seamless new integration with Microsoft App-V and support for Windows Server 2008 R2.

Facts being thin on the ground one is left to speculate that that means all of Amazon’s Linux-based servers everywhere including all those Linux images on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The terms of the deal are secret of course, but Microsoft made sure to say that Amazon’s paying it “an undisclosed amount of money.”

The fact that Amazon appears to concede the legitimacy of Microsoft’s claims that Linux and other open source widgetry violate its patents is going to drive the Linux crowd up a wall. Microsoft has never identified which patents it’s talking about, which infuriates them more.

Linux Foundation chief Jim Zemlin went into a state of denial blogging that “a cross-licensing agreement is a non-news event. The fact that two entities with expensive stockpiles of outdated weapons felt the need to negotiate détente is not surprising. Let’s avoid second-guessing and implication. There’s nothing to see here. We have real code to write.”

Microsoft’s deputy general counsel for IP and licensing Horacio Gutierrez mumbled something about the Amazon deal demonstrating the companies’ “ability to reach pragmatic solutions to IP issues regardless of whether proprietary or open source software is involved.”

Microsoft says it’s cut more than 600 IP licensing deals in the six years since it started cashing in on its IP a la IBM.

It has only ever taken one company to court over patents in its whole life and that was TomTom last year over its Linux-based GPS navigation devices which used the FAT file format that’s in the Linux kernel. Ultimately the Dutch company caved and they settled out-of-court for money and the undertaking to tear out the offending code over time.

Amusingly – and without mentioning a word about Linux – Microsoft said Thursday that Panasonic had licensed its Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) technology, the latest generation of the Microsoft file system, as well as its FAT32 long file name technology for media devices. exFAT is supposed to up the size of files that can be stored on flash memory devices, the speed at which they can be accessed and facilitate the interchange between desktop PCs and consumer electronics. The deal includes a patent license.

Microsoft also has exFAT licensing agreements with Sanyo and Olympus.