Stories by Shane O'Neill

Welcome to The Microsoft Home, where no wall or table in the house is safe from being a digital device.

If your business is still running Service Pack 2 of Windows XP, security problems are lurking around the corner, according to new research from IT services vendor Softchoice stating that almost 80 percent of organizations surveyed risk a security breach if the do not upgrade to SP3.

As Microsoft CIO, Tony Scott oversees the software giant's security, infrastructure, and messaging and business applications, and helps support the product and corporate business groups as well as Redmond's global sales and marketing organization.

Sony Electronics, the division of Sony Corporation that designs and develops the company's cameras, computers, TVs and other devices, is making a broad move to SharePoint 2010 to improve search, social networking and document sharing.

When you're auto giant BMW, with 24 production sites in 13 countries, you're going to have your share of important business applications.

At its launch event in New York City, Microsoft blared the trumpets for Office and SharePoint 2010, emphasizing that the new updates are designed to give users a choice of on-premise or cloud environments, calling the new releases an intersection of the PC, phone and browser.

Cloud-based e-mail may be generating powerful market buzz, but in the enterprise, Microsoft Exchange today remains the dominant e-mail platform.

If you're an enterprise deciding whether now is the time to migrate your e-mail or SharePoint environment into a cloud service, there is a method to all this cloud madness. And if done right, it could transform your company's identity.

Enterprises of all shapes and sizes are catching on to the value in moving e-mail and other productivity apps to the cloud where they can be delivered and managed by vendors like Microsoft, Google or Cisco.

Late last week, Google made another aggressive move to stay ahead of Microsoft in the online productivity tools space by acquiring DocVerse, a startup founded by two former Microsoft employees, known for tools that let users collaborate on Microsoft Office files on the Web.

The big news this week out of Redmondland was CEO Steve Ballmer's Cloud Manifesto at the University of Washington. Big Steve was explicit in his remarks: Microsoft is betting its future on cloud computing.

The hero and the villain. It's the age-old formula that pervades today's reality TV showdowns, the shenanigans of professional wrestling and cinematic classics like Star Wars. Tech is no different, with its passionate heroes who balance profit with innovation and social responsibility, and the money-mad, egomaniac villains who simply cannot be trusted. Here's a look at tech's good guys and bad guys.

Windows 7 may have helped propel to record levels, but many enterprises are still slowly, carefully deploying the OS, if at all.

Microsoft's Bing search (decision) engine keeps chipping away, that's for sure.

For both enterprises and consumers, one of the big draws of Windows 7 has been its tighter security features.