Microsoft believes secure computing depends on digital
rights management (DRM) and the company expects to get a good grip
on the market, according to chief executive officer Steve
Ballmer.
Ballmer revealed in an e-mail sent to subscribers of a periodic
executive update that Microsoft saw DRM as a crucial piece of its
initiatives.
"Microsoft has invested more than $250m to date in rights
management technologies, and we have substantial efforts to enable
a new generation of rights management that will protect a broad
range of personal and commercial digital content," Ballmer
wrote.
DRM promises to be an increasingly lucrative market as more
digital content becomes available and more content providers demand
that their works be protected.
In addition to content such as music and movies that are ripe
candidates for DRM technologies, Microsoft saw corporate content
such as e-mail and internal documents as other realms where DRM
technologies will take hold.
"Anyone who uses a personal computer for word processing,
e-mail, data analysis or other common purposes is creating digital
content - content that if unprotected might be misused by others,"
Ballmer wrote.
Microsoft's flagship DRM technology is its Windows Media Digital
Rights Management (DRM) tool which delivers music, media and other
content online.
The Windows Media DRM was first released in 1999 and Ballmer's
e-mail detailed how the company has a line of new DRM products up
its sleeve, including Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services,
a security service for Windows Server 2003, due out later this
year.
Ballmer said Microsoft was partnering with a wide range of
content providers and industry suppliers to grab hold of the
market, adding that DRM is a crucial part of the company's
Trustworthy Computing strategy.