RMS won't be available at Windows Server 2003's launch, which is slated for April. Instead, RMS will be entering beta in the second quarter, with no final release date announced, according to Microsoft. Pricing details are also still being determined, but the software will be sold as an add-on module.
Also in the second quarter, Microsoft will release two software kits to aid developers in building rights management functionality into their applications.
"Software development kits will make it easy to develop applications that use rights management consistently. We need to make sure that rights management can be used in a consistent way and can be applied across a broad set of applications," Nash said.
Microsoft is currently working on RMS with several hardware partners, ISVs and likely early-adopter customers, according to Stuart Okin, Microsoft U.K.'s chief security officer.
One of those ISVs is Adobe Systems, according to Nash.
A spokesman for Adobe said that his company had been briefed by Microsoft on the RMS technology, but that the company had no definite plans to integrate RMS with any of its desktop publishing products.
"Today we’re not announcing any implementation plans for RMS," said Harry Vitelli, vice president of business development at Adobe.
"Since Adobe applications rest on top of Microsoft's platform technology, we take it seriously and are looking into how to integrate [RMS] into our own product plans," Vitelli said.
Vitellideclined to speculate on which Adobe products might integrate the RMS technology or when RMS features might be available in Adobe's products.
"Conjecture at this point would only lead to more conjecture," Vitelli said.
Adobe already offers forms of rights management with its Acrobat and Acrobat eBook Reader products, according to Vitelli.
Many of those features are provided using technology from Adobe partners such as Authentica, in
Vitellideclined to comment on how or whether Microsoft's entry into the rights management arena would affect those relationships.
Microsoft is seeing particular interest in RMS from government customers and those in the pharmaceutical industry, Okin said. Organizations in those industries often already have in place detailed security and access policies, and are eager to explore technical solutions for enforcing those procedures, he said.
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