] An upcoming Microsoft software product for clustered servers
] won't run on Intel's high-end Itanium 2 chip, according to a
] report first published on News.com. Instead, it will be
] optimized for a more mainstream type of server chip from Intel
] and rival Advanced Micro Devices

I would say this is yet another set back for Intel:Itanium, except that in real clustering environments -- compute loads where the difference between an Itanium and a Xeon is significant -- Microsoft is almost completely irrelevant. Microsoft was at Supercomputing this year, with a two-story booth... and almost no attention. I saw Linux support touted by the hardware vendors far more (10:1?) than any mention of Microsoft products.