Microsoft to Take Cross-Product Integration a Step Further
|
SAN DIEGO — If you thought Microsoft was tightly integrating its products before, wait until you see what it's planning to do in the future. Taking the company's "integrated innovation" charge a step further, Andy Lees, the Microsoft corporate VP in charge of server and tools marketing, focused his Tuesday morning TechEd 2004 keynote here on the company's plans to deliver a common set of services across its entire Windows Server System family. This new set of services is detailed in a plan called the "Common Engineering Roadmap." These common services will reduce complexity and provide customers with a standard set of "criteria" which will be available for all the Windows Server System products going forward, Lees said. In short, the new services will insure that Microsoft's own products work better together, according to Lees. Windows Server System products include Windows Server, BizTalk Server, Commerce Server, Content Management Server, Exchange Server, Host Integration Server, Identity Integration Server, Internet Security and Acceleration Server, Microsoft Operations Manager, SharePoint Portal Server, SQL Server, Systems Management Server and Storage Server. Examples of the kinds of services that Microsoft is planning to make common across its products:
Lees made a number of other new product announcements during his hour-and-a-half presentation. Among them: Lees spent most of his keynote running through demonstrations intended to show how an integrated family of products can help customers manage costs, keep their businesses running and deliver business value.
Throughout the demonstrations, Lees and his team members demonstrated an early version of "R2," the version of Windows Server that is due to ship in 2005. R2 has still not yet reached the beta test stage. Among the R2 features that Lees highlighted were the hub and spoke topology model that will streamline branch communication; the so-called "remote differential compression feature" that will allow users to more replicate files more efficiently; the client inspection and isolation technology that will help customers lock-down desktops on their networks for security purposes; and Active Directory Federation Services (the new name for the federated-identity technology formerly code-named "TrustBridge"). Lees also used his keynote to beat the drum for Microsoft's Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), which is its autonomic computing plan. To help encourage customers to deploy some of Microsoft's first DSI deliverables, Microsoft is providing all TechEd 2004 attendees a free copy of Systems management Server 2003; Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 "Express" and Services for Unix. Microsoft is spending $10 million to give away these products, Lees said — an announcement which met with resounding audience applause. |
