|
Integration and security will be the watchwords at Microsoft's annual TechEd 2004 show, which will kick off Monday in San Diego.
The Microsoft brass are on tap to talk up the benefits of "integrated innovation" (whether or not they actually use the company's favorite catch phrase). Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Server and Tools Corporate VP Andy Lees are expected to focus in their keynotes on how the growing amount of integration across the Windows Server System (as well as other Microsoft products) will help developers and customers cut costs and improve productivity.
Microsoft officials declined to comment on new product and strategy announcements that the Redmond software vendor is planning – other than acknowledging it will launch officially its Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2004 firewall product at the show.
But other expected announcements, according to sources close to the company, include:
The Microsoft Information Bridge Framework, a new tool for more tightly integrating Office 2003 applications with back-end enterprise applications from Microsoft and third-party software vendors;
Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1), complete with its new "intelligent message filter" spam-fighting technology;
Some kind of new tool tying together BizTalk 2004 and SQL Server 2002 Reporting Services; and
A "Microsoft Access Conversion Toolkit" that will eliminate one of the supposed major "deployment blockers" in getting Access 97 users to migrate to Office 2003.
Although some had expected Microsoft to use the show as a launch pad for Release Candidate 2 (RC2) of its Windows XP Service Pack 2 release, it's not for certain that the company will be ready to roll out the final RC2 bits during the week-long conference.
One source close to the company said Microsoft won't be delivering RC2 until the week after the show, despite the fact that the company rolled out new interim beta releases of both XP SP2 (marked pre-RC2) and the complementary Windows Update V5 (Release Candidate 2) technologies this week.
Microsoft officials have said to expect RC2 by the end of May and the final by the end of July.
It's also unclear whether Microsoft will launch Beta 1 of Visual Studio 2005 (code-named "Whidbey") during TechEd. The company is planning a heavy focus on developer tools, as well as on service-oriented architectures at the show. One of Microsoft's first SOA deliverables will be "Whitehorse," the modeling tool that is slated to be integrated into Visual Studio 2005.
|
