Microsoft Eyes Manageability, Development At TechEd

Notable among the announcements is a new common engineering road map and criteria for the Windows Server System, in which Microsoft has identified specific capabilities and features that will be made consistent across the entire server family, starting in 2005. This is clearly intended to iron out differences in the server products (Windows, SQL Server, BizTalk Server, Exchange Server, etc.) to, in effect, lower deployment and administration costs and ease complexity. By imbuing its servers with identical functionality, including like tools for manageability and security, Microsoft hopes to give partners and customers fewer headaches.

Microsoft's server road map for Windows is long and parts of it very late. The much-anticipated Longhorn release--originally due out in 2003, now is expected to market in 2007 (yes, 2007). In the meantime, Microsoft plans to this year release its first service pack for Windows Server 2003, which will feature security and VPN enhancements and 64-bit hardware extended system support. In 2005, the company will roll out an update to Windows Server 2003, code-named R2, that will carry forward features from its parent, but add support for application-level remote access (avoiding a VPN connection when you just need one piece of data or functionality); and a raft of identity-federation and single sign-on capabilities. In the second half of 2005 comes the first beta of Longhorn, followed by a second beta in 2006. Longhorn will be built entirely upon managed code.

The server time line served as backdrop for TechEd this week, where some of the show's major product news was aimed at developers, not surprisingly. Of particular note is Visual Studio Team System, an application life-cycle tools suite that marks Microsoft's entry into a space now dominated by IBM Rational, Borland and Compuware. The new suite, which will be released in concert with Visual Studio.Net 2005 next year, features tools for modeling, designing and testing applications.

Addressing the full application life cycle is crucial if Microsoft hopes to assert itself with developers of large-scale distributed applications that are deployed on servers, tend to be back-end and mission critical in nature. To date, Microsoft's tools have a tight grip on client-side application development, but to play in enterprise-grade apps space they will have to provide an integrated set of tools that teams of developers at each stage can take advantage of. Much as IBM has done with its Eclipse IDE, Microsoft is encouraging partners to plug their own life-cycle tools into the Team Center System to extend the suite's capabilities. This week, tools vendors like Compuware, Borland and a raft of others pledged to do so.

"What's interesting about Eclipse is that a number of projects can plug into it. It's a community," says Rick LaPlante general manager Visual Studio Team System at Microsoft. "But with Visual Studio.Net, we also have a lot of plug-ins. It's a community that is often overlooked, but it is a strong business model for partners in terms of access to APIs and co-marketing opportunities, etc."

The suite may also have the effect of alienating some smaller Microsoft partners who market and sell testing or modeling tools and now find themselves in competition with Redmond. But as Microsoft officials have countered when faced with similar concerns about being in the applications business, LaPlante said that, far from driving tools partners out of business, the suite gives them opportunity to add value.

"Extensibility gives partners a lot of business opportunity," he says. "Yes, some are scared, some are circumspect. But we have given them advance notice of what we are doing, so that they have the ability and time to come up with their integration strategy or how to add value."