Improved patching and management systems will give IT professionals more time to spend on upgrades and integration, better enabling them to reap the benefits of upcoming products such as SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft executives told attendees at its TechEd conference in June 2005. Emphasizing security and management, the company rolled out new patch management tools and touted the management features in upcoming Windows and SQL Server releases, while also whetting attendees' appetites for the other capabilities of SQL Server 2005 and longer-term product releases, such as BizTalk Server 2006 and Exchange 12.

Patching and Reliability Highlighted

Microsoft says corporate IT departments today spend about 70% of their time operating and managing existing systems. Only 30% of their budgets and resources go into new projects. Security problems in Microsoft software and confusion over its patching technologies are longstanding bugbears of system administrators, and at TechEd 2005 the company highlighted its current and future efforts to address these problems. If successful, these efforts will benefit not only the company's customers but also Microsoft's bottom line, as its image improves and organizations spend less on maintenance and more on new projects—and software licenses.

In addition to announcing the availability of a single Microsoft Update (MU) site for desktop updates and an improved and renamed corporate update tool, Windows Server Update Services (WSUS, formerly Software Update Services), the company touted upcoming feature releases for Systems Management Server (SMS) and Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server to ease desktop and branch-office administrative tasks. Speakers also described new manageability features in products such as Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 that will improve interoperability with other systems and management tools.

Even when Microsoft highlighted new products, management and security played a significant role. The company demonstrated database mirroring in SQL Server (using a robot to destroy a switch connecting two servers to demonstrate how processing could fail over to one machine) and discussed its authentication, certificate management, and data encryption capabilities. The company will also build "Best Practices Analyzers" based on real-world feedback from customers and consultants for many server products, including SQL and Exchange, to minimize their exposure to attack when configured for particular roles.

The company plans a major launch event for SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 on Nov. 7, 2005, but provided no specific dates for their actual delivery. Based on strong feedback from SQL users about the utility of Reporting Services, the company said it has revised plans to include it only with the Standard and Enterprise Editions: it will also be bundled with the lower-cost Express and Workgroup Editions.

Longer-Term Initiatives

With its focus on security and management, and on well-known releases such as SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005, TechEd 2005 was short on major product announcements. However, the company did discuss some longer-term initiatives, including the following:

Messaging and Security Feature Pack for Windows Mobile 5.0. Likely to be included with Exchange 2003 SP2, this feature pack will duplicate the RIM Blackberry's e-mail "push" capabilities for Windows Mobile wireless devices—an improvement over Exchange's current "Always Up to Date" push feature, which depends on Simple Messaging System text messages, for which many customers must pay extra. The feature pack will also enable remote management of remote devices so that, for example, a lost cell phone can be permanently locked and its data erased.

Radio frequency ID (RFID) tools. Based on the .NET Framework, these tools will be used to build RFID applications in Visual Studio for use with SQL Server, BizTalk, and other systems. One demo showed how RFID tags stuck to attendees' badges could be used to measure traffic into the show's hands-on lab area.

Hypervisor technology. Microsoft recently released desktop and server virtualization software that allows multiple logical computers, using a variety of OSs (including Linux), to run on a single machine. The next major advance in this area will be an unnamed "hypervisor" technology to be bundled with Windows Server sometime after the release of Longhorn Server (currently expected in 2007). Unlike the current Virtual PC and Virtual Server software, which run on Windows OSs, the hypervisor will run at a very low level and manage multiple OSs on a computer. Several competitors already have or are working on similar systems: an open-source hypervisor called Xen has been endorsed by major Linux vendors, chip manufacturers, and server vendors, including Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM.

Resources

RFID is described in "Wireless ID Tags Gain Microsoft Support" on page 19 of the July 2003 Update.

MU and WSUS are described in "Updated Patching Tools Cover OSs, Applications".

Microsoft's software management plans are covered in the Mar. 2005 Enterprise Software Roadmap.

The hypervisor feature planned for Windows Server is described in more detail in "Management Product Roadmap Expanding" on page 11 of the June 2005 Update.