New World of Work

Steve Ballmer kicked off the hour and a half long presentation with the theme of The new world of work . He touched upon the way that information workers’ IT needs are changing and the challenges that developers are facing in meeting those demands. The main theme was the cycle of design/build -> deploy/operate -> act/interact that Microsoft perceives most software products follow in the modern world and how MS products such as VSTS 2005 are preparing to make people’s lives easier. (Personally, I’m sceptical that this is really true of the wider world “ Active/Test-driven development for example doesn’t conform to this view and may cause potential problems for VSTS users, but never mind. Back to the talk ) For example, VSTS will be the first version of Studio to have management tools ( Foundation Services ) built into the application alongside the development tools as first-class citizens, rather than as plug-in add-ons or relegated to Excel spreadsheet macros.

The 3 core principals of this new World of Work are:

1. Access without compromise “ using the corporate network from anywhere: your desk, the client site, the car, home, your blackberry, all without compromising the integrity of the network.


2. Self-service infrastructure “ the major bottleneck in current IT operations is in dealing with client requests. By making more mundane tasks ~self-service’ the IT staff are freed to perform more skilled work and the clients experience a faster, smoother self-service operation.


3. Policies to place control in the hands of IT management “ for example, new development in MS Mobile technology now allow the IT management to enforce password based logins across company hand-helds when previously they had to rely on the goodwill of individual employees to keep passwords enabled on their units when working away from site. Now policy updates can be downloaded automatically to all handhelds in the manner of a live-update while clients download mail, surf the web, etc.

This triumvirate is itself based on a broad base of technologies. Most pertinent amongst those are Presence , Identity , Rights Management , and Network Access . These are collectively known as Shared Information Services .

Active Directory

Surprisingly the now rather aging technology of Active Directory was in for a prime position in the talk. A.D. still remains the back-bone of Microsoft’s infrastructure technologies (they claim it’s the most widely used technology in its field; I’ve not had a chance to check their figures). It is especially important in the modern IT world as it gives a firm concept of identity to the individual user working on the system.

In the near future (this year probably) MS are planning to release an improved version of A.D. called Active Directory Federation Services which will allow user’s identities to be taken out of the corporate network and seamlessly across company borders. It’s likely that WS-* technology will be involved in this in some way.

Before moving on he alluded to Windows Server 2003 being the logical next step in Active Directory and of undisclosed new features coming up in R2 within the next 12 months.

Exchange Server SP2

Following on from his earlier comments mention was made of Exchange Server SP2 and of new functionality that was forthcoming. This includes, as previously mentioned, the ability to wipe mobile devices after a predetermined number of password fails and to enforce and update the password policy automatically.

He also mentioned a Windows Desktop Search plug-in SDK which allows the OS to search inside an ever widening number of documents. (I’ve yet to check this one out, so can’t confirm whether it’s available and how well it works).

Longhorn

At this stage we were treated to extremely brief and constrained views of progress within some of the more photogenic development projects currently underway. First up was the Journaled File System in Windows Longhorn. With a few deft clicks of the mouse the demonstrator was able to whittle down a seemingly jumbled archive directory of 500 items to just a couple of dozen which matched by category, then just two or three which matched by author. Nothing new here, and I wouldn’t have mentioned it but for the next bit, where by manipulating Longhorn’s version of ~Folder Icon Zoom’ you were able to zoom right into the filtered documents from the folder view, enlarging them until the filled the screen and beyond so you could read the contents of the individual files without having to open them with Word, etc. Great eye-candy. Not sure how practical it’ll actually be (I bet it’s a huge resource hog, too)

The second eye-candy moment came in the form of Microsoft Virtual Earth . It’s Microsoft’s answer to Google maps. Google maps works of course using AJAX, I’m not sure what VE is but it does much the same thing, with smooth zooming and point-to-point jumping. MS have added a scratchpad to the format to keep your notes in while you work with it and have options to overlay/substitute aerial photographs in place of the usual vector mapping . There’s not much info about the underlying technology around at the moment, but Paul Scobel’s got a link to a video of MVE’s operation on his blog (http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=71140)

Microsoft Information Manager (MOM)

A whistle-stop tour of developments within MOM came next, showing how the system’s intelligence has been improved and stressing its new interoperability with Solaris systems. A demonstration came in the form of ripping the fans out of a Sun rack containing Windows Servers causing the system to begin to heat up. MOM detected the problem (as you’d expect), issued an advisory, then a warning. The system was easily switched to backup from the MOM control window. The same exercise was then undertaken on a mixed Win/Solaris system with the same results which was much more interesting.

.NET take-up and momentum

A couple of .NET uptake stats were provided next. After 5 years of .NET (has it really been that long) the state of play is apparently as follows:

43% .NET

35% Java

Other

As no information seemed to have been provided as to what this was in terms of(server, desktop, web apps?) this was spectacularly meaningless.

A set of improvement stats was provided for .NET 2.0, too (measured in terms of transactions per second, so nothing to do with coding convenience, app size, deployment, etc.)

Steve claimed that .NET 2.0 is between 25% and 40% faster than .NET 1.1 and up to 200% faster than IBM Websphere. As you’d expect no information was provided as to what the transactions were. Apparently the data came from TheServerSide.com. I’m trying to find out exactly what the test was at the moment.

Maestro CRM system

Mention was made of the Maestro CRM system, which I’ve never heard of before. It’s new; a business scorecard system with will bring rich application data and flexible reporting services to business users in conjunction with the upcoming release of SQL Server 2005.

Making DSI real

As the presentation began to wind down, Steve reinforced Microsoft’s commitment to the Dynamic System’s Initiative ( DSI ). Microsoft and its partners are focusing on enabling IT teams to capture and transfer knowledge across the lifecycle from development to operations to business users. In support of DSI Steve reinforced the following:

1. MS initial delivery of System Definition Model ( SDM ) a modeling language used to express knowledge across the lifecycle in VSTS 2005. SDM allows operations managers and application architects to collaborate early in the development process.


2. Ongoing work with AMD, Dell and others on the WS-Management Web Services standard to improve the manageability of their heterogeneous environments by providing common ways for all types of system to exchange information.

Microsoft Update

Finally the new Microsoft Update security patching initiative was announced that provides the same patching convenience to MS products across the board as is currently enjoyed via Windows Update for the OS.

Conclusion

It was an entertaining talk, with many comic sojourns and much poking fun almost making up for the lack of new information.