Microsoft Makes Some Interesting Middleware Announcements

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

At the Network+Interop trade show in Las Vegas last week, Microsoft made a whole slew of announcements that ranged across its product lines. None of them were particularly related to the show, but the PR departments of IT vendors often use big trade shows as an excuse to clear their desks. Microsoft put out lots of releases last week, trumpeting .NET and Active Directory, but the interesting announcements were enhanced integration software for Unix, an accelerator for building SQL Server-based data warehouses, and an integrated portal/content manager for Windows.

The third iteration Microsoft's Services for Unix (SFU) extensions to Windows has just been released to manufacturing, which means it will be imminently available for production use. SFU 3.0 builds on the SFU 2.0 that Microsoft released for Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 in that it embeds the Interix Unix APIs that Microsoft gained when it acquired Software Systems, the developer of the Unix-alike code that can make it substantially easier for Unix vendors to port their applications to Windows. Interix does not allow Unix binaries to be run on top of Windows, but rather allows Unix applications to be recompiled in a Unix environment that rests on top of Windows. It is, in effect, a Unix rehosting environment. Microsoft bought Software Systems several years ago, and its developers in Redmond and India have been hard at work merging Interex with the existing SFU to give Windows 2000 a Unix look and feel for those who want to interoperate with Unix servers using Unix commands and protocols as well as those who want to rehost their Unix applications on Windows servers. SFU 3.0 can also make use of Windows Active Directory password and authentication features to provide a single sign on for Windows and Unix users on the same networks. Microsoft says that SFU 3.0 will be available by the end of the second quarter and that it will cost $99.

Microsoft also announced late last week that it had started shipping an adjunct program for its SQL Server database called the Accelerator for Business Intelligence. This program does not make data warehouses run faster, as the name might suggest, but rather accelerates the process of building and maintaining data warehouses. It is essentially a rapid application development environment for the "Plato" Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) server, now known as SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services. The Accelerator for BI tool takes the best practices of Microsoft's customers and partners and creates a blueprint and foundation that newbies can use to build their data warehouses. Microsoft also believes that partners who want to sell BI solutions based on Windows technologies will use the accelerator to help them implement data warehouses for customers in a more timely and efficient manner, and thereby increase their profits and the satisfaction of their customers. Perhaps most significantly, by making Accelerator for BI available only on SQL Server 2000, Microsoft is trying to encourage customers to move up from SQL Server 7.0 and prior Microsoft databases. Accelerator for BI is available for free for SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition customers. It can be downloaded from http://www.mi crosoft.com/solutions/bi/ .

Finally, Microsoft announced last week that it has merged its Content Management Server and SharePoint Portal Server into a single integrated offering. The idea is to give customers a single product for creating their portals and the content on them and behind them. More importantly, by linking the publishing tools that companies use to create Web pages and Web applications and the collaboration tools that their Web developers and designers use to keep in touch with each other, Microsoft can say that these tools can help cut down on the substantial duplication of effort that goes on behind the scenes on most corporate Web sites. The integration pack is available for free to Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN) subscribers at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release/asp?ReleaseID=38801 .