Ballmer Touts 'Dynamic IT' During Launch Event

Published: March 5, 2008

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer described how the latest products were following through on the company's vision for "dynamic IT," including software and services.

After being introduced by former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw during last week's "Heroes Happen Here" launch event, Ballmer dipped into the marketing trough when he talked about how Microsoft tries to help its customers "achieve agility and manage complexity."

Those are choice marketing buzzwords. However, they also describe the state of IT in many data centers--namely, a lack of agility, and too much complexity--and it's good at least to see Microsoft acknowledge the problem that it, in part, helped create. "The problem in many IT shops is the user is empowered [but] there's no central control, efficiency, organization, or information protection," Ballmer said.

Can Microsoft actually fix these problems with yet more software? It's doubtful. That could be one of the reasons why the CEO hammered home the company's "software plus services" mantra, which refers to surrounding in-house servers and applications with Web-based services from Microsoft. "The ultimate technology trend is to remove a lot of the work that happens inside enterprises today in deployment and operations and allow that to be done centrally, if you will, for many businesses, in the cloud," Ballmer says.

The second way out of the morass of IT clumsiness and complexity is virtualization, according to Ballmer. While only 5 percent of the world's servers are virtualized, Ballmer says, it's a technology that "promises more than anything else to be about eliminating, or at least reducing, the cost of deploying and operating new solutions."

More open and collaborative software development--where the "designers of rich user experiences" and the programmers and the coders "are linked from the get-go"-- is the third big trend identified by Ballmer. The last is "richer user experiences," which refers to AJAX and smart-client development techniques that give users the feeling they're using an application running on their computer, as opposed to a slow browser-based application.

Ballmer also talked up the new security and high availability features of Windows Server 2008, which became available March 1, and SQL Server 2008, which won't ship until the third quarter, although a "feature complete" version, known as the February Community Technology Preview (CTP), is available now.

The new server core function is shaping up to have a big impact on Windows Server 2008's out-of-the-box security. By delivering custom images of the operating system designed to perform a single function, thereby presenting less surface area for people to attack, it will "make it hard for the bad guys out there" to compromise your system, Ballmer says. What's more, Ballmer says early tests show server core deployments require 60 percent fewer patches than nonserver core offerings.

Close behind server core in the impact it will have on security is Network Access Protection (NAP), which ensures only fully patched and secured PCs are allowed onto networks controlled by Windows Server 2008. "We've done work to make sure NAP also works for the Linux machines that you put on the network," Ballmer says.

Improvements in SQL Server 2008 that should make people's lives easier include support for "transparent encryption," or encrypting the database without the need to change application code. The new database also features "transparent failover" capabilities, Ballmer says, "so you can get failover without the need to be on the same IP sub-net."

Microsoft also highlighted the business intelligence capabilities available with the combination of SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and Windows Server 2008. One organization using early-release versions of these products is the San Diego Zoo, which has developed an interactive program called iZoofari that allows visitors to plan their trips to the zoo, and also to post pictures and comments about their visit on a Web page. Microsoft says the application will allow zoo managers to make better decisions on exhibit planning and zoo operations, and will enhance the visitor experience.