Microsoft Rolls Out Betas for Management Middleware

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Microsoft hosted its third annual Management Summit in Las Vegas yesterday and detailed its evolving Dynamic Systems Initiative for self-administering, self-managing computing, while rolling out betas for various management servers that fit into the DSI. Some 2,000 IT professionals showed up for the event to hear Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Windows Server Division, detail DSI and the new betas.

Muglia said that the final beta of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (MOM 2005) was released Tuesday. The fact that this program was called MOM 2004 until this final beta might make you think that it will be behind schedule, but Microsoft says it will nonetheless ship by the end of this year. The name change seems to be an effort to get as many programs that are running on top of Windows 2003, and which will be delivered late this year or early next year, labeled with the "2005" moniker, so the company's naming is consistent. SQL Server and Visual Studio have had ".NET" surgically removed from their names this week, and none of the new programs, including MOM, will carry the .NET name.

MOM 2005 is going to be released in two versions. MOM 205 will build on the first and second MOM betas, in that it will be easier to use (and will therefore deliver a faster return on investment for customers who adopt it) and will be able to manage more Microsoft and third-party applications. Microsoft will also roll out a stripped-down but less expensive version of MOM, called MOM 2005 Express, which also went into beta this week and is supposed to ship by year's end as well. While the full MOM 2005 is designed to manage anywhere from hundreds to thousands of servers, the express version will have a lower price but will probably manage under 100 servers. A new integrated bundle of Systems Management Server 2003 plus MOM 2005 will be rolled out as System Center 2005. While SMS manages the provisioning of software on the server, MOM manages how those servers run once they are built. Having a single tool (presumably with a discounted price) is just the next logical step in the integration processor for Microsoft.

Muglia also talked about two new feature packs for SMS 2003. The Device Management feature pack, which went into beta this week, allows SMS to reach out over the network and manage devices running the Windows CE, Windows Mobile, or Smartphone variants of Windows. The second feature, called OS Deployment, also went into beta and allows bare-metal provisioning of Windows XP on desktop PCs and workstations. Finally, Microsoft also announced that Windows Update Services, a kicker to the Software Update Services 1.0, is in beta this week, too. Windows Update Services is supposed to be a more automated and expansive update program, not just for Windows operating systems, but also for SQL Server, Exchange Server, and Office XP and 2003. Today, each of these programs has to be updated and patched independently of Windows, and this is a big hassle.