But Wait, There's More

Microsoft at WinHEC: Drivers, Drivers, Drivers, Drivers

Do you remember Steve Ballmer's "developers, developers" rant during a presentation in the summer of 2001? Well, there were no presentations at the WinHEC 2005 conference last week that came anywhere near Ballmer's stirring tribute to the men and women who make software, in terms of pure energy and sweat production. But in terms of repetition, Microsoft executives and product managers were united in one voice, chanting "drivers, drivers, drivers, drivers." In session after session, Microsoft product managers hammered the same message home: We need you to write drivers for the X64 versions of Windows. While 32-bit applications will run on the new 64-bit versions of Windows, legacy 32-bit drivers will not run. Microsoft and industry partners acknowledged that the availability of 64-bit drivers will determine whether the X64 versions of Windows are adopted quickly or slowly. If we're still wallowing around in 32-bit land this time next year due to lack of 64-bit drivers, Microsoft might do well to invite its high-octane CEO up on the stage at WinHEC 2006, to really raise the speed limit, and developers' blood pressure.

Longhorn to Include WinFS Lite?

Longhorn won't include the WinFS file system when it ships, as Microsoft already made the decision last year to pull the SQL Server-based file system from the next version of Windows rather than run the risk of missing the ship deadline, which remains holiday 2006, for the time being. But Microsoft is working hard to build "rich indexing" into Longhorn that will pave the way for easier adoption of WinFS when it does become available, Microsoft executives said last week at the WinHEC 2005 conference in Seattle. During his keynote address Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates provided a preview of the new search technologies we can expect with Longhorn. Gates said because Microsoft nixed WinFS from Longhorn, " people naturally misunderstood that we weren't going to do a lot on visualization and organization. In fact, I'd call this out as something we are doing, something that's pretty amazing," he says. "By doing indexing, rich indexing in a smart way, we can get a lot of these capabilities without having to go to a full database. As we eventually move to that database, in effect, it's a natural migration."

Brocade to Resell Tacit Networks' Windows-based WAN File Serving System

Brocade Communication Systems yesterday announced plans to start selling Windows server-based Wide Area File Services (WAFS) system to enterprise shops as a result of a minority investment it has made in WAFS developer, Tacit Networks. The WAFS system lets an organization's remote locations access the same data in the same way that every other location and the main office do, while maintaining centralized management and backups at the main office, thereby eliminating the administrative headache of maintaining multiple local storage fiefdoms. Tacit Network's WAFS solution does this by using a single Windows Storage Server 2003-based appliance server at the home office, which serves hundreds of appliances installed at branch offices. It doesn't matter what type of platform the branch offices are using. They can be Windows or Linux servers, or desktop PCs. The company says remote offices can get file access at LAN speeds over the WAN by using a "WAN-optimized file sharing protocol" called Storage Caching over IP (SC/IP) protocol. Brocade, the San Jose manufacturer of storage area network (SAN) switches, has apparently found all this quite interesting, and has committed to invest up to $7.5 million into the South Plainfield, New Jersey, company and will immediately add Tacit Networks' WAFS solution to its product portfolio. In addition to the reseller agreement, the companies have also committed to customer support and product development programs.

Microsoft Unveils Call Center Application Integration Program

There's a lot of money being spent to modernize call centers these days, as technology providers seek ways to streamline call center workers' access to back-office applications, while making the process as painless as possible for the customer. Microsoft threw its hat in the call center ring this week with a new program it calls the Customer Care Framework, which is a combination of software and services designed to enable call center works to access all the data and business processes they need to do their job, and to do it from a single screen, instead of continually changing systems and screens, which slows down the process, irritates the customer, and is a general drain on productivity. "Because customer service satisfaction directly impacts the bottom line, businesses need a solution that improves call center efficiency, reduces operational costs, and integrates seamlessly with back-office systems," says Maria Martinez, corporate vice president of Microsoft's communications sector. Several customers are deploying the Customer Care Framework, which includes BizTalk Server, SQL Server, Windows Server, and Visual Studio .NET.

Citrix to Crank Up the Scalability with Presentation Server 4.0

Citrix last week launched the next version of its eponymous Presentation Server software, a product that has become nearly synonymous with Windows emulation and thin client computing. The Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, company says Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 delivers tremendous scalability improvements, and now can support up to 1,000 servers and up to 100,000 users with a single implementation. Citrix also says the new version can deploy a much broader range of applications, and also features a new print driver that delivers printing up to 400 percent faster, while using less bandwidth and memory. The new version also integrates Conferencing Manager, which was an add-on product before, and delivers easier synchronization for Windows-based PDAs, the company says. Citrix is offering heterogeneous licensing for the first time, allowing companies to buy and deploy Citrix for Windows and UNIX servers. The software is slated to ship in the second quarter, and will be available in Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise editions.

Microsoft Partners with French to Build New Research Center in Paris

Microsoft announced last week that it will work with the French government and the French research institute INRIA to build a new joint laboratory in Paris, to be called the Microsoft-INRIA Institute for Computational Science. Microsoft says researchers at the institute will investigate the application of mathematics to improve software and systems security, as well as the development of new tools for managing and analyzing highly complex scientific data. "An open and collaborative approach exists at the heart of the research we're conducting with Microsoft Research," says Gilles Kahn, chairman and managing director of INRIA. It is the second such European research and development center Microsoft has announced this year.

Cruise Ships: the Choice for New Offshore Programming Havens

While some American companies continue to successfully cut costs by outsourcing high-paying programming jobs to low-cost providers in Russia, China, and India, two entrepreneurs from San Diego are working to build a new model for offshore work. David Cook and Roger Green founded SeaCode with the idea of housing up to 600 foreign programmers on a cruise ship parked three miles off the coast of Los Angeles. By classifying the programmers as "seaman" and having the work done outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law, Cook and Green figure they can avoid the nasty little requirement for foreign technology workers to have H1B visas, while still keeping the programmers within a half-hour water taxi ride of shore, where they can visit clients, if need be, and blow off some steam (and some cash) during shore leave. "We're not a slave ship," Cook told Forbes. "It's like the International Space Station," Green said. The two men are reportedly close to buying a used cruise ship, and could begin staffing the ship with programmers within months. Once on board, the programmers, who will be paid salaries of about $21,000, will work in eight- or 10-hour shifts, enabling work to get done 24 hours a day. "Try to get American software engineers to work at night," Cook says.