Windows Server System Gets Integrated Roadmap

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

One of the frustrating things about any operating system platform is integrating the key middleware, database, and other systems programs that run on top of that platform so it all works seamlessly. In essence, what we want is a middleware stack that feels like a single operating system, and this is something that Microsoft has argued (with a certain amount of sense) is its right as a software supplier to businesses and consumers. It has done a pretty good job integrating on the desktop, and now it is taking integration to the next level with its server products.

The Windows Server System, Microsoft's name for the operating system and middleware components it sells to run applications, may have been given a common name last year, but the underlying software is a tangled mess of different products on different roadmaps and with differing levels of integration. Platform rivals IBM and Sun Microsystems are in the process of more tightly integrating their respective operating systems to give customers a single stack of software. Sun needs to integrate its Solaris Unix variant and the iPlanet stack that it bought from Netscape and has rebranded as the Java Enterprise System. This is a tough job, to be sure, but it has a simpler job than IBM, which has four major operating systems (AIX, Linux, OS/400, and MVS) and three middleware stacks (WebSphere, Domino, and all that alphabet soup running on mainframes), Sun has tried to make it simple for customers to buy JES by charging a simple price you can remember--$100 per employee per year--for the entire stack. Customers can use what they want, ignore what they don't want, and put it on any machine they want.

Microsoft, like Sun, has only one stack to support, and also like Sun, it has a disparate collection of products launched over time. To its credit, Microsoft invented the concept of the system software suite back with Windows NT in 1995 with the advent of BackOffice. BackOffice 2.0 really got things going on the integration front by including Windows NT 3.51 plus the SQL Server 6.0 database, the Exchange Server 4.0 email server, the SNA Server 2.11 connectivity server, the Internet Information 1.0 Web server, and the Systems Management Server 1.1 admin tool. Soon thereafter, Oracle launched its own suite (now forgotten) and was quickly followed by IBM's Lotus unit with the Domino stack.

Bundling is not, as we all know, the same thing as integrating. Putting everything on a single set of CDs and offering a reduced price is nice, but integrating them is hard. If it were easy, Microsoft would be the only supplier of systems software in the world right now, because it has the tens of billions of dollars needed to make the investments to make that integration happen while no other player has that option financially. This is very, very difficult stuff, and that is why well-integrated systems, like the now defunct Hewlett-Packard 3000 series and the DEC VAX and the still surviving (and exemplary) IBM AS/400-iSeries-i5, still persist in the installed server base in such high numbers.

Microsoft wants its real integration--not just the kind it talks about in spec sheets--to be exemplary, because it is here that the company can truly differentiate itself from various other vendors' stacks, which have a lot of baling wire and bubblegum holding them together. This is why Andrew Lees, corporate vice president for server and tools marketing at Microsoft, announced the Windows Server System Common Engineering Roadmap at the TechEd conference in San Diego. (Lees also announced the 10 year extended life cycle for its products, which does not include Windows NT, by the way.)

With the Windows Server System Common Engineering Roadmap, Microsoft is promising to, quite literally, get is server act together. Specifically, all new server programs for the Windows platform will have interfaces into Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 that will allow it to remotely control all elements of the Windows Server System--that's Windows Server, Application Center, BizTalk Server, Commerce Server, Content Management Server, Exchange Server, Host Integration Server, Identity Integration Server, ISA Server, Live Communications Server, SharePoint Portal Server, Speech Server, SQL Server, and Systems Management Server. All of these programs as well as MOM 2005 will support the same Windows Installer and Windows Update patch management that comes with the Windows operating system. Having different install and patch management programs for each product is insane, and it drives system administrators crazy. Microsoft also says that it will have "transactional rollback" capabilities for updates to the software so customers can revert to the state of a system prior to an update if something goes wrong. All Windows Server System elements will have this capability. Just as importantly, on day one when a server program ships, Microsoft will have architectural guidance and best practices methodologies as well as support and training available for these new programs. No more launching a product naked into IT shops, who then have to struggle with how to implement it.

These three elements are known as the Common Engineering Criteria for 2005, but Lees says that there are lots more steps toward better integration that are on the Common Engineering Roadmap. He promises to let us all know soon what these other steps are. But these activities represent a good first step.