Muglia Leads Off Week Two of Tech Ed

Published: June 11, 2008

by Alex Woodie

The second week of TechEd 2008 kicked off in Orlando, Florida, yesterday when Microsoft server chief Bob Muglia delivered a keynote to 10,000 people attending the "IT professionals" segment of the conference. Muglia centered his speech on the evolution of "Dynamic IT," Microsoft's multi-year, multi-product initiative to make it easier to manage computers and the applications that run on them, and unveiled enhancements to several Microsoft products in the areas of virtualization, security, identity management, and data management. Last week TechEd was a developer-oriented conference.

Microsoft started the Dynamic IT journey in 2008, and it said it was going to be a 10-year plan. "We're five years into it, we really feel like there's been five good years of work," Muglia says.

Attention then turned to Identity Lifecycle Manager, a software product that helps organizations manage and synchronize user identities and passwords across heterogeneous platforms. "As we move forward into a world where you begin to use services to run part of your business, managing your identity across multiple service providers becomes a really challenging problem, and federation is a really key issue," Muglia says.

To that end, Microsoft launched ILM 2 beta 3, a new release of the product that brings new self-service capabilities that will allow users to interact with the product through their Office productivity apps. It will also feature new programming extensions using .NET and WS-*. Microsoft says the new Office interface for ILM will give decision makers the necessary tools to manage identities and access privileges. The new ILM is slated to be released to manufacturing during the first quarter of 2009. That would mean this product, which is codenamed "2" because it's the second major version following the release of ILM 2007, will likely be named ILM 2009.

Muglia also talked about a new test release of SQL Server 2008, the new relational database that will introduce new features in a number of areas, including data compression, new policy management features, the addition of full-text search, support for filestreams, enhancements to reporting services, and other new features.

"We are very close to shipping this product. It's in great shape," he told the audience. " There are thousands and thousands of SQL Servers in production. Microsoft runs our entire SAP system on SQL Server 2008 , and has for many months. This product is also incredibly solid, and I'm pleased to announce today that it has gone to the RC process, and that software is available to all of you." Release candidate 0 (RC0) is expected to be the latest test release of the product, and is available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers. SQL Server 2008 is expected to ship during the third quarter.

New Color Schemes

A new logo for the SQL Server product line was also unveiled. The logo incorporates a new symbol called a "dynamic grid" that's supposed to distinguish the product and make it look more "enterprisey." The new logo is part of a larger re-branding initiative at the company that will split Microsoft products into four categories, each with its very own color.

The new scheme will be as follows:

• IT Management--blue
• Security--green
• Application Infrastructure--red
• Business Productivity Infrastructure--yellow

According to Microsoft's Data Platform Insider blog, the new colors will not be regular blue, green, red, or yellow, but "Microsoft blue," "Microsoft green," "Microsoft deep red" (which is a new color), and "Microsoft deep yellow." The SQL Server family of products will be red.

Microsoft also announced a new server virtualization validation program and new virtualization training programs, and new virtualization software.

The validation program is aimed at helping software vendors to test their applications running on virtualized versions of Windows Server 2008. Interestingly, the program doesn't appear to be aimed at ensuring compatibility with Hyper-V, the new hypervisor program that Microsoft will soon be releasing to manufacturing. Supposedly, vendor applications will just work on Hyper-V without testing. Instead, the program is aimed at validating software running on non-Microsoft server virtualization software. This would seem to include such participants as Novell and its XEN Virtual Server, Sun Microsystems and its xVM software, upstart Virtual Iron, industry leader VMware, and the open source Xen group and its commercialized XenSource cohort, which was bought by close Microsoft pal Citrix Systems last year.

The new certification program will offer four tracks for desktop support technicians, database administrators, and Web developers who will work with virtualization technologies. Microsoft also launched eight new training courses related to virtualization technologies.

The new virtualization software, Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 release candidate 1 (RC1), is an updated version of the desktop virtualization and streaming software that Microsoft obtained two years ago with its acquisition of Softricity. This is the first Microsoft-branded release of the product, which formerly went by the name SoftGrid Application Virtualization.

The software, which helps to eliminate desktop configuration issues by housing Windows desktop instances on a server and then streaming applications and data down to the PC over the network, includes new capabilities for large-scale, multi-site implementations, new globalization and localization enhancements, the capability to mix virtual application combinations, and support for 32-bit Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services. The software continues to be only available to enterprise customers with multi-year agreements through the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP), and is expected to be available during the third quarter.

The delivery timeline for Hyper-V was also discussed during Muglia's keynote. "We've committed to [deliver Hyper-V] by late August, and we're going to beat that date," he said.

Muglia also talked about Forefront, Microsoft's security brand, and efforts the company is making to ensure that Forefront fully supports virtualized environments. Microsoft says its desktop security offering, Forefront Client Security, will support Hyper-V when it's released later this summer. It also says its next-generation security product, codenamed "Sterling," will also support Hyper-V when Sterling ships during the first half of 2009.

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