Latest Microsoft Updates – PDC & WINHEC Conferences

Published 07 November 08 01:51 PM

The past few weeks have been huge with respect to some major announcements from the Professional Developers Conference and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference. We have announced a new wave of products based on the Windows platform, as well as some significant strategic bets on the Software + Services model.

Windows Azure is the Microsoft Windows platform in the cloud. It will provide a way for customers and partners to quickly and easily develop, deploy, and scale out web applications. With an on-demand hosting model, it will be simple for developers to add resources to meet customer demand. A consistent developer experience will provide a simple transition from standard, in-house web application deployment. The platform also will allow for data storage in the form of SQL Services, integration with Live services, and upcoming Sharepoint and Dynamics CRM Online. Additionally, the plan is to support third party code, such as Python, PGH, Ruby, and Eclipse. Windows Azure is scheduled to be launched in calendar year 2009, with technical previews being provided on the path to release.

Please see http://www.microsoft.com/azure/whatisazure.mspx for more information

Windows 7 is the next generation of Windows client operating systems, due to release in calendar year 2009 (though maybe sooner than you think). The emphasis for the development of Windows 7 has revolved around performance, stability, usability, customization, and ecosystem readiness. On stage at PDC, Windows 7 was demonstrated running on a 1 Ghz, 1 GB RAM netbook device, with 512 MB of RAM remaining for application usage. Multi-touch capabilities, a new taskbar experience, less ‘annoying’ UAC features (save the applause, please), faster startup\shutdown\sleep\resume, sidebar to the desktop, aero enhancements, better battery life, improved SSD support…the list goes on. For enterprise customers, in addition to the performance enhancements, Bitlocker for removable drives, DirectAccess (VPN clients are a thing of the past), BranchCache and more should appeal. To avoid the problems with driver readiness and application compatibility first experienced with Windows Vista, we have been working more closely with our OEM and ISV ecosystem. No major architectural changes have been made in Windows 7, in contrast to the drastic changes to the Windows Vista kernel and driver model compared to Windows XP. Many third party analysts have already posted exhaustive reviews, and the vast majority of commentary has been extremely positive. A public beta is due within the next few months…stay tuned!

See http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx for details

Windows Server 2008 R2 will be an interim release in the Windows Server lifecycle, but will offer huge benefits in a number of areas. Hyper-V 2.0 will add Live Migration, VDI support, and more. We’ll also add Terminal Services enhancements, PowerShell 2.0, Power consumption reduction features, enhancements to AD, Server Core support for the .NET framework, Windows 7 support, and much more. Very few core feature-sets remain untouched, improvements will be available across the board. A reviewers guide has been published, explaining all of the new capabilities. The release timeline should be similar to that of Windows 7.

Office Web Applications was announced for the upcoming release of Microsoft Office, codenamed ‘Office 14’. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote will be available as a purely browser based application, much like OWA exists for Outlook\Exchange users. This will provide users the ability to view and edit documents from a browser, without access to the full Office client software. This is not a replacement for the full client, as the browser-based options will not be full featured, but is an enhancement to the suite. Office Web Applications will be available as a Microsoft-hosted service, or enterprises will be able to self-host the apps through Sharepoint servers.

More details on this and the entire Office ‘14’ suite are forthcoming, but if you’d like to see a demonstration and deeper discussion of the Web Applications feature, watch these:

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/PDCNews/First-Look-Office-14-for-Web/

http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/KYN02/

For all of the conference content, try these sites:

http://www.microsoftpdc.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/default.mspx

http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/

by mfiorina