Microsoft sketches Windows management road map

[The Tool]

LAS VEGAS -- Microsoft on Friday laid out its long-term vision for Windows management, offering a glimpse into two research projects and its view of the future systems management in a Web services world.

In a keynote address here at the Microsoft Management Summit 2002 conference, Brian Valentine, Microsoft senior vice president of Windows, said Microsoft is thinking more strategically about Windows management, moving away from piece products toward integrated tools, prescriptive guidelines, and solution-oriented offerings, he said.

"In the past, Microsoft would just tell you to deploy Windows, [but] not fully own the management," he said. "That is changing in Microsoft. We are moving to manage the infrastructure while giving plans and tools to better manage TCO."

Thinking about Windows in the enterprise going forward, Microsoft's goals are to offer IT managers a secure connected infrastructure, tools to empower knowledge workers, and to further enable a rapid application development environment. These elements will be become critical as Web services take hold, according to Valentine.

"When we get into .Net and Web services, we want the Windows platform to be the best platform on which to build Web services. All of this is controlled under the management infrastructure," he said.

Specifically, Valentine outlined two development projects designed to enable a more roles-based focus with client and server management products, a move Microsoft believes will help reduce the complexity of systems management.

"We want to provide an end-to-end platform targeted at business roles instead of having customers piece together products on their own into a solution," he said.

The Client Manager project will include tools to manage a broad set of Windows-based clients, including handhelds, tablets, phones, kiosks, and ATMs.

"We are building infrastructure elements inside of Windows that makes the process easier -- that simplify software distribution, configuration, and management," for a range of devices, Valentine said.

For datacenter management, Microsoft is developing the Server Management project, which evolves server monitoring toward service management, he said.

"We are really taking you from a component-level view of your datacenter toward thinking about delivering a service. This would allow you to manage the datacenter as a set of services," he said.

For example, the Server Manager product presents a service view while offering the capability to drill down into the physical elements of applications, systems, and servers to quickly diagnose problems, according to Valentine.

The concept of service management is especially vital in Web services construction and management, according to Valentine.

"If you build a Web services application, how do you manage and deploy that in your environment? Today this would be a clunky process," he said.

In addition, enhancements to the Windows platform are needed to support specific issues with Web services, he said. For event logging, improvements are needed to include monitoring of Web services and to determine how an application can register itself for configuration.

Application development elements such as logic and business process should just be part of the environment, he said.

"So if you want to develop Web services, you don't have to also develop identity, presence, and monitoring in the application. Those should just be fundamental elements of the application," Valentine said.

Microsoft's vision, according to Valentine, is to allow developers to write applications, and then all the business logic around the application follows so the environment knows how to manage that application in the most appropriate way.

During the keynote, Valentine emphasized that the Client and Server Manager research projects, which are three to five years out from fruition, do not mean that current management products such as SMS (Systems Management Server), MOM (Microsoft Operations Manager), or Application Center will become obsolete.

"Those product are not going way but are evolving in rich ways," he said. "We will provide tools to migrate you to the environments."

"SMS today is a bit schizophrenic. It does some management, monitoring, software distribution. It needs to get more focused," he said.

Other future releases highlighted during the address include MOM Server Status Monitor, which is designed to provide a simple monitoring solution for small and midsize businesses. Due for release this summer, Server Status Monitor includes an easy-to-navigate UI that allows users to monitor a small number of servers, automatically discover servers, and identify what they do.

In addition, Microsoft previewed scenario-based management offerings, which combine best practices, management technologies, service, and support in an effort to solve specific operational management issues. The first release, due out in the second half of the year, comprises Critical Patch Deployment for quickly distributing fixes, service packs, and security patches; Office XP New Deployment for automating the deployment of Office XP into a workstation; and Monitoring and Control of Windows 2000 Services and Applications for implementing best practices for monitoring and control.

Source: InfoWorld