Microsoft executives unveiled its plans for future
products and enhancements to existing servers, tools and
applications.
Microsoft officials detailed what technologists can expect to
see later this year and into 2004, with what chairman and chief
software architect Bill Gates and others called "Integration
Innovation".
Gates said Microsoft planned to spend $6.8bn (£4.2bn) on
research and development during 2004 and hire as many as 5,000 new
employees.
The key areas for spending will be on technology management,
increased product integration, business intelligence, model-based
programming and speech and language technologies.
"We have to take the products we have today and make them
applicable to more scenarios," Gates said.
He said, for instance, that most of the key R&D spending
areas he mentioned will come to market via intermediate releases
between now and the final version of the Windows operating system,
codenamed Longhorn.
He said that Longhorn will include advances in the user
interface, unified storage and improved messaging.
"In the same time frame, we'll have advances in Office," Gates
said.
Group vice-president of platforms Jim Allchin said that at
Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, in late October, the
company will give developers a CD containing an early version of
Longhorn code. Following that and into next year, Microsoft intends
to issue the first of beta of Longhorn.
Allchin also said that in 2004 Microsoft will deliver more
client pieces, such as Service Pack 2 for Windows XP, a version of
media centre and update to the Tablet PC edition of Windows.
Office product manager Roan King demonstrated the integration of
One Note 2003 with Office. He showed how a user can run a search on
a word to have One Note pull up several instances of the word in
various forms including text and electronic handwritten notes, and
then with one click create an Outlook e-mail message out of the
document.
Showing how hardware will play a role in integrating various
communication applications, Chad Magendanz, lead program manager of
hardware innovation team, showed off the Athens system and claimed
that the PC increases productivity by enabling communications
methods such as voice, data, video and text.
Pieter Knook, corporate vice-president of the mobile and
embedded devices group, said that next year Microsoft will
issue the latest version of Windows Mobile that will include
tighter integration with Exchange Server.
By the next release date, he added, more than 1,000 applications
will be certified for Windows Mobile. The latest version also will
be accompanied by more deals with Tier One operators and major
worldwide operators.
On the enterprise applications side, senior vice-president of
Microsoft busienss solutions, Doug Burgum said that in the first
calendar quarter of 2004 will bring to market an enhanced iteration
of its CRM software with support for eight more languages.
Also announced were the latest versions of servers and tools
scheduled to be released in 2004 for a number of servers, including
Microsoft Operations Manager, Internet Security and Acceleration
Server, Speech Server, Real-Time Communications Server and BizTalk
Server.
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