Microsoft promised to reduce complexity in IT
departments at its annual European developers conference in
Amsterdam last week.
Addressing 6,000 delegates, Andrew Lees, Microsoft's corporate
vice-president responsible for servers and tools, said his goal was
to make it easier to create connected systems using service
oriented architecture.
Microsoft aims to offer a server platform to link web services. The
Visual Studio 2005 development platform and the SQL Server 2005
database are the main components of its SOA strategy. The company
is now focusing on making software development teams work more
efficiently through the Team System version of Visual Studio.
It will also provide a version of Visual Studio for developing
interactive Office documents: Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the MS
Office System. SQL Server will include the common language runtime
component of Visual Studio, allowing users to program the database
using Visual Basic and C# in order to run tasks that would be too
complex to achieve using SQL.
But the strategy also relies on Microsoft's Trustworthy security
initiative covering federated security and Network Access Control,
to ensure devices connecting to a network are patched and running
the latest anti-virus signatures.
Lees stressed the importance of the Active Directory in Microsoft's
plans. He said, "Granular access to applications will be achieved
via the Active Directory and two-factor authentication." The aim is
to give end-users full access to IT systems without the need for IT
support staff to get involved.
He said the approach will require users to start building federated
identity management to enable access to applications though a
single user log-in and biometrics will be needed to boost
security.
Microsoft also anticipates users will need to make changes to their
networks to support its vision of connected systems. Users will
need to switch to IPv6, the next version of the IP networking
protocol, in order to cope with the potential for large numbers of
devices connecting into the corporate network. Lees said IPSec
should also be used inside the corporate network to improve
security further.
Microsoft's strategy also pulls in its Dynamic Systems Initiative,
designed to make IT systems more self-managing.
Using the WS-Management web services standard, Microsoft is
planning to provide a way to manage PCs and servers, even when no
operating system is installed. This will require the hardware to
use a dedicated service processor.
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