October 30th, 2008

Add Windows Mobile 6.5 to the Microsoft roadmap

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 3:26 pm

Categories: Corporate strategy, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Windows Mobile, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Handhelds, Software, Hardware, Mary Jo Foley, Mobile, Advertising & Promotion

A slip-up by a Motorola executive this week revealed that Microsoft’s next version of Windows Mobile isn’t Windows Mobile 7, but is actually Windows Mobile 6.5.

I asked around and heard from sources that yes, indeed, 6.5 is in the works. Think latter half of 2009, I hear. As noted a few months ago, Windows Mobile 7 is unlikely to make it to market on new phones before 2010.

(No word so far about which features will be in Windows 6.5 Mobile vs. Windows 7 Mobile.)

An aside: In the mobile space, Microsoft is working on more than just the operating system. The company is working on consumer-focused mobile services (code-named “Pink”) and business-focused mobile services (code-named “Rouge”). Microsoft can and will roll out these services independently of the next versions of Windows Mobile.

What do you think Microsoft needs to make sure to get out in the Windows Mobile 6.5 timeframe in order to have any chance at staying competitive in the mobile space?

October 30th, 2008

Microsoft drops more new codenames, including another 'Mojave'

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 11:42 am

Categories: Azure, Code names, Corporate strategy, PDC 2008, Research, SharePoint Server, Speech, Telecommunications, Utility/cloud computing, VOIP, Web conferencing

Tags: Codename, Microsoft Corp., Mary Jo Foley, Paris, Microsoft Commerce Server, Microsoft Office, Mojave, Huron, Commerce Server Mojave, Microsoft Windows

Microsoft used this week’s Professional Developers Conference to flesh out a bunch of codenames that had been circulating for the past several months — everything from “Red Dog,” to “Geneva,” to  “Zurich.” At the Los Angeles confab, the company also introduced a few brand-new codenames.

Among those that have caught my eye so far:

Anchorage: “Anchorage” is Microsoft SyncToy Version 2, which will be part of Sync Framework Version 2. Anchorage was mentioned during a PDC presentation on the Sync Framework Version 2 release. (There was some recent confusion as to Microsoft’s Sync Framework release schedule, as the Redmondians rolled out two different Sync Framework releases labeled as “Version 1.”)

Microsoft released a first Community Technology Preview (CTP) build of Sync Framework Version 2 on October 28. Version 2 sounds like it will include more providers and simplify how developers interact with the framework.

Huron: “Huron” is a “cloud-based data hub” that is another of Microsoft’s newly unveiled SQL Services Labs projects.  Huron relies on the Sync Framework and SQL Services (formerly known as SQL Server Data Services) to publish databases, reports, forms and objects to the cloud, back-up and restore database apps to the cloud, and more. No word on when or exactly how Microsoft plans to commercialize Huron.

Mojave: Yes, we all know about the “Mojave” release of Windows Vista that was part of the company’s marketing plan, designed to prove that users hated Vista because of its reputation more than its actual feature set. But there’s another Microsoft “Mojave” that has nothing to do with Windows. This is the “Mojave” release of Microsoft Commerce Server, which the company detailed at the PDC this week.The Commerce Server Mojave release includes a “multi-channel” foundation, out of the box shopping (with Live and SharePoint integration, and an Office-like interface. Commerce Server Mojave has been out in CTP test-build form since August of this year. The final version is due out in Q1 2009. (The next two versions of Commerce Server are on the books, too: One for late 2009 or early 2010, and another for late 2010/early 2011.)

Paris: “Paris” is part of Microsoft’s Office Communications Server family of products. Microsoft is in the midst of private testing of Office Communications Server Release 2 (R2), the next version of its integrated VOIP/conferencing/instant messaging product for business users — the final release of which is due in late 2008 or early 2009. But Paris seems to be a new set of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight controls and programming interfaces that will be integrated into OCS Version “Next,” which is part of the Office 14 wave (and thus due in either late 2009 or 2010).

October 30th, 2008

Windows 7 to scale to 256 processors

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:45 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Multicore/distributed computing, PDC 2008, WinHEC, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 /("Windows 7 Server"), Windows client, Windows server

Tags: Processor, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft Corp.

Microsoft has been hinting that even though it had no plans to make major changes to the Windows kernel, it did have a scheme up its sleeve to make Windows 7 and Windows 7 Server better suited to working on multicore/parallel systems. Now details are becoming clearer as to how Microsoft plans to do this.

During the debut of the pre-beta of Windows 7 this week, Windows Engineering Chief Steven Sinofsky made a passing reference to Windows 7 being able to scale to 256 processors. But he never said how this would be enabled.

Mark Russinovich, Technical Fellow in Microsoft’s Core OS division, explained in more detail how Microsoft has managed to do this in a video interview published on Microsoft’s Channel 9 Web site.

Russinovich said that Microsoft has managed to break the dispatcher lock in Windows — a task that had stumped even the father of the Windows NT operating system, David Cutler. When Cutler designed Windows for the server, systems beyond 32-way seemed far, far away, Russinovich said.

On more massively multiprocessor systems, Windows threads spin while waiting for the dispatcher lock. Once Cutler had been moved to work on Microsoft Red Dog (Windows Azure), another kernel developer, Arun Kishan, looked at this problem with a set of fresh eyes and found a solution, Russinovich said. By adding another state — so threads aren’t just running or waiting, but can be “pre-waiting,” as well — Windows will be better suited to running parallel, multithreaded applications running across manycore systems, Russinovich said.

Russinovich noted with the dispatcher-lock roadblock removed, a second set of locks became the new focus for folks working on the Windows kernel. The PFN database inside Windows, which contains information on all of the physical memory in the system, was becoming another scalability bottleneck when trying to get Windows to handle multithreaded apps on massively multicore machines. With Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (Windows 7 Server), Microsoft again broke this lock down into finer grain locks, Russinovich said.

I’d expect Microsoft will delve into the ways it is making the next generation of Windows more multiprocessing-capable at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) next week in Los Angeles. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, given I’m not a programmer and am trying to channel a very technical Russinovich, it’s probably worth checking out the Channel 9 video interview of him yourself if you care about Windows kernel futures.

October 29th, 2008

Microsoft's Live Framework: A (revised) picture is worth a thousand words

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 4:07 pm

Categories: Azure, Development tools, Live Mesh, PDC 2008, Silverlight (wpf/e), Utility/cloud computing

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Branding, Marketing, Mary Jo Foley, Developer, Application, Live Framework

Microsoft’s Live Framework has evolved a bit since the company first unveiled it in April this year.

Microsoft is now positioning the Live Framework as the development framework for all of Microsoft’s Live services, not just Live Mesh. The Live Framework is akin to the .Net Framework, but is aimed to support developers writing mostly consumer-focused applications and services that need online/offline synchronization and work across the PC, Web and devices.

Here at Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC), Microsoft announced that its Live Framework is now “live,” as in Microsoft allowing developers to sign up to test drive it.

Microsoft also made some tweaks to the framework since it first unveiled plans for it. Some of the names of the different subsystems within the framework are different. And the way that Live Mesh and Silverlight work together has been fleshed out. The Framework now includes support for contacts, so that developers can build applications that will be designed to spread virally.

“We’re unleashing (contacts) in the platform. We’re making social-graph information available to developers to help them make their applications viral,” said Jeff Hansen, General Manager Services Marketing.

Here’s what the Live Framework looked like in April:

And here’s what the Live Framework looks like now:

The infrastructure services layer, even though it’s not visible in the newly revised slide, remains the same: It’s Windows Azure (Red Dog) and the building-block Azure services. The Mesh FX (framework) is now simply called the “programming model.” The Mesh operating environment (MOE) is now the Live Operating Environment (LOE?). The operating environment consists of three pillars: Data, applications and communications.

(If you’re a real architectural diagram junkie, here’s an even more detailed overview of what the Live Framework looks like under the covers.)

“We want to make it easy for rich applications to extend to the cloud. But we also want to help Web apps break free of the browser frame and go offline,” explained Abhay Parasnis, General Manager of Live Mesh. “We also want to enable developers of applications inject social-graph data into their applications.”

Developers are going to be able to wrap a Silverlight application with an “invisible” Internet Explorer wrapper and publish an application to Mesh. Through the Mesh synchronization model, developers can enable their applications to run locally on any Mesh-enabled system or device. When users reconnect and go online, these local Silverlight apps will automatically synchronize.

So what’s next for Mesh? Microsoft will be moving more of its Live services onto the base Red Dog cloud operating system, officials said. Right now, Live Mesh is the first of those services that is (partially) hosted in Microsoft’s cloud. Microsoft also will continue to extend its base Live Services platform. Right now, that platform consists of shared identity; directory; communication and presence; search and geospatial; and contacts. Expect Live Workspaces, groups, calendars and other core elements to be added to the platform in the coming months.

October 29th, 2008

Ozzie responds: Is Microsoft Azure just 'Hailstorm' revisited?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 11:57 am

Categories: Azure, Corporate strategy, Live Mesh, PDC 2008, Utility/cloud computing

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Ozzie, Mary Jo Foley, Ray Ozzie, Hailstorm, Strategy, Management

At the Professional Developer Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles, I’ve heard a few long-time Microsoft watchers wondering aloud whether Microsoft’s newly unveiled “Azure” isn’t simply Microsoft taking another run at “Hailstorm.”

I had a chance to ask Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, that very question this week.

First, a quick refresher: For those who weren’t following the Microsoft juggernaut back in the late 1990s, Hailstorm was Microsoft’s first pass at a .Net services platform. “HailStorm” technologies will enable a new world of computing where all the applications, devices and services in an individual’s life can work together, on their behalf and under their control,” explained Microsoft in a 2001 press release. (Sounds eerily like Live Mesh/Live Services, doesn’t it?)

Microsoft ended up killing off Hailstorm before it ever really launched. One of the main reasons was privacy: Microsoft customers were nervous about trusting Microsoft with hosting their data. And the idea of an on-premise, customer-managed Hailstorm cloud was not fleshed out.

Isn’t Azure — Microsoft’s new cloud platform, of which Live Services are one key component — just Hailstorm Take 2? And if it’s not, how is it really different, I asked Ozzie.

Interestingly, back in 2001, Ozzie was working at Groove Networks, which was one of Microsoft’s Hailstorm partners/customers.

Microsoft “did not understand identity federation at that point in time,” Ozzie said. “I think we (Microsoft) were thinking we could bring it all there. There was no code in the cloud. It was a service that projected services outward but it didn’t — you didn’t upload your stuff. It was just — it was about ‘my stuff.’

“In that era (Microsoft) believed in pure centralization in ‘true integrated storage,’ the middle. My DNA tells me — and you can see this in my past and what I’ve done before — that it’s a world of decentralization and that you synchronize the truth amongst many things, both in the center and at the edge on the devices where you need them. So, that’s very architectural different.

Read the rest of this entry »

October 29th, 2008

Microsoft PDC attendees get 'the goods'

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 10:04 am

Categories: .Net Framework, Azure, Development tools, PDC 2008, Robotics, Silverlight (wpf/e), Utility/cloud computing, Visual Studio 10 ("Hawaii")

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Attendee, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Operating Systems, Software, Mary Jo Foley, UXEvangelist Blog, .Net, Microsoft Development Tools

Microsoft provided attendees of its Professional Developer Conference this week with a 160 GB drive full of bits and resources. The Windows 7 M3 pre-beta build and Windows Server 2008 R2 M3 pre-beta are on the drives.

(The Windows 7 build attendees got is the September build 6801 that leaked out a month ago. The new taskbar and quite a bit of the other eye candy Microsoft showed off during the October 28 PDC keynote aren’t part of the pre-beta build.)

What else is on those PDC drives? The UXEvangelist blog provides the full list of the PDC goods. A few of the goodies:

• Live Framework Software Development Kit
• Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4.0 test builds
• Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 Express Edition
• Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio and the Windows Azure SDK

Speaking of .Net 4.0, the next version of Microsoft’s .Net Framework, there are a number of new features and enhancements that Microsoft is showing off in the first Community Technology Preview (CTP) test build of .Net 4.0. Among them:

• Silverlight features: Deep Zoom support, Visual State Manager, new text rendering enhancements and more Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) support
• The ability to load Common Language Runtime 2 and 4 in the same address space
• Managed and native code interoperability improvements
• Dynamic Language Runtime libraries built into the core library framework
• Support for the Microsoft Managed Extensions Framework

October 29th, 2008

Liveblogging Microsoft PDC keynote day three: Robotics and research

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:29 am

Categories: PDC 2008, Research, Robotics

Tags: Robotics, Microsoft Corp., Robots, Blogging, Emerging Technologies, Internet, Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software

Our cabal of bloggers from across a variety of pubs and sites is  back again live blogging the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) day three keynote.

Today it’s all about robotics with Tandy Trower and Microsoft Research with Research head Richard Rashid.

Running commentary will be brought to you in real time by Todd Bishop, TechFlash; Ed Bott, ZDNet;  Kip Kniskern, Liveside; Rafael Rivera, Within Windows; Paul Thurrott, Windows Supersite; and Tom Warren, Neowin; and Long Zheng, Istartedsomething — and yours truly.

Join in and share your comments with us!

October 28th, 2008

A report card: Microsoft's Ozzie grades his three years of 'disruption'

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 12:59 pm

Categories: Corporate strategy, Live Mesh, PDC 2008, Utility/cloud computing, Web 2.0

Tags: Card, Microsoft Corp., Internet, Mary Jo Foley, Ray Ozzie, Change Management, Microsoft Office, Collaboration, Team Management, Tools & Techniques

Three years ago today, on October 28, 2005, Microsoft’s now Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie issued a missive that put Microsoft employees on notice.

Entitled “The Internet Services Disruption,” Ozzie’s memo to his direct reports detailed how Microsoft needed to change its products, business models and strategies to stay relevant in the quickly changing Web world. It was the first official document that mentioned the development approach every division at Microsoft has come to embrace: Software plus services.

This week at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC), I had my first chance to interview Ozzie since he joined Microsoft. I asked him to rate the extent to which Microsoft has delivered on the plan he outlined three years ago.

(When I reviewed Ozzie’s 2005 memo and looked at how closely Microsoft has executed against his ideas, I was surprised about the extent to which Ozzie and his team has stuck to plan. The company has rolled out service complements to many of its software products; introduced several ad-funded pilots; and created a number of hybrid research-product labs to make the company more agile in rolling out new technologies. All of these goals were outlined in Ozzie’s 2005 memo.)

Is Ozzie satisfied with Microsoft’s progress? Where could the company do more — and how?

“I know I wanted was to shock people into realizing that there was this new thing happening, and I think we did do that, but I can’t remember what my aspirations were in terms of concretely taking advantage of it.

“Overall,” Ozzie said, “I’m really pleased actually with the fact that it’s come together,” Ozzie said. “It’s certainly nascent. It’s certainly kind of the early days. The stuff is just coming to light. It’s a real testament to the culture that even though there’s a lot of wrangling that you need to do to get this group to that group to that group, you can end up in a place where people say, ‘Okay, I get it. I get the end-to-end thing of what we should be accomplishing, and I’m going to march in line.’”

Ozzie admitted there were some areas, however, where there was room for improvement.

Read the rest of this entry »

October 28th, 2008

Windows 7: What's coming for business users

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 10:02 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, PDC 2008, Windows 7, Windows client

Tags: Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft Corp.

Microsoft showed off publicly for the first time Windows 7 at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) on October 28. But almost everything shown were consumer-focused features. Does that mean Windows 7 won’t have anything for businesses?

Microsoft officials say Windows 7 will include enterprise functionality, too, even though today’s PDC keynote didn’t highlight it.

(For screen shots of and more information about the M3 pre-beta Windows 7 build that Microsoft is distributing to PDC attendees, check out my ZDNet blogging colleague Ed Bott’s blog. ActiveWin is running a meaty review of the Windows 7 M3 preview. Paul Thurrott has reviews on Windows 7 M3, as well as the Windows 7 Server 2008 R2 pre-beta.)

I asked Mike Nash, Corporate Vice President of Windows Product Management, about what’s coming on the business front — besides the fundamental changes that will benefit all users, like quicker boot speed, support for up to 256 processors and more granular User Account Control management.

Nash mentioned:

• Branch Office Caching (hosted server caching)
• New desktop imaging tools for managing multiple monitors, etc.
• Bitlocker to go — encryption for removable USB drives
• AppLocker — better control over which applications are authorized to be used on which machines
• Direct Access — RPC over HTTPS will be modified to allow users to authenticate to their domain, and access applications and resources without a VPN I didn’t explain this correctly. Microsoft officials said “This is not related to RPC over HTTPS. It is a new solution to enable remote PCs to stay connected to the corp network whenever they have an internet connection. Here’s more on Direct Access.
• Native virtual hard disk (VHD) support

(I don’t believe all of these features are enabled in the pre-beta Windows 7 build. I’ll ask Microsoft for clarification.)

Update: Microsoft said all of these features will be in the M3 build, and Direct Access and Branch Office Caching require Windows Server 2008 R2 to work. The M3 of Windows Server 2008 R2 is being distributed to show attendees today, alongside the Windows 7 M3 pre-beta bits.

Microsoft officials said today that the M3 pre-beta of Windows 7 will go to PDC attendees, attendees of the company’s Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in early November, and a select group of other external testers. This is considered an application-programming-interface (API) complete build.

A first public beta of Windows 7, that will be feature-complete, is due “early next year,” company officials said. (My bet? That’s a worst-case date and the public beta will still show up before Christmas this year.) Don’t expect multiple betas: From what officials are hinting, it sounds like there will be one beta, one release candidate and then RTM.

Microsoft still isn’t changing official guidance on when Windows 7 will ship. The official date is three years from general availability of Vista, meaning early 2010. I still believe that’s a worst-case date and we’ll see Windows 7 by the second half of 2009.

October 28th, 2008

Microsoft to 'webify' Office (sort of)

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 9:09 am

Categories: Office, Office 2010/Office 14, Office Live, Office Live Workspace, PDC 2008

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Mary Jo Foley, Web Application, Office Web Application

Microsoft is finally doing what many have been clamoring for — making Web-based versions of its Office apps available — but in a different way than expected.

As part of the Office 14 release wave, Microsoft is going to provide “Office Web applications,” which it is describing as “lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. These versions will allow users to access their documents via a Web browser on the PC, phone or other devices.

Microsoft is slated to make the announcement about its Office Web applications plans at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles on October 28 during the morning keynote.

Office Web applications are not meant to be a replacement for the client version of Office.
Microsoft still will deliver a traditional Office 14 client release for PCs. Office Web applications are more of an adjunct to Office 14 — more along the lines of Office Live Workspace.

While Office Live Workspace, which is still in beta, allows users to collaborate and annotate Office documents, it’s not really meant for heavy editing of documents. Beyond that, I’m vague on how Office Live Workspace and Office Web applications interact and/or compete. I also am somewhat fuzzy on exactly how these Office Web Applications work under the covers.

Microsoft is saying it will deliver Office Web applications “through Office Live.” There will be both ad-funded and paid-subscription versions of these Web apps. For business users, Office Web applications will be sold as a hosted subscription service and through volume-licensing agreements. For consumers, Office Web Applications will be ad-funded and free.

There will be a private tech preview of Office Web applications starting later this year. Those interested in participating will be able to sign up for the preview  from the Office Live Workspace site.

Microsoft officials still won’t talk about when Office 14 is due to ship. Until recently, many expected it to be released in the latter half of 2009. But I’ve been hearing recent scuttlebutt that 2010 might be a more realistic target.