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.