ActiveWin.com: Microsoft TechED 2005 Key Technologies Overview

TechEd 2005 is one of the largest technology conferences of the year.  Steve Ballmer kicked off the conference with a keynote address that changed the focus that we as IT people should have toward our clients.  He stated that we should now start to shift our service-offering to become more “Information Worker”-centric.  What does this mean?  Steve stated that we were in a new world of work.  Microsoft’s goal now is to enable people to drive business success.  Our main goal, as IT Workers or Information Workers, is to improve customer satisfaction.  Why can’t Information Workers access information easily and collect it?

  Well, I know that in my 8 years of IT experience, I have seen a large shift in what was expected from IT individuals.  I first began working on corporate networks in 1997.  That was prior to the release of Windows 98.  Basically people were looking for stability and we were working hard to keep those blue screens out of the corporate environment while maximizing functionality of the system.

  Today the world has changed.  I really can not remember the last time that I have seen a blue screen of death on one of my Windows XP boxes.  Microsoft started focusing on the Internet more heavily in 1999.  That is when they started investing time in XML with several other industry leaders.  Prior to that, most individuals used the internet for relatively simple tasks. (File Transfer’s, Web Page viewing, and E-Mail were the primary uses of the internet.)  After evaluating the usefulness and speed of information transfer on the internet, these organizations saw a potential of developing applications that would build on the idea of information transfer from the internet and build a set of standards that would give programmers the ability to build their own applications, with their own predefined rules.  This was the purpose of XML.  Microsoft decided that it would be crucial to build bridges from all of their product offerings so that information could be more readily exchanged from different systems, as long as you understood the concepts of XML.

Steve mentioned some interesting things during the keynote.  One of the things that were mentioned was the top five most requested requests by Information Workers.  Here they are:

1. One Identity of Passage
2. Online Presence
3. Network Access
4. Synchronization
5. Self Service

 What is Microsoft doing with their products to provide their customers with these things?  Let’s look at the enhancements that will be available from each Microsoft product offering.

Office 12 - One announcement was that Office 12 would save files in an XML format by default.  This would be in contrast to the current basic Binary format that can be translated, with some difficulty to other applications.

Windows Server Enhancements – Many new products are being deployed to assist in accomplishing these goals.  These include:

• Rights Management Software (In a separate product)

• Active Directory Federation Services (Available in Windows Server 2003 R2)

• Web Services Interoperability (Sun and Microsoft have made great strides toward accomplishing this.)

Exchange 2003 SP2 – The primary enhancements with Exchange 2003 SP2 is going to be the new Messaging and Security Feature Pack for Windows Mobile 5.0.  Some of the new features included will be always up-to-date email with direct push using functionality similar to what has been available for a long time using RIM’s blackberry devices.  Mobile devices that are capable of interacting with Microsoft ActiveSync will be able to be managed via server policies. One of the more interesting features will be the remote wipe capabilities of the phone.  From what I had seen, there will be two ways of accomplishing this.  The first way can be accomplished if someone calls into a helpdesk and asks an Admin to wipe the device.  An admin will at that point access a web page and invoke a function that will send a command to the device to wipe it to factory settings.  The second way of accomplishing this will be to erase the phone automatically if someone attempts to guess the password incorrectly after a few attempts.

VS 2005 – Visual Studio 2005 will include a very large number of enhancements depending on which platform you choose to develop on.  Web and Windows Development will be greatly enhanced with the IDE. 

Windows Mobile 5.0 - Mobile Development enhancements have been greatly improved via the new Windows Mobile 5.0 SDK.  There are now managed code extensions for many native functions of Windows Mobile 5.0 devices.  Microsoft also assured us during one of the sessions that they are working on standardizing many other technologies, such as Bluetooth and microphone API’s so that coders do not have to be as aware of the vendor’s implementation of a technology to efficiently deploy a solution that utilizes a given technology.

RFID – Microsoft Radio Frequency Identification infrastructure is a completely new technology that Microsoft showcased during Day 2’s keynote that essentially places a bar-code like device on something and allows that device to be tracked via radio frequencies.  This will be an amazing enhancement of the future because it will provide shipping companies with the ability to monitor package locations without having to use traditional bar code scanners, inventory control can be more easily managed without having to manually go to a warehouse.  The possibilities are amazing…and frightening at the same time.

Please stay tuned over the next few weeks and months as ActiveWin will begin to cover these products in more detail as we collect real information on the practicality and functionality of the products.