Microsoft Strengthens ISV Commitment
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By Izwan Ismail  INDEPENDENT software vendors (ISVs) will continue to be the most important extension of Microsoft's business in Malaysia.
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Microsoft plans on Tuesday to unveil what could be an industry-changing effort in application modeling and SOA with its "Oslo" project, which could significantly change the equation in the Windows application deployment space.Part of Oslo involves delivering a unified platform integrating services and modeling, Microsoft said. But instead of models describing the application, models are the applications themselves.Oslo is a codename for a set of technical investments that will be delivered in the next major versions of Microsoft's platform products, said Steven Martin, director of product management in the company's Connected Systems division. These products include Visual Studio, System Center, BizTalk Server, BizTalk Services, and the .Net Framework. Beta releases of Oslo technology are due in 2008."Oslo is a set of technologies that we think will help take model-driven design mainstream," Martin said.With Oslo, Microsoft is making investments aligned with a vision to simplify the effort needed to build, deploy, and manage composite applications within and across organizations. The effort builds on model-driven and service-enabled principles and extends SOA beyond the firewall.Release dates of Oslo-driven products have not been set. "This will make existing products we have better. Oslo doesn't have any new products. It's being injected into existing projects," Martin said.The products include:* Microsoft .Net Framework "4," which will further enable model-driven development within the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Web services platform and Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF).* Visual Studio "10," to follow the upcoming Visual 2008 package. Version 10 focuses on application lifecycle management with tools for model-driven design of distributed applications.* BizTalk Server "6," which will continue to offer technology for distributed SOA and BPM and include capabilities for composite applications.* BizTalk Services "1," which provides BizTalk capabilities within the cloud, will feature Web-based services for hosting composite applications that cross organizational boundaries. Advanced messaging, identity, and workflow will be featured.* Metadata repositories will be aligned across server and tools products, including System Center "5," Visual Studio "10," and BizTalk Server "6." Each will utilize repository technology for managing, versioning, and deployment models."System Center will be able to grab an application from the repository and deploy it easily without any intermediate steps," said Martin. Also, Microsoft anticipates that WCF and WWF will collapse into a single technology, he said.Analysts at Gartner called Oslo "ambitious.""It's pretty ambitious, and as a matter of fact, I believe we're not going to see anything concrete until well into 2008 and possibly 2009," said analyst Massimo Pezzini, vice president of the application platform strategies group at Gartner.Featured in Oslo are three fundamental components: a modeling environment, a business process server, including a significant evolution of BizTalk Server, and a new deployment model, Pezzini said.Oslo makes sense on paper, he said. "So far, there are only ideas and plans and prototypes, etc., so we have to see," said Pezzini.He added that he senses Oslo is mostly focused on enabling Microsoft Dynamics applications as work as enterprise applications via a SaaS (software as a service) model.Microsoft will need industry backing for Oslo to succeed, said analyst Nick Gall, vice president at Gartner."It's doubtful that it could really have the kind of major impact that I'm sure Microsoft and all of us would like to see unless they get the industry behind the approach," Gall said. Microsoft said it is evaluating whether to submit Oslo to an industry standards body and whether to seek industry-wide use of Oslo.SOA is related to Oslo because a services piece is offered, in which tooling and integration are improved with the .Net Framework. Also, there will be better connectivity to BizTalk Services, which provides Web-based services for messaging, identity, and workflow.Modeling, meanwhile, is important to application development, said Martin. Microsoft sees stumbling blocks with modeling as it is now: that modeling represents the application or business logic at a specific time, thus providing only a snapshot, and that models exist in isolation."Anytime you're looking at a model, you're only looking at a piece of the application because each of those models is separate," Martin said.Solving these problems involves taking modeling mainstream, he said. "Today, modeling is really only something that a select group of users and a select group of companies can do," said Martin.Whether a user is designing, developing, or deploying applications, Oslo "will simplify your job," Martin stressed.Microsoft's approach is not about Unified Modeling Language (UML), a technology of which Microsoft has not been a big supporter. But UML is a great example of a modeling language and Microsoft wants to unify its approach to modeling in general, Martin said.A modeling language is part of Oslo, but Microsoft is building a modeling language, a set of tools, and a unified repository. Microsoft's modeling language provides a way to unify existing modeling languages, similar to Microsoft's Common Language Runtime for application development.Oslo expands beyond UML to cover deployment and management, which UML does not address, Pezzini said.Key to Microsoft's effort is a unified metadata repository. Users get a view of a model being pulled out of this repository, Martin said. Deployment and policy information, workflow, and rules are maintained in one location, to prevent loss of data useful when deploying and managing an application or writing business rules against it."We think this will allow a much broader set of users to collaborate on applications," Martin said. "We think the process of building applications will be more efficient when anybody can see the application holistically."If Microsoft is successful with its plan to have application components automatically deployed based on models in the repository, it will be "a very huge benefit for the IT operations," said Pezzini.Microsoft is making available tools and guidance to take advantage of "real-world SOA." Featured are SOA resources from Microsoft and industry partners. Meanwhile, the new Microsoft SOA and Business Process Solution Center offers resources such as patterns and practices based on customer implementations.Microsoft's approach to SOA is to start out with a business problem and build services. The company will continue to work with partners such as AmberPoint and SOA Software to help round out SOA offerings, said Martin.Also at the conference, Microsoft plans to demonstrate an upcoming technology preview of BizTalk Services, with additional support for interoperability, Web 2.0 services, identity standards, and workflow in the cloud.The Oslo vision will be the subject of a keynote by Robert Wahbe, corporate vice president of the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft, at the Microsoft SOA and Business Process Conference in Redmond, Wash., on Tuesday morning. Microsoft's SOA strategy will be covered in the presentation.
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The vendor says the upgraded software is easier to use and helps companies control finances. By Laurie Sullivan. Microsoft on Monday announced the first major upgrade to the enterprise-resource-planning suite it acquired when it bought Navision in 2002.
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Check Point Software has beefed up its enterprise security gateways.
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Microsoft and HP cemented plans this week for a new $300 million partnership that will extend their current relationship and expand their portfolio of solutions for enterprise customers around the world.
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Amid strong quarterly earnings, Microsoft said it is seeing signs of strength in enterprise spending, particularly in software.
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Microsoft Corp. is expanding its efforts to move from a "trade secrets" company to one that banks on sharing its intellectual property (IP) and benefits from being seen as a more cooperative and open-industry player.
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The companyâs performance shows that it is making progress in its shift toward selling higher-margin software.
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The move that shows Microsoft continuing to fill top executive positions from outside the company.
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NOVEMBER 05, 2004  - A Microsoft Corp. vice president this week confirmed that the company intends to continue its track record of shipping a new version of its Office System software every two to three years.
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MicrosoftÂ has taken another step to make it easier for customers and partners to customize its BI software suite.
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Partners at last week's conference are pleased with Microsoft's focus on software and hosted services.
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Microsoft Corp. continues to tweak its volume licensing programs to make it easier for business customers to purchase the company&#39;s software in bulk.
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BEA Systems Inc. is planning to release this week a new version of its application suite targeted at its ISV partners. WebLogic Platform ISV Edition is an integrated suite that features core BEA technology
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Microsoft has laid out plans to become a bigger force in the market for virtualization software, stepping up its assault on established leaders such as VMware.The plans announced Monday include the acquisition of a startup company, Calista Technologies, whose graphics technology is designed to improve the end-user experience for people who access their Windows desktop remotely from a server, Microsoft said.The company also loosened some of its licensing terms related to virtualization. Consumers who use the Home Basic and Home Premium editions of Windows Vista will now be able to run those OSes in a virtualized environment, Microsoft said. It also announced new licensing rates for corporate users.Finally, Microsoft extended its partnership with Citrix Systems to make that company&#39;s Xen virtualization software work better with Microsoft&#39;s server and desktop software, it said.Virtualization technologies separate the software on a computer from its underlying hardware, allowing it to be deployed in more flexible ways. Virtualization can allow multiple operating systems to run on one computer, for example, or allow application workloads to be shifted between computers more easily to improve hardware utilization.The technology has been around for decades but was popularized in server environments recently by VMware and others. More recently, Apple introduced virtualization for its Macintosh desktops so that users can run both the Mac OS and Windows on the same machine.Microsoft has not been a significant player in virtualization, but it hopes to change that with its announcements this week. It plans to discuss the changes at its Virtualization Deployment Summit, a two-day event for 300 of its customers and partners that starts Tuesday.It argued that the virtualization market remains open for newer players like itself.&#8220;Very few customers are able to reap the benefits of virtualization today,&#8221; Bob Muglia, senior vice present of Microsoft&#39;s Server and Tools Business, said in a statement. &#8220;We estimate that less than five percent of companies are utilizing virtualization technology because it is simply too cost-prohibitive and complex.&quot;Microsoft&#39;s strategy will be to offer a full range of virtualization products, including desktop, server and management software, and do so at a competitive price, Muglia said.Customers with the Home and Home Premium editions of Vista can now run them as a guest operating system on a virtual machine, the company said. Among other things, that should mean that Apple Mac users who want to run Vista alongside the Mac OS can now do so without having to buy a more expensive version of Windows.For businesses, customers who subscribe to Microsoft&#39;s Software Assurance maintenance program can now get an annual subscription to Microsoft&#39;s desktop virtualization software for $23 per desktop, the company said.Citrix is developing a software tool that will make it easier for customers to transfer virtual machines between Citrix XenServer and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. A test version of the tool will be available in the second quarter, and the final version will be released along with Hyper-V, Microsoft said.The technology from Calista aims to improve the experience for people who access their Windows desktops remotely from a server. It allows people to view multimedia content on a PC or thin client without the media player or software codecs they would normally need installed.Microsoft will add Calista&#39;s graphics technology to future virtualization products, it said. Calista, of San Jose, California, is now a Microsoft subsidiary.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft wants to make its Dynamics business applications more immediately relevant to customers in five vertical markets -- manufacturing, distribution, retail, services and the public sector. The vendor is due to announce its Dynamics Industry Solutions initiative Monday at its Convergence conference in San Diego. Microsoft will build in additional vertical capabilities to its ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications through a combination of internal development, small-scale acquisitions and a deepening of its Industry Builder partner incentive initiative, according to James Utzschneider, general manager of Dynamics marketing at Microsoft. Future industry-specific offerings codeveloped by Microsoft and its partners can be stand-alone offerings or ISVs (independent software vendors) can build on top of them, he said. Utzschneider doesn't see the vendor's increased vertical interest as an issue for its existing partners. "If anything we're strengthening opportunities for our partners," he said. "We're clarifying where we're going to play." Previously, Microsoft tended to rely on its partners to add on industry-specific functionalities to its Dynamics software. That situation was problematic for customers in particular industries, according to Yvonne Genovese, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. Those users were largely dependent on code developed on top of Dynamics often by very small ISVs and that code wasn't backed by Microsoft. Going forward, users will have a better comfort level around guarantees of Microsoft and its partners working together. As an example of the kind of relationship Microsoft will engage in around specific industries, Utzschneider pointed to the strategic alliance the vendor recently struck with public-sector information management software vendor Tyler Technologies. With its headquarters in Dallas, Tyler has more than 6,000 customers, mostly in the U.S. local government sector. The company has 1,500 staff and annual revenue in the order of $200 million. In January, the two companies announced they'd work together to jointly develop public-sector accounting functionality for Dynamics AX suitable for out-of-the-box use by governments worldwide. The enhanced version of Dynamics should appear in the latter part of 2009, according to John Marr, Tyler president and CEO. Government users require specific functionality in areas such as fund accounting and grant management, he said. They often choose general-purpose applications and then bolt on public-sector specific capabilities. The software would be much more useful and easier to deploy if such functionalities were designed into the applications, Marr added. Tyler talked to Microsoft about working together for a number of years, but found it challenging to define a relationship that would prove beneficial to both companies, he said. Following the alliance, Tyler became a Microsoft reseller and hopes teaming up with the software giant will help it attract more international customers. Marr welcomed Microsoft's industry-focused move. "They're now saying, 'Be a part of our development team,'" he said. Microsoft also announced Certified for Microsoft Dynamics, an ISV software certification program to give customers a better sense of the 3,000-plus ISV offerings in the market and their compatibility with Dynamics as tested by third parties. Another new offering is Dynamics Sure Step, a combination of templates and models on how best to configure and deploy the applications. Microsoft previously lacked such a standard implementation methodology and relied instead on models developed by its partners, Utzschneider said. The vendor has spent the last year and a half working on Sure Step based on the implementation experiences of its customers and partners. Having a standard methodology in place should make it easier for Microsoft to train up new partners and consultants who don't have previous experience with Dynamics. Â
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InfoWorld - Microsoft will participate in a meeting later this month with vendors and organizations that are backing several different identity management systems, an indication that&#160;cooperation between the software giant and its peers&#160;is improving.