Patrick Hynds, Security Editor of .NET Developer's Journal, writes: Every year at Tech·Ed I make it a point to attend the opening keynote which is often delivered by Steve Ballmer. This year Steve came out very hopeful and predicted that we are on the upswing of the IT cycle, while he is often upbeat he argued his case well.

He said things like "Exciting time" and "Innovations like never before." Also, as I have come to expect from Steve, he covered a wide range of topics that mapped closely with the products that MS is most motivated to see increase their market share. This list includes Windows Server 2003 and beyond, Exchange, the set of mobile technologies as well as some other sundry tools.

Photo Copyright 2005 SYS-CON Media

A major premise was that the next ten years is laden with opportunity because of new technologies that are upon us now. These technologies have to be bent toward improving productivity and to further that goal MS is striving to drive business success with their offerings. A major symptom of the problem is that users know that the information they need is there, but the pain is that they can’t always get to it.

Barriers of trust mean that security questions overhang the next burst of productivity. Steve quoted Bill Gates in saying that we are looking to create a "New World of Work"

As a fan of the Daily Show on Comedy Central I was happy to see that Samantha Bee not only did the introduction, but also returned to do other comedy bits.

Hitting another pillar goal, Steve pointed out that reliability is key to maintaining the productivity gains we achieve as a highly productive system that is down is not useful to anyone. Though I can’t remember how he pulled it off, but this introduced the discussion of Search, Directory, Self Provisioning web sites. Freedom coupled with control and protection with the ultimate goal of finding a balance. Hurdles include Identity, Rights Management and moving forward self service to prevent IT bottlenecks from hindering the progress. Presence was also pointed out as a key component of real time business with Directories (Active Directory) the anchor of this vision. Single Sign-on, group policy, smartcard and other 2-factor auth, AD Federation, etc.

(If you haven’t been paying attention, AD Federation is key to getting companies to collaborate and integrate their user communities.)

"This was the first time I heard that virtualization will be built into the Server platform"

Windows Server is the carrier for all the innovations above. Investing in supporting new hardware and closing down problems as they are found is the focus of moving the platform forward while this was the first time I heard that virtualization will be built into the Server platform.

An amusing video demoed the remote wipe of a lost device using Windows Mobile 5.0 as well as a walk through of pushing out policies to Windows Mobile devices such as requiring passwords and a really cool demo was given of a MapPoint application called Virtual Earth has a hybrid mode that integrates satellite and map data.

After 5 years of .NET, Steve pointed to the embrace of .NET through statistics like 90% of global accounts using .NET in their environment and 43% of developers working with .NET putting it at number 1. The VS 2005, SQL 2005 and Biztalk 2006 debuts will be a big push for .NET. Performance is looking better with .NET 2.0 than both IBM Websphere and .Net 1.1 when run against Sun’s WSTest 1.1 benchmarks.

Among the promises Steve made was that Office 12 will use XML format as the default to better facilitate integration of data. This should make integration between products much easier.

"Bill Anderson showed Windows running on a Sun box managed by MOM"

The Dynamic Systems Initiative is an effort to get serious about management and allowing developers to tap into the SDM. Both MOM and SMS will consume SDM. These disclosures led to having WS-Management demoed by Bill Anderson where he showed Windows running on a Sun box managed by MOM via the management web services that both MS and SUN are driving. Bill showed recovering both windows servers and a Solaris server via MOM thanks to the WS-Management capabilities. The system can differentiate between software and hardware issues. During the demo Steve was happy to help by pulling fans out of the Solaris server that MOM was monitoring. On pulling the second fan MOM reported a critical error. This demo highlighted interop in the datacenter.

As the talk wound toward the end security was introduced as the capstone subject and we were warned (and I agree) that failure in this area can make everything else less relevant. Steve assured us that "Security is Job 1"!

The final announcement was Microsoft Update which will bring together Microsoft Update, SUS and SMS through the Microsoft Update Catalog. This brings patching up the chain and puts the tools to manage in your hands.

Steve wrapped up by coming back to the "World of Work" concept and restated the commitment to push this vision with the tools and the security we need to make it happen. Innovative investment is the overarching commitment.