Directions on Microsoft Research Reports drill down into core Microsoft technologies and trends to explain what they are, how they work, where they're headed, and how they may affect your business. [Subscribe to Directions on Microsoft]

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January 2008. Visual Studio 2008 is the latest release of Microsoft's flagship developer product. Along with the accompanying release of the .NET Framework 3.5, Visual Studio 2008 includes significant new features that make data queries substantially quicker and simpler to code, less error-prone, and easier to debug and maintain; brings Visual Studio up to date with new features introduced in Windows Vista, the .NET Framework 3.0, and Office 2007; and further improves Visual Studio as a Web development tool. This report outlines the major improvements in Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5, including the C# and VB programming languages and IDE, and lays out the product roadmap for future versions of Visual Studio.

November 2007. Communications Server 2007 is Microsoft's latest platform for unified communications, which provides instant messaging, user presence, voice, and other communications services over a single network and directory infrastructure. This report outlines the many small improvements in instant messaging and presence, the dramatically improved voice and phone integration features, and the newly added support for Web conferences, which combine voice with synchronized PowerPoint presentations and other data sharing features. The report also projects upcoming releases for the product line, and explains the product line's licensing model, including the tradeoffs between buying licenses individually versus buying them in Microsoft's enterprise license bundles.

May 2007. Over the last two years, Microsoft has expanded its product lines for business intelligence (BI), the process of extracting raw data from operational business applications and databases and analyzing the data to make long-term, high-level business decisions. This report summarizes the recent evolution of Microsoft's BI strategy and offerings. It covers the SQL Server 2005 BI platform and explains improvements over the previous generation of the platform, and outlines the latest and upcoming versions of Microsoft's BI applications, including Excel, SharePoint Server, and PerformancePoint Server. The report will interest any organization considering or expanding BI solutions on the Microsoft platform, and systems integrators, solution providers, and software vendors who support such organizations.

April 2007. Along with its traditional role as a platform for creating and managing corporate portals, SharePoint Server 2007 (formerly SharePoint Portal Server) assumes a variety of new roles, including records management, centralized spreadsheet management, Web content management, and business intelligence. Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0, the platform on which SharePoint Server 2007 is built, includes better features for organizing and storing documents and data, and new blog and wiki features that could help workers informally exchange ideas and compile information. This report describes the major changes and new features in WSS 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 and helps IT decision-makers evaluate the pros and cons of those products before making purchase or upgrade decisions.

March 2007. Exchange Server 2007 and Outlook 2007, the first major upgrade of Microsoft's e-mail platform in nearly four years, offer new features and enhancements to existing capabilities that will pique the interest of many organizations. This report describes the products' new unified messaging, mobility, spam blocking, calendaring, security, scalability, availability, manageability, and regulatory compliance capabilities. It also summarizes the APIs Exchange 2007 offers developers and presents an overview of products' packaging, pricing, and licensing.

February 2007. Office 2007 delivers the biggest changes to the product's user interface and technology since Office 2000. Organizations will have to evaluate and test Office 2007 more carefully than they have tested previous Office versions, and many will want to roll out the product simultaneously with Windows Vista and new desktop hardware. The report summarizes major changes in the user interface, file format, code compatibility, and deployment technology. It also summarizes the most important changes to the suite's individual applications and presents an overview of the suite's pricing and licensing.

December 2006. This report summarizes the Vista features that will have the greatest impact on business users, and that make Vista the first Windows release in many years with unique features that offer clear value to businesses. Security has been significantly enhanced with User Account Control, which limits the damage that viruses and other malicious software can do, and with BitLocker Drive Encryption, which conceals corporate data on the hard disk from unauthorized eyes. Deployment has been streamlined, and Vista is more amenable to centralized management than any of its predecessors. In a market in which sales of portable or mobile computers nearly equals that of traditional desktops, Vista brings better manageability, configuration, and wireless networking to mobile computers, and desktop networking has also been strengthened.

November 2006. The .NET Framework 3.0, the latest version of Microsoft's application development platform, is shipping as part of Windows Vista and will also be available for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1. Microsoft is expanding the Framework's libraries to include sophisticated graphics, better support for Web services, workflow programming to capture business processes, and a new user interface for authentication, among other capabilities. However, another update to the .NET Framework, along with better support from Visual Studio, is due in 2007. Some IT organizations, therefore, may choose to wait until then to begin serious evaluation.

August 2006. This report describes major elements of Microsoft's partner strategy and the general landscape of Microsoft partnerships, and provides a detailed look at major features of the Microsoft Partner Program, which was substantially redesigned in 2003. It describes the characteristics that are important to Microsoft in evaluating its partners, pathways for partners who want to earn more support and recognition from Microsoft, and some of the teams involved in managing partners and partner programs. The reports updates the Apr. 2005 Research Report, "2005 Guide to Microsoft Programs for Partners." Major changes since that report include changes in marketing strategy and full integration of the partner program previously used by companies that sell Microsoft Business Solutions software, such as Great Plains.

April 2006. To establish the Windows PC as a home entertainment device, Microsoft is building technologies into Windows that improve the PC's ability to work with digital audio and video (digital media). The company and its partners are also creating a wide variety of entertainment products and services, from portable audio players to online music stores, that support the PC in this role. If successful, the strategy will help PC manufacturers, by encouraging consumers to upgrade their PCs more frequently, and content owners, by providing a new, lower-cost distribution channel. For consumer electronics manufacturers, Microsoft's plans offer both an opportunity to sell new types of devices and the threat of commoditization. This report will help hardware manufacturers, content owners, and consumer electronics companies understand the threats and opportunities posed by Microsoft's home entertainment strategy, with a particular focus on digital media.

March 2006. Windows Server 2003 R2, an interim update to Microsoft's server OS, will interest customers with specific branch office, storage management, Unix interoperability, and identity management issues. This report examines the improvements in each of these four areas. Few customers will benefit from all of these improvements, but most customers could benefit from at least one. Finally, the report looks at additional changes, such as the decision to drop 32-bit OS support in some future server products that may also make Microsoft's product delivery schedules more predicable.

January 2006. SQL Server 2005 delivers improvements for both corporate database management and database application development. This report describes the major changes in SQL Server 2005 as a database management system, with individual sections describing the release's new management features; developer features; and scalability, performance, and availability improvements. This report also includes a discussion of potential risks and challenges for customers and partners and an appendix that outlines the editions and pricing for SQL Server 2005.

December 2005. Although not yet feature-complete, the first beta of Windows Vista (formerly code-named Longhorn) gives customers and partners their first real chance to examine the improved security and substantially improved graphics, messaging, and workflow capabilities. This report outlines three major new components of Windows Vista—a new graphics engine called the Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly 'Avalon'), the Windows Communications Foundation (formerly 'Indigo') for building Web services, and the Windows Workflow Foundation for enabling workflow within Vista applications—and explains why developers might want to begin deciding how to incorporate them in their applications. The report also looks at security and reliability improvements expected in Vista as well as Vista's schedule and the steps Microsoft may need to take to meet that schedule.

November 2005. Visual Studio (VS) 2005 is the most important developer tools release in more than three years. It removes many barriers to .NET platform adoption, exploits new capabilities in SQL Server 2005, and helps developers, testers, and project managers be more productive and work better together as a team. This report outlines the new features of VS 2005 for individual developers using programming languages such as Visual Basic, C#, and C++, for Web developers building applications for ASP.NET, for developers building applications that access data, and for teams of developers, testers, and project managers. Finally, this report outlines changes in pricing and licensing that IT administrators need to understand.

October 2005. Microsoft offers two distinct sets of rights management technologies: one for protecting digital media, such as movies or music, and one for protecting corporate data, such as documents or e-mails. Although functionally similar, these two technologies are intended for different audiences, are being developed by separate product teams at Microsoft, and are not currently slated to merge or evolve to use a common foundation. This report provides an overview of Microsoft's two digital rights management technologies, summarize how they differ, and identify future directions for both. The report also explains how Microsoft has integrated rights management for digital media into the upcoming Vista (Longhorn client) operating system.

September 2005. SQL Server 2005 includes major enhancements across the product's business intelligence (BI) platform, a collection of development tools, programming interfaces, run-time services, and management utilities for building applications that analyze business trends and conditions, and help make corresponding business-related decisions. This report describes the major changes in the SQL Server 2005 BI platform, an integral part of SQL Server 2005, which is scheduled to launch in Nov. 2005. The report contains sections describing the updates to each of the platform's major components (Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services), discusses issues and caveats customers and partners should consider when evaluating the SQL Server 2005 BI platform, outlines the new licensing and pricing structure for SQL Server 2005, and provides a mapping of BI features to SQL Server 2005 editions.

April 2005. More dependent on partners than any other major software company, Microsoft has recently modified its core partner program and significantly broadened the number of partners with which the company has formal relationships. This report describes major elements of Microsoft’s partner strategy and the general landscape of Microsoft partnerships, and provides a detailed look at major features of the new Microsoft Partner Program. It describes the characteristics that are important to Microsoft in evaluating its partners, pathways for partners who want to earn more support and recognition from Microsoft, and some of the teams involved in managing partners and partner programs. This report has been superceded by a more recent August 2006 version (see above).

February 2005. To establish the Windows PC as the hub of home entertainment, Microsoft is building technologies into Windows that improve the PC's ability to work with digital audio and video (digital media). The company and its partners are also creating a wide variety of entertainment products and services, from portable audio players to online music stores, that support this role for the PC. If successful, the strategy will help PC manufacturers by shortening hardware upgrade cycles, and content owners could gain a new, lower-cost distribution channel. For consumer electronics manufacturers, Microsoft’s plans present both an opportunity to sell new types of devices and a threat of commoditization. This report explains the underlying technologies and strategic reasoning behind Microsoft's digital media products and services and helps hardware manufacturers, content owners, and consumer electronics companies understand the threats and opportunities posed by Microsoft's home entertainment strategy.

October 2004. Application integration platforms, such as Microsoft's BizTalk Server, can help organizations lower operating costs by reducing or eliminating manual transfer and reentry of data between disparate systems, such as a company’s existing warehouse and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. For businesses that rely on many trading partners (for example, a manufacturer that sources parts from hundreds of suppliers), it can also provide similar efficiencies through automation of B2B processes such as purchase order processing and invoicing. This report describes the major changes incorporated into BizTalk Server 2004—including improved performance and scalability, better tools for developers, and new support for human-oriented workflow—and also delves into the product's limitations and future directions.

September 2004. Recent events suggest that systems management has gained a higher priority at Microsoft and that the company has begun to execute on a plan that, if successful, could reduce the cost of maintaining Microsoft software and make systems running that software more reliable. This report summarizes Microsoft's new systems management software roadmap and outlines the new capabilities of its two most strategic systems management products: Systems Management Server and Microsoft Operations Manager.

July 2004. Microsoft claims Windows Server 2003's enhancements make server consolidation more practical than ever on the Windows platform, and provide IT managers with the opportunity to drive down management costs substantially. But what Microsoft means by server consolidation, why consolidation may (or may not) be worth the effort, and the extent to which Windows Server 2003 enables consolidation is the source of considerable debate and confusion. This report evaluates the performance, availability, and storage improvements in Windows Server 2003 related to consolidation. The report also identifies issues that need to be addressed in planning for consolidation, once an organization has concluded Windows Server 2003 will support their efforts.

April 2004. Although the Trustworthy Computing initiative is about more than security, ongoing events have kept security foremost on customers' minds, and continuing to improve the security of existing and future products remains a necessary first step toward making computers as ubiquitous and dependable as the telephone. This report examines how Microsoft is addressing security concerns by reengineering the design, coding, and testing practices for its software and services. It also provides guidelines for taking advantage of the security improvements Microsoft has already made and describes the security-related advances to expect in the future. Finally, the report studies Microsoft's efforts to bolster the other three pillars of Trustworthy Computing (beyond security)—improving product reliability, strengthening and clarifying privacy controls and choices, and raising the public’s assessment of the company's overall integrity.

December 2003. Originally released in 2002 and completely revised for 2004, this report helps organizations calculate the types and quantity of software licenses they need to buy, determine the best way to purchase these licenses, evaluate upgrade options and strategies, and assess the impact of recent sweeping changes to Microsoft's volume licensing programs. The report explains Microsoft's licensing philosophy, its volume licensing programs, the pros and cons of Software Assurance, and likely future changes in Microsoft licensing policies. It offers specific strategies for Microsoft customers who need to reduce the risks of noncompliance and mitigate licensing costs. The revised version includes additional benefits available to Software Assurance customers, step-up programs for Windows Server 2003 and Office 2003, and new programs such as Open license Value.

November 2003. This report describes the ambitious strategy behind the Office System, a new brand and expanded Office product line that includes not only the traditional Office suite, but a wave of new applications, server products, and online services for collaboration and software development. This report outlines improvements to the Office 2003 suite for several specific types of solutions, including e-mail, team document sharing, and custom-developed solutions that use XML-based data access. For each of these solutions, the report outlines what the solution is, how it might benefit an organization, and how Microsoft's products work together to deliver the benefits. The report also identifies how Office System client applications stack up against alternative clients for specific solutions. And finally, report identifies important limitations, potential problems, and future product directions. An appendix outlines the licensing requirements and base pricing for typical solutions.

September 2003. This report covers significant changes in Microsoft's portal strategy and technology, with the release of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), the successor to SharePoint Team Services, and SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) 2003. The report covers major new features in WSS, including document management and creation of team sites; the functional relationships between WSS and SPS; how these collaboration products carry out long term Microsoft goals, such as tight integration between collaboration servers and Office, and greater adoption of .NET Framework technologies; and significant migration issues that customers will face as they deploy SPS 2003.

July 2003. This report describes major improvements to Microsoft's Exchange e-mail server and Outlook e-mail client that make the products easier to manage and use, and that improve Exchange's scalability for large organizations and application service providers. The report also previews some of the features expected in Kodiak, the next version of Exchange. Major topics include improved backup and restore features in Exchange 2003; improvements for remote users, such as much improved Outlook Web Access and better support for offline use of Outlook and Exchange; how application service providers benefit from changes in Exchange; and features that have been removed from Exchange. The report also summarizes factors that organizations should consider when considering whether to upgrade their e-mail systems.

June 2003. The release of the .NET development platform marks the first major change in Microsoft’s development platform in nearly ten years. The development platform consists of a new software infrastructure (the .NET Framework and ASP.NET) for loading and running applications, a new developer environment (Visual Studio .NET), and programming languages to support that infrastructure. This report is an invaluable guide for understanding the architecture, capabilities, and benefits of the platform as well as for deciding between it and competing alternatives such as Java. [This report is an updated version of the Feb. 2002 Research Report "The .NET Development Platform." It reflects several changes in Microsoft's development and operating systems platforms, including Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0.]

April 2003. Compared to their predecessors, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP make it considerably more practical for administrators to manage client PCs throughout their life cycle, including installing the operating system, deploying applications, centrally configuring and locking down each PC and its software, supporting users that roam between different PCs, restoring failed PCs, and migrating existing configurations to new PCs. This report provides an overview of Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP improvements including Active Directory, Group Policy, IntelliMirror, and application installation technologies, all of which make it easier, more efficient, and safer for an administrator to manage the PCs in an organization. The report also identifies other Windows technologies and other features that can make it easier to initially deploy and subsequently maintain PCs, such as scripting, Terminal Services, and Remote Installation Services.

December 2002. Application development is quickly moving away from "roll your own" infrastructure technologies toward application servers, software platforms that simplify the development, deployment, and maintenance of large-scale multiuser applications, such as corporate payroll systems or high-volume e-commerce Web sites. The upcoming Windows Server 2003 provides a complete set of application server functions built in and companies looking to accelerate application development should carefully evaluate Windows Server 2003 against competitors such as BEA WebLogic and IBM WebSphere Application Server. This report outlines the strategic importance of application servers to Microsoft, its partners, and its customers. It explains the main tasks of an application server, identifies the Windows components that carry out those tasks, and summarizes improvements to those components in Windows Server 2003. Finally, the report identifies the major factors organizations should consider when evaluating Windows Server 2003 against competing application servers, factors that also could determine Microsoft's prospects in the market.

September 2002. This report examines Microsoft’s recent efforts to reduce the likelihood that vulnerabilities in its products expose customers’ systems to security threats such as viruses, worms, and malevolent attacks. In particular, this report examines what Microsoft is doing to improve its design, coding, and testing practices so fewer vulnerabilities get into shipping software; limit the possible damage should new vulnerabilities be discovered; and make it practical to keep systems up-to-date with the latest software patches. This report also provides guidelines on what customers need to do to take advantage of the security improvements Microsoft has already made, as well as an overview of further improvements customers can expect in the future. In addition, the report explains how Microsoft’s recent security efforts relate to the company’s broader "Trustworthy Computing" initiative, a long-term set of goals first publicly articulated by senior executives in early 2002. This report has been superceded by a more recent April 2004 version (see above).

June 2002. This report is essential for understanding Microsoft's complex array of licensing policies, procedures, and programs; staying in compliance without over-paying; and budgeting intelligently for future software purchases. The report explains the types and quantities of licenses customers have to buy for desktop and server software; describes each of the major volume purchasing plans, the differences between them, and the factors companies must consider when deciding which program or programs to use; and reviews the new and controversial Software Assurance upgrade program, including the upgrade rights it confers, which products it applies to, how it affects overall volume discount levels, and which older upgrade programs it replaces. The report concludes with a summary of the trends that could determine the near-term direction of Microsoft licensing, and analyzes their potential impact on customer procurement and IT management. This report has been superceded by a more recent December 2003 version (see above).

February 2002. The release of the .NET development platform marks the first major change in Microsoft’s development platform in nearly ten years. The development platform consists of a new software infrastructure (the .NET Framework and ASP.NET) for loading and running applications, a new developer environment (Visual Studio .NET), and programming languages to support that infrastructure. This report is an invaluable guide for understanding the architecture, capabilities, and benefits of the platform as well as for deciding between it and competing alternatives such as Java. This report has been superceded by a more recent June 2003 version (see above).

December 2001. With its prime markets—desktop operating systems and desktop productivity applications—nearly saturated, Microsoft is looking to increase revenues by selling more server software into enterprise datacenters. Currently, server products generate about US$5 billion of Microsoft’s revenue, but the company hopes to double that by 2005. This report examines the product capabilities, pricing and licensing practices, and selling and support strategies Microsoft will need to make inroads into the enterprise datacenter, as well as their progress to date.

July 2001. Similar to the company’s Windows strategy more than a decade ago, the .NET initiative represents a long-term company wide focus that will have broad implications for Microsoft customers, partners, third-party developers, and competitors alike. This report provides an in-depth explanation of the .NET vision for how software will more fully exploit the Internet’s potential, the .NET platform for building Internet-enabled applications, and Microsoft's planned .NET hosted-services for deriving ongoing subscription revenues. Also explored are the reasons why Microsoft felt compelled to launch .NET, as well as the formidable array of challenges Microsoft must overcome to make .NET a success. Readers will find the report an invaluable guide for understanding what .NET actually is, for evaluating the opportunities and threats .NET may pose to their business, and for interpreting Microsoft’s technical and strategic moves from this day forward.

December 2000. SQL Server 2000 rolls up two years’ worth of requested improvements into a major new release of Microsoft's principal database management product. For large corporate customers and application service providers, it leverages the new Windows Datacenter hardware to boost performance and availability and simplify management of large databases and large numbers of servers. For application architects and developers, its Web access and XML features enable new ways to build ".NET" Web and e-commerce applications with much less code and better performance than current methods. This report summarizes the most important new features of SQL 2000 to aid planning of both operations and application development, and points out the impact of the product's new pricing and licensing scheme.

September 2000. This report focuses on the problems posed by e-mail-borne viruses to Microsoft-based systems and offers strategies to help reduce the risks to reasonable levels. As much as organizations might loathe applying scarce IT resources to this threat, they don’t have a choice. IT managers must understand the nature of the problem and introduce comprehensive protective measures that guard against business losses caused by malicious attacks, whether from external or internal sources.

March 2000. Exchange 2000 makes a giant leap, from a workgroup product that was sorely stretched in large installations to a next-generation e-mail service capable of supporting millions of users on a 7x24 basis. This metamorphosis was not simple. To achieve substantially higher scalability, compatibility, and reliability over earlier versions of Exchange, the Exchange 2000 architecture embraces Internet technology and protocols and relegates most prior Microsoft messaging technology to emulation mode. The new architecture also relies heavily on features found in Windows 2000 Server and Windows Web Services (WWS), both of which are prerequisites for Exchange 2000 installation.

January 2000. Laptops are getting more attention from IT directors as companies try to give workers an "anytime, anywhere" computing environment. Companies that use laptops should consider upgrading to Windows 2000 Professional, the workstation version of Microsoft's new operating system. For companies currently running Windows 95/98 on their laptops, Windows 2000 Professional significantly improves reliability and security. For companies currently running Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 Professional lowers administration costs and supports new hardware and services. Companies should note, however, that Windows 2000 Professional needs recent laptop hardware, and companies will require certified applications and Windows 2000 Server to get a few of its advertised benefits.