New Orleans - Things will get better. Trust us.
That was the message Monday from Microsoft Corp.'s Steve Ballmer to more than 8,000 Windows developers at the company's annual Tech*Ed conference.
IT has not done a good job to date of addressing today's basic business problems, such as getting the right information, at the right time, to the right people for decision making, said Ballmer, executive vice president of sales and support. What's needed, he said, is the digital equivalent of the body's central nervous system - new tools and core software technologies to let existing PC networks and the Internet communicate more effectively.
Those tools and technologies are coming from Microsoft, he assured his listeners. To illustrate his point, he emphasized the importance of the upcoming Windows NT 5.0 release, and for the first time, outlined new features to be found in Microsoft Office 9, due out in early 1999, according to Ballmer.
Plenty of attendees seemed willing to continue trusting that Microsoft will invent the future just in time for them to use it.
"The most enlightening thing for me is to see what's happening and get a sense of what I can do," said Donald Seagraves, a senior programming analyst with Arizona Public Service Co., an electric utility in Phoenix. "It's been difficult [working with Microsoft technologies]. What I see is the commitment they have to better tools and solutions."
Office 9 will include features to simplify deployment and management of the suite's applications, including the IntelliMirror technology, which is designed to speed up software installation.
To tie Office more closely to the growing sea of Web-based information, the new release will also be able to store documents in HTML format or load XML documents directly into applications such as Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Word.
Integrated with Office 9 will be Microsoft's SQL Server database, which in turn will be linked tightly with the desktop Access database product. There will also be a desktop version of the upcoming SQL Server 7 and this, too, will be incorporated in Office 9. Users will also have an array of new data access tools as part of their applications, according to Ballmer.
A demonstration showed a user creating, with a series of mouse clicks and filling in a few forms, HTML pages that displayed current data being drawn from an SQL Server database. Office 9 will include a set of reusable "Office Web Components," which are a set of Component Object Model (COM) objects that customers can use to incorporate Office functions into their applications, Ballmer said.
Repeatedly, Ballmer's words and the demonstrations emphasized the close integration that will be achieved by using component software, COM, and the core operating system services being added to Windows NT and the BackOffice family of servers, such as Microsoft Exchange, Site Server and others.
"We're creating a digital 'nervous system' based on new tools to manage knowledge and applications and on top of an IT infrastructure that's easier to build and to manage every year," Ballmer said.
Things are getting better. Trust us.
RELATED LINKS
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Network World Fusion, 5/6/98
Ballmer's keynote
from Microsoft's Web site.
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