Microsoft builds toward management vision

Updated software will add common features across patch and assessment tools.

After nearly two years, Microsoft last week began to pull together the first pieces of its patch management infrastructure. The effort ultimately will extend to a host of free and licensed products and eventually integrate with efforts to create a broad management platform for Windows.

The goal of the plan, which the vendor calls its Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI ), is to provide corporate users with a range of assessment, configuration, monitoring, management and development tools that will let Microsoft's software communicate its status to the network to improve the security, uptime and general maintenance of Microsoft environments.

In its march to that goal, Microsoft last week issued a final beta and a first beta for two technologies that will provide common scanning and catalog engines for future free and licensed patch and assessment tools. And next month at its annual management conference, Microsoft will issue a technology beta of its new capacity-planning tool, code-named Indy, to fill in more of its management puzzle.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

After nearly two years, Microsoft last week began to pull together the first pieces of its patch management infrastructure. The effort ultimately will extend to a host of free and licensed products and eventually integrate with efforts to create a broad management platform for Windows.

The goal of the plan, which the vendor calls its Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI ), is to provide corporate users with a range of assessment, configuration, monitoring, management and development tools that will let Microsoft's software communicate its status to the network to improve the security, uptime and general maintenance of Microsoft environments.

In its march to that goal, Microsoft last week issued a final beta and a first beta for two technologies that will provide common scanning and catalog engines for future free and licensed patch and assessment tools. And next month at its annual management conference, Microsoft will issue a technology beta of its new capacity-planning tool, code-named Indy, to fill in more of its management puzzle.

"Microsoft's management is all about making Microsoft infrastructure as intelligent as possible in terms of managing itself," says Jasmine Noel, a principal with Ptak, Noel & Associates. "But you can't manage something if you don't know its configuration, and you need to be able to do that quickly and efficiently. They can't go to Step 2, which are things like capacity planning, until they solve Step 1, which is configuration."

Last week, Step 1 involved issuing the "release candidate" for its Windows Server Update Services (WSUS ), a free server that corporations internally deploy to download patches from Microsoft and push them out to desktops and servers. A release candidate is the final step in the beta process before product shipment. Microsoft called the software Windows Update Services in the past. More than 100,000 copies of the 1.0 version, which is called Software Update Services, connect to Microsoft on a monthly basis to download patches.

The company also launched the beta program for Microsoft Update, a public Web-based patch download site and the replacement for the current Windows Update. Microsoft Update eventually will provide patches for all Microsoft software and will work in conjunction with WSUS.

"The significant things we have focused on is 'can we reduce the downtime and the costs associated with getting patches out to systems and getting them updated?'" says Felicity McGourty, director of product marketing in the Windows and enterprise management group at Microsoft. "The second thing we are focused on is 'can we reduce the costs as far as the labor?' The third aspect that we covered is to reduce data loss."

But Microsoft's goal is DSI, and WSUS and Microsoft Update form the foundation for all patch and assessment tools going forward. The linchpin is WSUS' new client-side scanning engine that details what patches are installed and catalog technology that lists available patches and updates.

Those two technologies eventually will replace similar features in Systems Management Server and Microsoft Operations Manager and will be part of the forthcoming System Center, which will include the Indy capacity-planning tool.