Microsoft proved last week that it still has a lot of work to do on Longhorn before it is corporate-ready. But the imminent release of the next version of its server operating system is on target to provide users with key technology designed to greatly augment secure access to their networks.
At Microsoft’s annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), Longhorn dominated the marquee with its promise of future improvements. But for the near term, the company announced the first public beta of the Windows Server 2003 R2 upgrade, designed to let users lock down access controls inside and outside a firewall.
The beta, which is slated to ship in the next week and is already being tried by a group of 3,000 testers, includes an identity technology called Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). ADFS is one of the final pieces of Microsoft’s identity management platform and it represents the company’s first implementation of the WS-Federation protocol. Microsoft has positioned WS-Federation, which the company developed with IBM, as the linchpin for integrating security infrastructures between companies.
“My personal quest is to dispel the idea this is just a roll-up of existing stuff; that’s not true. There are a lot of new technologies out there,” says Samm DiStasio, director of product management for the Windows Server division.
Microsoft also used WinHEC, which is targeted at hardware manufacturers, to implore those partners to start developing drivers for new 64-bit platforms and for Longhorn. The company also showed off prototypes of future mobile devices and introduced new feature sets for Longhorn, such as touch-screen support.
A new document format code-named Metro was introduced, which is expected to rival Adobe’s PDF format.
The company also said its Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB), a hardware/software-based security feature introduced two years ago under the name Palladium, would not ship with Longhorn as previously planned. Instead, a few features that align with NGSCB, such as Secure Start-up, will show up in Longhorn.
In addition, the company gave a small glimpse of the Avalon user interface features slated for Longhorn and formally launched its first 64-bit operating systems.
While there appeared to be a lot on the agenda, critics say Microsoft must get past discussions of Longhorn’s goals and begin to talk about specific details so companies can understand the upgrade options Longhorn presents.
“Longhorn is the focus again after the shipment of the service packs for XP and Windows Server 2003, but knowing what Longhorn is going to be, I think, is still a bit hard,” says Michael Cherry, an analyst at independent research firm Directions on Microsoft. “They are telling us it is going to be important, but the underlying details are still to be determined.”
Coming attractions Microsoft has plans to release most of its server applica-tions for its new 64-bit server platform, which was formally launched last week. Here is a look at the release schedule. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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What has been determined is when all users can finally begin to test Win 2003 R2. It is the first so-called “interim” release of the server operating system since Microsoft initiated a release cycle that called for a major operating system upgrade every four years, with a lesser upgrade in between.
The highlight is ADFS, which lets users integrate their identity and access control infrastructures with partners also running the Microsoft directory. Eventually, users will be able to integrate regardless of platform if Microsoft is successful in establishing WS-Federation as one protocol under its WS-Security banner of Web services protocols.
ADFS is Microsoft’s first support for WS-Federation, which will let the protocol be tested side by side with similar specifications, most notably the Security Assertion Markup Language and the Liberty Alliance’s Identity Web Services Framework.
Earlier this year, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chief software architect, called federation a milestone in the company’s ongoing security efforts.
Users will have to roll out four pieces of Microsoft infrastructure to support ADFS: Active Directory, the federation services, a federation server proxy and a Web server, according to Microsoft officials.
Also part of R2 is branch-office support so servers can be managed remotely from a central location, integration of Services for Unix into the core operating system, new storage management features, support for the .Net Framework 2.0 and enhancements to the Windows SharePoint Services collaboration technology.
While R2 is around the corner, Microsoft used WinHEC to show some features of Longhorn, which won’t ship until next year, including instant-on, smart caching, disk optimization, hot patching, single image deployment, third-party code isolation, self-healing and diagnostic features.
Also new is the Metro document format, which is an XML-based technology that Microsoft plans to offer royalty free. Metro documents can be displayed without the need for a specialized client, but printers and print drivers will have to be developed that support Metro, Microsoft officials said.
