Q&A: Business Value of Windows Server System, Dynamic Systems Initiative, Outlined



Kirill Tatarinov, Corporate Vice President, Enterprise Management Division

COPENHAGEN, Nov. 11, 2003 — When Kirill Tatarinov, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Enterprise Management Division, meets with customers, they tell him they want products and solutions that are easier to manage and simple to use and deploy — as well as provide greater value and lower total cost. In a keynote at the Microsoft IT Forum here today, Tatarinov will outline how Microsoft technology allows businesses to meet all of these needs, in part through the application of what Microsoft calls “integrated innovation.”

Tatarinov will explain how the Microsoft Windows Server System provides businesses a complete server infrastructure that integrates with other Microsoft products, enabling them to meet their IT challenges. He will also explain how Microsoft’s Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) will address platform management issues — and extend the company’s commitment to what Microsoft calls “integrated innovation” — by dramatically simplifying and automating development, deployment and operation of distributed computing systems.

Tatarinov joined Microsoft in summer 2002, with more than a decade of experience in the systems and network management industry. Most recently, Tatarinov was senior vice president and chief technology officer for BMC Software Inc. Before that, he was co-founder, chief architect, and head of research and development for Patrol Software Pty. Ltd., original developer for the PATROL family of products. In January 2002, Computerworld named him one of the business world’s 2002 Premier 100 IT Leaders.

Tatarinov spoke with PressPass to talk about how businesses can benefit from Microsoft’s integrated-innovation approach.

PressPass: Explain what Microsoft means when it talks about “integrated innovation?”

Tatarinov: When I talk with customers, they tell me of their frustrations: frustrations with applying resources just to keep up, frustrations about applications not working together, and of the expectations placed on them to deliver more value to the bottom line.

We want to make IT professionals successful. To do so, we’re investing billions of dollars in research and development and creating an integrated platform that works well across the Windows Server System family and in connecting with heterogeneous environments. However, it is not enough to simply integrate today’s technology; we must also build a structure that easily accommodates next-generation products. We call this approach “integrated innovation.”

It refers to Microsoft’s design principles for products that offer seamless integration, and is also forward looking with easier management, simpler deployment and use and greater overall value. For developers, this means greater productivity and easier access to advanced technologies directly from within their familiar development environment. For IT professionals, this means spending less time managing existing infrastructure and more time adding value to the business while meeting strategic needs. For information workers, this means being able to take advantage of new capabilities and access more information to seize new business opportunities without needing to learn new computing environments.

PressPass: Other companies also talk about integration. What makes Microsoft’s integrated innovation strategy different?

Tatarinov: One key differentiator is that we’re not just talking about it. It’s a part of our heritage and we’ve been delivering on it for years. Integrated innovation is real today, in the form of Microsoft Windows Server System, the Microsoft Office System, and the Visual Studio .NET integrated development environment. That makes it an end-to-end solution — something far different than the piece-meal solutions our competitors offer.

PressPass: In your keynote, you plan to talk about the value of Windows Server System to businesses. What differentiates Windows Server System from other platforms?

Tatarinov: Windows Server System is server-infrastructure software that provides the integrated functionality businesses need to connect their applications; to build a dependable, secure and manageable IT infrastructure; to increase the productivity of developers, IT professionals, and information workers, and to accomplish all of this with the best value for the business. We have designed Windows Server System through a process of integrated innovation, ensuring that new capabilities are incorporated into the system, that the servers across the system work well together, and that the whole system works seamlessly with the latest advancements in the Microsoft Office System and Visual Studio. Now, IT users can focus less on making things work together and training users, and more on adding strategic value to their businesses.

Windows Server System starts with the Microsoft Windows Server operating system at its foundation and is designed to deliver value across every facet of IT, including application infrastructure for rapid design and development; operations infrastructure for easier and more secure deployment and management; and information work infrastructure for highly productive communications and collaboration.

PressPass: Can you provide an example of how the products within Windows Server System work together?

Tatarinov: Sure. One example that IT Forum attendees will see during a keynote demo is how the upcoming Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 and Microsoft Operations Manager will work together to monitor the business processes of the data center. The business activity monitoring (BAM) offered by BizTalk Server will enable business analysts to obtain real-time views into their critical business processes. They get business-level reports on, for example, how the organization is meeting its broad service-level agreements.

And businesses don’t have to build the integration line-by-line, as they would with an open source solution; we’ve designed these products from the ground-up to work well with each other; this is the central philosophy of integrated innovation..

PressPass: How does the Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) fit into Microsoft’s overall enterprise strategy?

Tatarinov : The goal of DSI is to combine a long-term vision for how customers can drastically reduce complexity in their IT infrastructure with a solid product roadmap that offers valuable solutions today and enables customers to take practical steps in line with the long term vision.

With DSI, we aim to enhance the Windows platform and deliver a coordinated set of solutions that dramatically simplify and automate how businesses design, deploy and operate distributed systems. We will create those solutions through integrated innovation across the entire portfolio of Microsoft and partner products. This includes development tools, server applications, operating systems, and management tools.

PressPass: Can you speak more about DSI? What elements of DSI are available to customers now?

Tatarinov: DSI is evident with Systems Management Server 2003, which we’re launching today in conjunction with IT Forum. Systems Management Server now has tight integration with Windows Server 2003 components such as Active Directory, so it makes focused software deployments more effective than ever before, without requiring IT departments to recreate organizational structures and resource hierarchies they’ve already defined in Active Directory. Systems Management Server also includes new capabilities for securing the enterprise and for managing computer assets.

We’re particularly excited about Systems Management Server 2003 and our customers are excited about it as well. This is very much a customer-driven release. For example, customers told us they wanted better mobile support for roaming users and help protecting their enterprise. As a direct result of that feedback, we delivered a new Advanced Client for mobile users and integrated support for Windows security and Office updates. Systems Management Server 2003 is already deployed in full production, managing 250,000 devices at more than 60 early adopter customer sites worldwide. Early adopters and beta customers have reported significant cost savings, seamless upgrades, and substantial improvements in software distribution, reporting, scalability, and performance.

PressPass: Beyond Systems Management Server 2003, where can we see DSI operating today?

Tatarinov: Automated Deployment Services for Windows Server 2003 is a good example. This new server provisioning and administration tool allows rapid deployment of both Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 onto bare metal servers. Network Load Balancing and Windows Server Clustering in Windows Server 2003 boost availability and reliability by giving administrators ways to balance network traffic among servers and to ensure that a single server failure won’t disrupt an application’s operation. Volume Shadow Copy Services facilitate the rapid backup of enormous amounts of data. These technologies demonstrate how DSI enhances various aspects of the IT infrastructure lifecycle.

PressPass: What’s ahead for DSI ?

Tatarinov: We have a well-defined roadmap for DSI. The initiative covers the operating system, server applications and tools and management products. We’ll continue to evolve Windows Server with innovations such as Software Update Services 2.0. On the development side, we’ll introduce the next version of Visual Studio .NET, codenamed “Whidbey,” in 2004. As part of “Whidbey,” the recently announced Web services design tools enable infrastructure and application architects to “design for operations,” which means that developers can build manageability into an application at its inception.

On the management side, look for Microsoft Operations Manager 2004 and Microsoft System Center, our solution for providing customers with complete application and system management for enterprises of all sizes. Microsoft System Center will provide a comprehensive solution for proactively managing enterprises and driving down the total cost of ownership of the Windows platform. It will provide solutions for enterprise management scenarios, including desktops, laptops, personal digital assistants, applications and servers.

PressPass: Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 is a big part of your keynote address today. What are you going to say?

Tatarinov: Exchange Server 2003 is a key component of Windows Server System. Though the product just launched last month, we are already seeing tremendous customer interest in upgrading. Existing Exchange Server customers are going to find Exchange 2003 is a boon to their organizations in increased security, reliability and manageability, with tight integration with Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Operations Manager 2000. These customers will also find that Exchange 2003 increases productivity in their organization through deep integration with Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, allowing them to access their e-mail, calendar and other Exchange Server data in new and faster ways.

Customers also will find that this product delivers significant TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) savings. When used in conjunction with Windows and Outlook, Exchange 2003 allows a customers’ messaging infrastructure to operate more efficiently, leading to cost savings both from server and site consolidation and from personal effectiveness.

Press Pass: What is the main message you want your customers to take away today from IT Forum?

Tatarinov: Reducing complexity and cost of operations continues to be one of our customers’ biggest challenges. Windows Server System and the Dynamic System Initiative, together with our integrated innovation approach to software development, provide solutions to these challenges.

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