30 June 2004

Amazing array of Windows Powered Devices I was wondering a few weeks ago why the Tablet PC team were moved into the Mobile and Embedded Devices division in Microsoft.  Then I saw this web page and the array of Tablet format devices and I realised why!  Theres a very good write up of recent news from the Embedded developers conference here.  More links to Windows powered devices can be found below: Tablet PC Pocket PC Media Center PC Smart picture frame Portable Media Center Smartphone Windows Automotive Gametrac gaming device SPOT watch Windows-powered cash register at store iCEBOX kitchen PC and home controller   5:28:53 PM    trackback []  comment [] Office 12 and other key release dates Some interesting roadmap data has been published at Tech-ED.  Well perhaps more stunning than interesting.  I posted previously that maybe Microsoft were loosing their nerve and pushing product to market rapidly through fear of loss of revenue, and that there strategic re-architecting of the main product lines was potentially being compromised.  However these dates tell a different story: The core foundation elements, i.e. Longhorn Client and SQL Server come first.  Then Longhorn Server, then Exchange Kodiak, Office System 12 and SPSv3 in 2007-8.  Hopefully a new version of WSS sits somewhere around 2005-6.  This implies that Microsoft are planning something significant in Office System 12, and that the information management and collaboration story might actually start to come together with the next versions of Longhorn server, Exchange and SPS.  There’s a jpeg of the roadmap slide available here. Microsoft are planning to give me some details under NDA of this stuff quite soon, so I maybe able to confirm some of this speculation at a high level. 2:09:50 PM    trackback []  comment [] WIndows 2003 Server, anywhere access It's TechED Europe this week and Microsoft have announced more details of the next release of Windows 2003 Server.  The area of most interest to me is, "anywhere access", which Neowin reports on. Anywhere access enables users to use terminal services over port 80 (HTTPs/RPC), Outlook over port 80 (HTTPs/RPC) and also file shares from within corporate LANs over port 80 (HTTPs/RPC).  These are very interesting developments, the WTS capabilities removing one more advantage that Citrix has over Microsoft.  The file share access is interesting, as file share access using WebDAV is already available I can only assume that this is CIFS access tunnelled over HTTPS, this would be a big improvement over WebDAV as it would support more applications, the properties dialog and other features not available today using DAV.  I thought Outlook over HTTPS was already part of Exchange 2003 server, so I am not sure why this is included in a feature list for Windows 2003 server unless its actually provided by the OS or probably IIS rather than Exchange. These HTTP access mechanisms are useful not just in providing internet access to corporate resources but also for corporates wishing to provide controlled access on their WAN for third parties, aquisitions or businesses in the process of being disposed of. 1:36:45 PM    trackback []  comment []

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