Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.2 Now Available!

Expanding to assess readiness for Microsoft Online Services, SQL Server 2008, Forefront Client Security, and Network Access Protection

Many of you are in the midst of an IT migration or upgrade planning but do not know with 100% certainty what computers are in your IT environment or what applications have been deployed. The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 3.2 makes it easier for customers and partners like you to quickly identify what servers, workstations, and network devices are in your IT environment. MAP also provides specific and actionable IT proposals and reports to help you get the most value out of Microsoft products and infrastructure.

Today, Brad Anderson, General Manager of the Management and Solutions Division at Microsoft, announced the RTM release of the MAP Toolkit 3.2 at the TechEd EMEA 2008 in Barcelona.

Over 510,000 Microsoft customers and partners have already downloaded and used MAP and its prior versions including Costco Wholesale Corporation, Continental Airlines, and Banque de Luxembourg.

Introducing Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit

Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP)Toolkit is a scalable and agent-less assessment platform designed to make it easier for you to adopt the latest Microsoft technologies. In this version, MAP has expanded its assessment capabilities to include SQL Server 2008, Forefront/NAP, and Microsoft Online Services migration, as well as providing a Power Savings assessment to help you “go green.”

In summary, MAP Toolkit 3.2 assessment areas now include:

• SQL Server Database Instance Discovery (NEW!)

• Microsoft Online Services Needs Assessment and Survey (NEW!)

• Forefront Client Security/NAP Readiness Assessment (NEW!)

• Power Savings Calculator (NEW!)

• Virtualization Infrastructure Assessment (e.g. reporting the mapping of hosts by guests) (NEW!)

• Windows Server 2008 Hardware Assessment

• Server Consolidation Reports and Proposals (Hyper-V or Virtual Server 2005 R2)

• Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 Hardware Assessment

• Desktop Security Assessment to determine if desktops have anti-virus and anti-malware programs installed and up-to-date, or if the Windows Firewall is turned on

Toolkit Features

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit performs key functions that include hardware and device inventory, compatibility analysis, and readiness reporting.

MAP utilizes an enterprise-scale, agent-less architecture that enables you to inventory your servers, desktops, applications, and network devices without installing any software agents on each machine being assessed. This tool can discover all computers within Active Directory, and most importantly, non-IT managed machines such as workgroup members.

Additionally, MAP can generate localized desktop readiness reports in seven languages including North American English, German, French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Benefits to You (Customers and Partners)

Fast and Agent-less. MAP provides secure network-wide assessment of environments of up to 100,000 computers in a matter of hours instead of days, all without deploying any software agents on each inventoried machine.

Saves Pre-Sales and Planning Time. For those of you who are IT consultants and Microsoft Partners, you know that a detailed network inventory and assessment of servers and desktops often takes days of manual labor. With MAP, you can now drastically reduce the time it takes for the same inventory to a matter of hours; allowing you more time to focus your efforts on critical pre-sales engagement tasks. For those of you who are IT professionals, MAP can significantly reduce the time it takes to gather the information necessary to make the business case for client and server migration, as well as for your upcoming virtualization projects.

Actionable Recommendations and Reporting. MAP offers valuable inventory and readiness assessment reports with specific upgrade recommendations and virtualization candidate reports that make it easier for IT migration and deployment projects to get off the ground and running.

Coverage from Desktops to Servers. MAP provides technology assessment and planning recommendations for many Microsoft desktop and server products including SQL Server 2008, Forefront Client Security/NAP, Microsoft Online Services, Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, Virtual Server 2005 R2, Windows Vista, 2007 Microsoft Office, Microsoft Application Virtualization (or App-V), System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007, and more.

Next Steps

Try the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.2 RTM version now! Tell a friend and blog about it!

• 
  
  Download Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.2 (RTM Bits)


• 
  
  Learn more about MAP on TechNet


• 
  
  Learn more about MAP on Microsoft Partner Program Portal


• 
  
  View quick demos on how to use the various features of MAP: Server Virtualization, PC Security + Windows Vista Hardware Assessment, and SQL 2008 Server Migration


• 
  
  Read Hyper-V/MAP Case Studies: See how Costco Wholesale Corporation, Continental Airlines, and Banque de Luxembourg benefitted from using the MAP Toolkit


• 
  
  Read the MAP Team Blog


• 
  
  Join the TechNet Forum Community for MAP


• 
  
  Use MAP together with the Integrated Virtualization ROI Tool to get more virtualization POC wins


• 
  
  MAP is a member of the family of Microsoft Solution Accelerators.

Baldwin Ng

Sr. Product Manager, Microsoft Solution Accelerators Team

Reference : http://blogs.technet.com/mapblog/archive/2008/11/03/rtm-news-microsoft-assessment-and-planning-toolkit-3-2-now-available.aspx

Stormy Weather: 7 Gotchas in Cloud Computing

When the computer industry buys into a buzzword, it's like getting a pop song stuck in your head. It's all you hear. Worse, the same half-dozen questions about the hyped trend are incessantly paraded out, with responses that succeed mainly in revealing how poorly understood the buzzword actually is.

These days, the hottest buzzphrase is "cloud computing," and for John Willis, a systems management consultant and author of an IT management and cloud blog , the most annoying question is this: Will enterprises embrace this style of computing?

"It's not a binary question," he asserts. "There will be things for the enterprise that will completely make sense and things that won't."

The better question, he says, is whether you understand the various offerings and architectures that fit under that umbrella term, the scenarios where one or more of those offerings would work, and the benefits and downsides of using them.

Even cloud users and proponents don't always recognize the downsides and thus don't prepare for what could go wrong, says Dave Methvin, chief technology officer at PC Pitstop LLC, which uses Amazon.com Inc.'s S3 cloud-based storage system and Google Apps . "They're trusting in the cloud too much and don't realize what the implications are," he says.
With that as prologue, here are seven turbulent areas where current and potential users of cloud computing need to be particularly wary.

Costs, Part I: Cloud Infrastructure Providers
When Brad Jefferson first founded Animoto Productions, a Web service that enables people to turn images and music into high-production video, he chose a Web hosting provider for the company's processing needs. Looking out over the horizon, however, Jefferson could see that the provider wouldn't be able to meet anticipated peak processing requirements.

But rather than investing in in-house servers and staff, Jefferson turned to Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, a Web service known as EC2 that provides resizable computing capacity in the cloud, and RightScale Inc., which provides system management for users of Web-based services such as EC2. With EC2, companies pay only for the server capacity they use, and they obtain and configure capacity over the Web.

"This is a capital-intensive business," Jefferson said in a podcast interview with Willis. "We could either go the venture capital route and give away a lot of equity or go to Amazon and pay by the drink."

His decision was validated in April, when usage spiked from 50 EC2 servers to 5,000 in one week. Jefferson says he never could have anticipated such needs. Even if he had, it would have cost millions to build the type of infrastructure that could have handled that spike. And investing in that infrastructure would have been overkill, since that capacity isn't needed all the time, he says.

But paying by the drink might make less economic sense once an application is used at a consistent level, Willis says. In fact, Jefferson says he might consider a hybrid approach when he gets a better sense of Animoto's usage patterns. In-house servers could take care of Animoto's ongoing, persistent requirements, and anything over that could be handled by the cloud.


Costs, Part II: Cloud Storage Providers
Storage in the cloud is another hot topic, but it's important to closely evaluate the costs, says George Crump, founder of Storage Switzerland LLC, an analyst firm that focuses on the virtualization and storage marketplaces.

At about 25 cents per gigabyte per month, cloud-based storage systems look like a huge bargain, Crump says. But although Crump is a proponent of cloud storage, the current cost models don't reflect how storage really works, he says. That's because traditional internal storage systems are designed to reduce storage costs over the life of the data by moving older and less-accessed data to less-expensive media, such as slower disk, tape or optical systems. But today, cloud companies essentially charge the same amount "from Day One to Day 700," Crump says.

Amazon's formula for calculating monthly rates for its S3 cloud storage service is based on the amount of data being stored, the number of access requests made and the number of data transfers, according to Methvin. The more you do, the more you pay.

Crump says that with the constant decline of storage media costs, it's not economical to store data in the cloud over a long period of time.

Cloud storage vendors need to create a different pricing model, he says. One idea is to move data that hasn't been accessed in, say, six months to a slower form of media and charge less for this storage. Users would also need to agree to lower service levels on the older data. "They might charge you $200 for 64G the first year; and the next year, instead of your having to buy more storage, they'd ask permission to archive 32G of the data and charge maybe 4 cents per gigabyte," Crump explains.

To further drive down their own costs and users' monthly fees, providers could store older data on systems that can power down or off when not in use, Crump says.

Sudden Code Changes

With cloud computing, companies have little to no control over when an application service provider decides to make a code change. This can wreak havoc when the code isn't thoroughly tested and doesn't work with all browsers.

That's what happened to users of Los Angeles-based SiteMeter Inc.'s Web traffic analysis system this summer. SiteMeter is a software-as-a-service-based (SaaS) operation that offers an application that works by injecting scripts into the HTML code of Web pages that users want tracked.

In July, the company released code that caused some problems. Any visitor using Internet Explorer to view Web pages with embedded SiteMeter code got an error message. When users began to complain, Web site owners weren't immediately sure where the problem was.

"If it were your own company pushing out live code and a problem occurred, you'd make the connection," Methvin explains. "But in this situation, the people using the cloud service started having users complaining, and it was a couple of hours later when they said, 'Maybe it's SiteMeter.' And sure enough, when they took the code out, it stopped happening."

The problem with the new code was greatly magnified because something had changed in the cloud without the users' knowledge. "There was no clear audit trail that the average user of SiteMeter could see and say, 'Ah, they updated the code,' " Methvin says.

Soon after, SiteMeter unexpectedly upgraded its system, quickly drawing the ire of users such as Michael van der Galien, editor of PoliGazette , a Web-based news and opinion site. The new version was "frustratingly slow and impractical," van der Galien says on his blog.

In addition, he says, current users had to provide a special code to reactivate their accounts, which caused additional frustration. Negative reaction was so immediate and intense that SiteMeter quickly retreated to its old system, much to the relief of van der Galien and hundreds of other users.

"Imagine Microsoft saying, 'As of this date, Word 2003 will cease to exist, and we'll be switching to 2007,' " Methvin says. "Users would all get confused and swamp the help desk, and that's kind of what happened."

Over time, he says, companies such as SiteMeter will learn to use beta programs, announce changes in advance, run systems in parallel and take other measures when making changes. Meanwhile, let the buyer beware.

Service Disruptions
Given the much-discussed outages of Amazon S3 , Google's Gmail and Apple's MobileMe , it's clear that cloud users need to prepare for service disruptions. For starters, they should demand that service providers notify them of current and even potential outages.
"You don't want to be caught by surprise," says Methvin, who uses both S3 and Gmail. Some vendors have relied on passive notification approaches, such as their own blogs, he says, but they're becoming more proactive.

For example, some vendors are providing a status page where users can monitor problems or subscribe to RSS feeds or cell phone alerts that notify them when there's trouble. "If there's a problem, the cloud service should give you feedback as to what's wrong and how to fix it," Methvin says.

Users should also create contingency plans with outages in mind. At PC Pitstop, for instance, an S3 outage would mean users couldn't purchase products on its site, since it relies on cloud storage for downloads. That's why Methvin created a fallback option. If S3 goes down, products can be downloaded from the company's own servers.

PC Pitstop doesn't have a backup plan for Google Apps, but Methvin reasons that with all of its resources, Google would be able to get a system such as e-mail up and running more quickly than his own staffers could if they had to manage a complex system like Microsoft Exchange. "You lose a little bit of control, but it's not necessarily the kind of control you want to have," he says.

Overall, it's important to understand your vendor's fail-over strategy and develop one for yourself. For instance, Palo Alto Software Inc. offers a cloud-based e-mail system that uses a caching strategy to enable continuous use during an outage. Called Email Center Pro, the system relies on S3 for primary storage, but it's designed so that if S3 goes down, users can still view locally cached copies of recent e-mails.

Forrester Research Inc. advises customers to ask whether the cloud service provider has geographically dispersed redundancy built into its architecture and how long it would take to get service running on backup. Others advise prospective users to discuss service-level agreements with vendors and arrange for outage compensation.

Many vendors reimburse customers for lost service. Amazon.com, for example, applies a 10% credit if S3 availability dips below 99.9% in a month.

Vendor Expertise

One of the biggest enticements of cloud computing is the promise of IT without the IT staff. However, veteran cloud users are adamant that this is not what you get. In fact, since many cloud vendors are new companies, their expertise -- especially with enterprise-level needs -- can be thin, says Rene Bonvanie , senior vice president at Serena Software Inc. It's essential to supplement providers' skills with those of your own in-house staff, he adds.

"The reality is that most of the companies operating these services are not nearly as experienced as we hoped they would be," Bonvanie says.

The inexperience shows up in application stability, especially when users need to integrate applications for functions like cross-application customer reporting, he says.

Serena itself provides a cloud-based application life-cycle management system, and it has decided to run most of its own business in the cloud as well. It uses a suite of office productivity applications from Google, a marketing automation application from MarketBright Inc. and an on-demand billing system from Aria Systems Inc.

So far, it has pushed its sales and marketing automation, payroll, intranet management, collaboration software and content management systems to the cloud. The only noncloud application is SAP, for which Serena outsourced management to an offshore firm.
According to Bonvanie, "the elimination of labor associated with cloud computing is greatly exaggerated."

The onus is still on the cloud consumer when it comes to integration. "Not only are you dealing with more moving parts, but they're not always as stable as you might think," he says.
"Today, there's no complete suite of SaaS applications, no equivalent of Oracle or R/3, and I don't think there ever will be," Bonvanie says. "Therefore, we in IT get a few more things pushed to us that are, quite honestly, not trivial."


Global Concerns
Cloud vendors today have a U.S.-centric view of providing services, and they need to adjust to the response-time needs of users around the world, says Reuven Cohen , founder and chief technologist at Enomaly Inc., a cloud infrastructure provider. This means ensuring that the application performs as well for users in, say, London as it does for those in Cincinnati.
Bonvanie agrees. Some cloud vendors "forget that we're more distributed than they are," he says.

For instance, San Bruno, Calif.-based MarketBright's cloud-based marketing application works great for Serena's marketing department in Redwood City, Calif., but performance diminished when personnel in Australia and India began using it. "People should investigate whether the vendor has optimized the application to work well around the world," Bonvanie says. "Don't just do an evaluation a few miles from where the hardware sits."

Worldwide optimization can be accomplished either by situating servers globally or by relying on a Web application acceleration service, also called a content delivery network, such as that of Akamai Technologies Inc. These systems work across the Internet to improve performance, scalability and cost efficiency for users.

Of course, situating servers globally can raise thorny geopolitical issues, Willis points out. Although it would be great to be able to load-balance application servers on demand in the Pacific Rim, Russia, China or Australia, the industry "isn't even close to that yet," he says. "We haven't even started that whole geopolitical discussion."

In fact, Cohen points out, some users outside of the U.S. are wary of hosting data on servers in this country. They cite the USA Patriot Act, which increases the ability of law enforcement agencies to search telephone, e-mail communications, medical and financial records and eases restrictions on foreign-intelligence-gathering within the U.S. The Canadian government, for instance, prohibits the export of certain personal data to the U.S.

"It's hazy and not well defined," Cohen says of the act. "People wonder, 'Can they just go in and take [the data] at a moment's notice, with no notification beforehand?' That's a whole second set of problems to be addressed."

Non-native Applications

Some applications offered on SaaS platforms were originally designed for SaaS; others were rebuilt to work that way. For example, Bonvanie says, there's a very big difference between applications like WebEx and Salesforce.com, which were designed as SaaS offerings, and Aria's billing platform, which was not.

"It's highly complex and fits in the cloud, but its origins are not cloud-based," he says. "If the offering was not born [in] but moved to the cloud, you deal with a different set of restrictions as far as how you can change it."

Whatever "cloud computing" is to you -- an annoying buzzphrase or a vehicle that might power your company into the future -- it's essential to get to know what it really means, how it fits into your computing architecture and what storms you may encounter en route to the cloud.

Computerworld contributing writer in Newton, Mass. Contact her at marybrandel@verizon.net .

This version of the story originally appeared in Computerworld s print edition.

Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/153219/cloud_computing_gotcha.html?tk=rss_news

Windows Azure: Why Microsoft Better Get It Right

Microsoft unleashed a new cloud computing ecosystem at its recent Professional Developers Conference event, even though most observers chose to focus on more obvious, though less important, aspects of its announcement.

Essentially, Microsoft is going to create a Windows-based cloud infrastructure. Many of the details of its ultimate offering are still unclear, and it chose to discuss Azure primarily in terms of how it enables Microsoft-offered hosting (dubbed Azure Services Platform) of Microsoft applications like Exchange, Live Services, .NET Services, SQL Server, SharePoint, and Dynamics CRM, and SQL Server. I'm surprised that so many of the commentators (and presumably Microsoft itself) chose to discuss this offering in terms of Microsoft offering SaaS version of its products. While I think this offering approach is interesting, it falls short of revolutionary; by contrast, the revolutionary aspects of Azure have barely been touched on by all the commentary about the new offering. Let me offer my take on what's really interesting about Azure:
Microsoft offering hosted versions (aka SaaS) of its applications is interesting; however, plenty of people already offer hosted versions of its server products (e.g., Exchange, SharePoint). So the mere fact of these apps being available in "the cloud" is nothing new. However, Microsoft has some interesting flexibility here. Other businesses offering hosted versions of these apps have to obtain licenses for them and pay some amount related to the list price of the product. By contrast, Microsoft, as the producer of the products, can -- should it choose -- price its hosted version nearer the marginal license cost of an instance, i.e., near-zero. Of course, Microsoft still has to pay for the infrastructure, operations, etc., but it can clearly, should it choose, obtain a price advantage compated to competitive offerings. This leads us to the next point: infrastructure pricing.

Microsoft, based on the cash flow from its packaged software offerings, clearly has a capital cost advantage compared to its competitors for hosting Microsoft applications. And, based on its experience in hosting Hotmai, Microsoft clearly has operational experience capable of scaling an infrastructure cost-effectively. Added to its ability to price at the margin for software licenses, this obviously provides Microsoft with the ability to be the low-cost provider of Microsoft application hosting. And this advantage doesn't even include the (dare I say it) synergies available to it based on its common ownership of the cloud offering and the applications themselves.

However, focusing on these aspects of the offering is missing the forest for the trees, so to speak; perhaps a better way to say it is that it focuses on the low-hanging fruit without realizing there is much more-and sweeter-fruit available just slightly further beyond the low-hanging stuff. And that's where Azure gets interesting.

First and foremost, Azure offers a way for Microsoft-based applications to be deployed in the cloud. All of the cloud offerings thus far have been Linux-oriented and required Linux-oriented skills. This has been fine for the first generation of cloud developers: they're early adopters most likely to have advanced skills. There is an enormous base of mainstream developers with Windows-based skills, though; corporations are stuffed with Windows developers. Before Azure, these developers were blocked from developing cloud-based applications. With Azure, they can participate in the cloud-which is why other elements of the announcement relating to .NET and SQL Server are so important. These capabilities of Azure will accelerate cloud adoption by enterprises. So Azure's support of the Windows development infrastructure is a big deal.



Cloud Economics Meets Windows Infrastructure
But even that isn't as important as what else Azure will provide: the mix of cloud economics and innovation with Windows infrastructure. One can argue that other providers (e.g., Amazon Web Services) could offer the same capability of hosting Windows infrastructure capabilities, so Azure, on first blush might not seem so important. However, these offerings would face the same issue alluded to earlier, namely, Microsoft's competitive advantage available through marginal license pricing (of course, that might be subject to antitrust issues, so the advantage actually might be moot). However, and this is not in doubt, Microsoft undoubtedly has an unanswerable advantage in that it can extend its components' architectures-at least theoretically-to be better suited to cloud infrastructure. That is to say, Microsoft could, say, take .NET, which today is primarily focused on operating on a single server, and extend it to transparently operate on a farm of servers, scaling up and down depending upon load. And this is where Azure could-could-get revolutionary. Marrying today's widely distributed Microsoft skill base with a cloud-capable architecture based on established Microsoft component development approaches, APIs, etc., could unleash a wave of innovation at least as great as the innovation already seen in EC2 (see this previous blog posting for some insight about today's cloud innovation). In fact, given the relative skill distribution of Linux vs. Windows, one could expect the Azure wave to be even larger.

Of course, this is all future tense, and by no means certain. Microsoft has, in the past, announced many, many initiatives that ultimately fizzled out. More challenging, perhaps, is how a company with large, established revenue streams will nurture a new offering that might clash with those established streams. This is Clayton Christensen territory. It can be all-too-tempting to skew a new offering to "better integrate" with current successful products to the detriment of the newcomer.

Microsoft has a mixed track record in this regard. I won't make a prediction about how it will turn out, but it will be a real challenge. However, cloud computing is, to my mind, at least, too important to fail at.

Cloud computing is at least as important as the move to distributed processing. If you track what distributed processing has meant to business and society-a computing on every desk and in every home, etc., etc.-you begin to get an appreciation for why Microsoft has to successfully address the cloud. Azure is a bet-the-company initiative-and there's a reason they're called bet-the-company: they're too important to fail at. So Microsoft needs to get Azure right.
Bernard Golden is CEO of consulting firm HyperStratus, which specializes in virtualization, cloud computing and related issues. He is also the author of "Virtualization for Dummies," the best-selling book on virtualization to date.


Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/153216/ms_windows_azure.html?tk=rss_news

Microsoft and LG Plan to Work Closer on Mobiles

As competition in the mobile phone market heats up, two companies with flagging momentum are teaming up to try to compete better with the market leaders.
Microsoft and LG on Monday said that they plan to work closely together, collaborating on research and development, marketing, applications and services for converged mobile devices.
The announcement came from Seoul, Korea, LG's base, during a trip there by Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO.
The collaboration is not a first for the companies. LG has already been making phones that run Windows Mobile. But the agreement could signal a stepped up effort by both companies to try to beat the competition.
While LG has had some hot sellers, such as the Chocolate, it now faces challenges from new competitors Apple and Google which are generating more excitement. Google just two weeks ago introduced the first phone to run on its Android software, HTC's G1. Apple's iPhone continues to build momentum.
Microsoft too has been affected by the new competitors. It has been working recently to try to position Windows Mobile, traditionally regarded as solely a business tool, as also useful for more personal applications. LG has traditionally focused on phones that would appeal most to mass market consumers.
Both companies have slipped in rankings recently. A recent Gartner study showed that worldwide, Microsoft in the second quarter this year slipped into the third place among providers of smartphone operating systems, behind number one Symbian and number two ranked Research In Motion. Last year in the same quarter, Microsoft beat out RIM for the second position.
A recent IDC study showed that LG during the third quarter this year slipped into the number-five position worldwide among mobile phone makers.
In a statement, the companies said they expected that their agreement would create momentum and innovation in the industry.


Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/153232/.html?tk=rss_news

TechEd: New networking features revealed for WIndows 7: DirectAccess and BranchCache

Microsoft is clearly using Tech Ed IT Pro in Barcelona to start revealing details about new features in the upcoming releases of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008.

One of the first sessions after the openening keynote was about new networking features in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. The enhancements clearly focus on making Windows work better from outside the corporate network and in Branch office situations.

Two prominent new features are:
DirectAccess
BranchCache

Direct Access is Microsoft's implementation of what I have earlier referred to as DirectConnect. The technoligy enables user to access resources on the corporate network from a corporate system over the Internet without a VPN using IPv6 and IPSec. Steve Riley already did a demo of this technology at Tech Ed in Orlando. It will be implemented as a client in Windows 7 and as a role on Windows Server 2008 R2.

BranchCache is a new caching technology that locally caches data that is retrieved over a WAN link using SMB or HTTP(S). This enables the next user that needs the same piece of information to retrieve the data without pulling all data over the line again. The demo's showed a substantial gain in speed. BranchCache is implemented in such a way that is preserves the security of the information.

BranchCache can be implemented in two modes:
BranchCache Distributed Cache
BranchCache Hosted Cache

BranchCache Distributed Cache provides a peer to peer mechanism for caching the data at the branch office. In this modes Windows 7 systems request for a local copy of the data at each other before pulling the data over the WAN link. Each time the data is fetched, the client checks with the originating server if the data has not changed and if the security settings allow access. BranchCache Distributed Cache only works for clients at the branch office that operate in the same subnet.

With BranchCache Hosted Cache, a Windows Server 2008 R2 server is assigned at the branch office to hold a cached copy of data that is retrieved over the WAN link. This server is configured with the BranchCache role and assigned as the caching server with Group Policy. It will work as the caching server for all Windows 7 clients at the branch office not regarding their subnet location.

The only downside I see in BranchCache is the fact that you need Windows Server 2008 R2/Windows 7 on both sides of the connection.


Reference : http://www.xpworld.com/

Microsoft: No Xbox 360 Price Drop for Several Years

The Xbox 360 has been through quite the public crucible of late. In the last 12 months, it's added a brand new model, re-priced its peripherals, dropped the bottom line cost of all its configurations, and in just a few weeks, it'll completely switch out the face it offers to gamers when powered on (see my review of that change-up, parts one and two). Whatever you think of those changes, you can justifiably say 2008 has been an incredibly transformative one for a system that only launched three years ago.

So it's not surprising to read that Microsoft's Stephen McGill told VideoGamer.com the price cuts are done, finished, fini, and that the company is "not dropping the price for many many years in the future." While McGill would technically be speaking on behalf of the UK market, Microsoft has tended to structure the 360's pricing internationally, so it's likely his statement applies universally.

According to McGill:

I'm not going to speculate where it might go (the price of the Xbox 360) in five or ten years time, whatever. But we've obviously just reduced the price and that's because we can pass the costs reductions we have straight on to consumers.

...a lot of people have been waiting for it to become even more affordable and they're now seeing that benefit and buying it in their droves and we can now hopefully continue it through Christmas and beyond."

That makes sense for the added reasons that Microsoft is selling well against Sony's PS3. Sony's Ray Maguire also said recently that the PS3 won't be dropping so much as a penny this holiday season, so there's no real pressure for Microsoft to double its flanking maneuvers.

That said, is it time for Sony to drop the PS3's price? Have a look at my thoughts on that touchy matter and decide for yourself.

Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/153200/no_xbox_price_drop.html?tk=rss_news

Microsoft: Data Shows Vista More Secure Than XP

Microsoft's latest security report shows that the number of new vulnerabilities found in its software was lower in first half of the year than the last half of 2007, with the Windows Vista OS proving more resistant to exploits than XP.

Microsoft reported 77 vulnerabilities from January to June compared to 116 for the last six months of 2007, according to the company's fifth Security Intelligence Report.

The decline is in line with the software industry as a whole, which saw a 19 percent decrease in vulnerability disclosures compared to the first half of 2007, Microsoft said. However, those vulnerabilities considered highly severe rose 13 percent.

Exploit code was available for about a third of the 77 vulnerabilities; however, reliable exploit code is available for only eight of those 77.

Other data shows that XP is attacked more frequently than Vista. In XP machines, Microsoft's own software contained 42 percent of the vulnerabilities attacked, while 58 percent were in third party software. For Vista machines, Microsoft's software had 6 percent of the vulnerabilities attacked, with third-party software containing 94 percent of the flaws.

New security technologies such as address space randomization have led to fewer successful attacks against Vista, said Vinny Gullotto, general manager of Microsoft's malware protection center.

"Moving onto Vista is clearly a safe bet," Gullotto said. "For us, it's a clear indicator that attacking Vista or trying to exploit Vista specifically is becoming much more difficult."

The highest number of exploits were released for Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 operating systems, Microsoft said.

Hackers appear to be increasingly targeting Internet surfers who speak Chinese. Microsoft found that 47 percent of browser-based exploits were executed against systems with Chinese set as the system language.

The most popular browser-based exploit is for the MDAC (Microsoft Data Access Components) bug that was patched (MS06-014) by Microsoft in April 2006.Some 12.1 percent of all exploits encountered on the Internet targeted that flaw. The second most encountered exploit is one aimed at a vulnerability in the RealPlayer multimedia software, CVE-2007-5601.

The two most commonly exploited vulnerabilities in Windows Vista concerned ActiveX controls that are commonly installed in China, Microsoft said.

Gullotto said Microsoft is continuing to improve the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), a free but very basic security application that can remove some of the most common malware families.

Last month, Microsoft added detection for "Antivirus XP," one of several questionable programs that warn users their PC is infected with malware, Gullotto said. The program badgers users to buy the software, which is of questionable utility. "Antivirus XP" is also very difficult to remove.

Microsoft fielded some 1,000 calls a month about Antivirus XP on its PC Safety line, where users can call and ask security questions. Since the MSRT started automatically removing the program, calls concerning Antivirus XP dropped by half the first week, Gullotto said.

Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/153193/windows_security.html?tk=rss_news

Microsoft's "New Xbox Experience" Leaked Online

I wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole, personally, but if you're an insufferably curious geek, it seems you can pull down a pirated version of Microsoft's New Xbox Experience. The NXE is Microsoft's impending total makeover for its Xbox 360 dashboard, which I recently previewed here and here. I say "early version" because I can confirm Microsoft's been releasing periodic updates to the NXE, so it's probably not the most recent version.

Furthermore, Microsoft has a very simple means of tracking who's supposed to have access and who isn't. I won't say how, but use your imagination and it'll come to you. If you download the update and connect, they'll also know you're not a card-carrying club member, at which point, says Microsoft, it's bye bye Xbox Live for you.

In case you think that's just grandstanding, Xbox Live director of programming Larry Hryb, aka "Major Nelson," Twittered the following on Saturday:

A little reminder: If you get your hands on NXE and you are NOT in the Preview Program. You won't be allowed on LIVE.

November 19th is just a few weeks away. Just wait. Besides, aren't Fable 2 and Fallout 3 enough?

Enable Windows 7 PreBeta Build 6801 protected bits!

During PDC ‘08, I was passed a note indicating that I should dig deeper into the bits to discover the snazzy new Taskbar. Upon cursory analysis, I found no evidence of such and dismissed the idea as completely bogus.

I got home and starting doing some research on a potentially new feature called Aero Shake when I stumbled upon an elaborate set of checks tied to various shell-related components, including the new Taskbar.

Update: Although a newer-looking Taskbar is present, it’s not exactly what you saw at PDC ‘08. For example, the Quicklaunch toolbar still exists, Aero Peek doesn’t work properly, and Jumplists are stale. This is likely why it wasn’t enabled, out of the box, so set your expectations accordingly.

To use these, what I call “protected features”, you must meet the following criteria:

1. Must be a member of an allowed domain
   
   
   
   • wingroup.windeploy.ntdev.microsoft.com
   
   
   • ntdev.corp.microsoft.com
   
   
   • redmond.corp.microsoft.com
   
   
   
   


2. Must not be an employee with a disallowed username prefix
   
   
   
   • a- (temporary employees)
   
   
   • v- (contractors/vendors)
   
   
   
   

Protected Feature Flowchart (click for full)

As checking against this criteria is potentially expensive, in terms of CPU cycles, the result of the check is cached for the duration of Explorer’s lifetime (per protected feature). The cached value is stored within a variable, space of which is allocated in the image’s initialized data section (.data).

Explorer does not initialize these variables at start and checks for a cached result for before performing any checks. I exploited this behavior by setting the initialized value in the image itself to 1 vice 0 to bypass all twelve checks.

Why not use a hook to intercept GetComputerNameExW / GetUserNameW?

I thought about building a hook to inject into the Explorer process upon start, but I grew concerned that legitimate code in Explorer that uses those functions to perform various legitimate tasks would malfunction. And I was lazy.

Can I has too? Plz?

Simply download a copy of a tool I whipped up for either x86 or x64 (untested thus far), drop it into your Windows\ directory and execute the following commands as an Administrator in a command prompt window:

• takeown /f %windir%\explorer.exe


• cacls %windir%\explorer.exe /E /G MyUserName:F (replacing MyUserName with your username)


• taskkill /im explorer.exe /f


• cd %windir%


• start unlockProtectedFeatures.exe

After changing the protected feature lock state, you can re-launch the shell by clicking the Launch button.

Screenshot of PDC ‘08 build with new Taskbar

Why did Microsoft do this?

I’m not sure why these features went into the main (winmain) builds wrapped with such protection. What are your thoughts?

Hot off the Press: CodeFocus on IE8!

In preparation for the Professional Developers Conference, the IE team recently authored some articles for a special issue of Code Focus magazine. The articles cover everything from cross-version compatibility to performance, and include new sample code. You can read the articles online at the following locations: Welcome to CoDe Focus for Internet Explorer 8! What’s New in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2? Making Your Web site Compatible Across Multiple Versions of Internet Explorer Introducing Compatibility View Create Your Own Web Slices Accelerators in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 New Search Features in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Developer Tools in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Better AJAX Development with Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 AJAX Performance Measurement Methodology for Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Performance Improvements in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Reliability and Privacy with Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Secure Coding with Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Internet Explorer 8 New Accessibility Features Or, if you’d prefer, you can also download the entire issue as a single PDF file. Enjoy! Eric Lawrence Program Manager

Microsoft Research Demonstrates Technology Breakthroughs at PDC2008

Developers get new tools and a glimpse into future of robotics, Surface, other Microsoft innovations designed to address societal issues and change the computing experience.

•	Microsoft Research Web site

Front view of Microsoft Surface. Click for hi-res version

Los Angeles – Oct. 29, 2008 – At Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference 2008, Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research, today showed developers how Microsoft is applying software’s power to tough technological and societal challenges.

Rashid announced the limited release of the first software development toolkit (SDK) for Microsoft Surface, new features for Worldwide Telescope, and the Microsoft CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008, which will make it easier to develop loosely coupled concurrent and distributed applications.

“Advances in software hold the key to progress in multiple fields,” said Rashid. “The modern world generates massive data sets - online search, astronomical phenomena, the climate, particle physics, and the human genome, to name a few areas. With software, we can capture, analyze, and make sense of this data to help combat global warming, develop life-saving vaccines, and enrich our kids’ education.”

In his keynote address, Rashid highlighted the news announcements plus initiatives spearheaded by more than 800 researchers in Microsoft Research’s six global labs that are aimed at easing societal problems society and changing the computing experience:

Microsoft Surface SDK

Microsoft Surface is a computing platform that opens a new chapter in the way people interact with computers by connectng them to digital content through natural gestures, touch, and devices such as wireless phones or even tagged drink glasses. The platform is being opened up to the developer community for the first time at PDC2008 with the limited release of the Microsoft Surface software development kit (SDK). The SDK enables developers to build groundbreaking applications that take advantage of the attributes of Microsoft Surface, which include:

•	Direct interaction: the ability to execute commands through gesture or touch, rather than via a mouse or keyboard.
•	Multi –touch: the ability to manipulate multiple on-screen items at once. Surface can read more than 52 individual touches.
•	Multi-user: new collaborative computing scenarios made possible by Surface’s horizontal form factor.
•	Object recognition: digital responses to objects placed on Surface – functionality that will ultimately permit the transfer of digital content.

Additional highlights from Rashid’s keynote included a wide range updates and announcements, including:

WorldWide Telescope Developed by Microsoft Research, WorldWide Telescope is a “Web browser for the sky”, bringing together images from the best ground- and space-based telescopes so people can explore the cosmos from their PC screen. Since its launch in May 2008, more than one million people have downloaded the web application. Several new features are now available for WorldWide Telescope, including a 3-D Solar System, more than 1,000 new images, and a tool that allows people to upload and share their own images of space. Existing users will be prompted to download the new features the next time they open the program. Others can download WorldWide Telescope at http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/

The Microsoft CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008 The Microsoft CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008 delivers a set of .NET- and Compact Framework-class libraries and tools that enable developers to better deal with the inherent complexities of creating looselycoupled concurrent and distributed applications. The Toolkit is designed to help developers take advantage of the Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR) and Decentralized Software Services (DSS) originally released as part of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. Microsoft CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008 provide early adopters with access to select technologies today; transitioning to Microsoft’s .NET Framework in the future. To learn more about Microsoft CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008, visit: http://www.microsoft.com/ccrdss Related Links • CCR DSS Tyco Case Study (video) • CCR DSS Siemens Case Study (written) • CCR DSS Siemens Case Study (video)

Tiny devices, big impact Scarce energy resources and worries about climate change create challenges and opportunities for computing. The advent of large datacenters that underpin cloud-based computing services make energy-efficient computing is increasingly important. Using technology developed by Microsoft Research, Microsoft is deploying tiny sensors throughout its datacenters to capture data that will allow it to better regulate energy consumption and reduce their carbon footprint. Sensors can also be deployed in the wild to help scientists monitor and track environmental changes. Rashid demonstrated the sensor technology in the auditorium at PDC. Related Links: • SenseWeb Project

Boku: turning programming into play Boku is a fun, intellectuallystimulating game, developed by Microsoft Research, that introduces youngsters to programming while they play. Through programming Boku, a virtual robot, children learn the basic principles of programming logic, analysis, and design. The 3-D interactive game is designed to demystify programming and spark interest in a career in science. Youngsters as young asnine years old have already used Boku in trials to create their own games. Related links: • Boku Web Site • Boku Gameplay Montage (Windows Media) • Boku Programming Walkthrough (Windows Media)

DryadLINQ Developed by a team from Microsoft Research, DryadLINQ is a powerful programming environment that enables ordinary programmers to write large-scale data parallel applications to run on large PC clusters. The platform comprises Dryad, a distributed execution engine that allows reliable, distributed computing across thousands of servers for large-scale data parallel applications, and the .NET Language Integrated Query, or LINQ, which allows developers to write and debug applications in a SQL-like query language, using the entire .NET library and Microsoft Visual Studio. Related link: • DryadLINQ Web site

SecondLight: a magic lens that goes beyond the surface The brainchild of Microsoft Researchers, SecondLight is a rear-projection technology that extends and enriches the Microsoft Surface device through the ability to project images both through and beyond the surface display, such as onto a translucent piece of plastic. With SecondLight, the translucent piece of plastic can also function as a “magic lens.” For instance, if it is” passed over an image displayed on the primary surface – suchas a car – it provides a view of the “inner workings” behind the image. In another application of this so-called “layering effect”, the transparency could register images of constellations when passed over a surface displaying the night sky. The technology also permits gesture-based interactions with the surface from farther away than rear- projected systems allow. Related Links: • SecondLight Video • White Paper: Going Beyond the Display: A Surface Technology with an Electronically Switchable Diffuser

New Developer Tools and Investments Span from Traditional Application Models to Cloud Development

Microsoft focuses on simplifying core tasks such as data and identity management, allowing developers to spend more time creating innovative applications and user experiences.


LOS ANGELES — Oct. 29, 2008 — This week at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC2008), Microsoft highlighted the company’s strategic shift to Software-plus-Services, announced a new cloud services platform for developers, and offered on-site developers Community Technology Previews (CTPs) for dozens of innovations across its traditional, on-premises application platform.

Microsoft’s announcements at, and leading-up to, PDC underscore the company’s strategic focus on making it easier for developers to build, deploy and manage applications across a broad range of scenarios, while using their existing skills and tools.

“Microsoft is committed to delivering tools for developers of all skill sets, while offering a consistent, integrated experience for software development teams, and providing a secure, reliable solution for developing high quality applications for the latest platforms,” says Dave Mendlen, director of Developer Marketing at Microsoft.

Building a Foundation for Innovation

In September, Microsoft outlined their vision for Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 by describing five focus areas: Democratizing ALM (Application Lifecycle Management), Breakthrough Departmental Applications, Inspiring Developer Delight, Riding the Next Generation Platform Wave and Enabling Emerging Trends.

This week at PDC, the dialogue around those focus areas continues, with details on ways to make it easy for developers to use their existing Visual Studio and .NET skills to develop for “the cloud” – software that resides primarily on the web but spans the server, PC and mobile devices as well.

Microsoft also provided a deeper look at the next generation platform opportunities by announcing that Visual Studio 2010 will be optimized to help developers build Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 applications and take advantage of new Web development features.

These highlights build on a series of recent announcements about new technologies designed to help developers create new software experiences, including:

•	New enhancements to the Windows Server application capabilities, including Windows Communication Foundation 4.0, Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0, and “Dublin” extensions to Windows Server.
•	Visual Studio 2010 programming models for concisely expressing “concurrency,” or the ability for applications to efficiently run multiple instructions on a “multicore” or “manycore” processing chip, including new .NET Framework libraries such as the Task Parallel Library and Parallel LINQ, as well as the Parallel Pattern Library and Concurrency Runtime for developing native applications with C++.
•	Ongoing investments in the .NET Framework through the addition of new functionality in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). For cloud computing and services, the tools are available today as separate add-ons for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (Standard Edition or better), and for Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition SP1. Support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 will be available in the near future.

According to Mendlen, the strategy is based on a high-level perspective of the development ecosystem, and the realization that the ultimate goal for every developer is to build engaging, practical new applications for end users.

“By working to make the process of developing simpler and more efficient, we’re empowering developers to focus on using the power of technology to address the needs of today’s marketplace,” he says.

New Platform and Modeling Tools for Declarative Development

Today software development is increasingly characterized by describing processes and links in applications, and less by writing lines and lines of new code. This so-called “model” approach has the potential to save developers untold hours in creating new applications.

“In order to make model-driven development a reality, Microsoft is focused on providing a platform and visual modeling tools that make it easy for all ‘mainstream’ users, including information workers, developers, database architects, software architects business analysts and IT Professionals, to collaborate throughout the application development lifecycle,” says Steven Martin, senior director of Microsoft’s Connected Systems Division.

According to Martin, since modeling is also a key bridge between designing and deploying on-premise and cloud-based applications or components, Microsoft delivered the community technology preview for its new modeling platform this week, dubbed “Oslo” which is made up of three technologies -- a language, a relational repository and a new developer tool, code named “Quadrant.”

“Oslo will enable developers to define solutions across cloud and on-premise environments, built on a consistent modeling experience,” Martin says. “Ultimately we’re aiming to reduce the complexity inherent in building large scale distributed applications.”

A member of the Visual Studio family, the “Quadrant” tool is designed to help define and interact with programming models in a rich and visual manner, including support for the “M” programming language that allows developers to create and use textual domain-specific languages and data models.

Microsoft announced its commitment to publish the “M” language specification under the Open Specification Promise (OSP), which makes it possible for third parties, including open source projects, to build implementations of "M" for other runtimes, services, applications and operating systems.

According to Martin, by putting model-driven innovation directly into the .NET platform, Microsoft is working to help organizations gain visibility and control over applications, ensure they are building systems based on the right requirements, simplify the stages of development and re-use, and enable developers to resolve potential issues at a high level before the company starts committing resources.

“Modeling has been heralded as a means to break down technology and role ‘silos’ in application development, and to assist IT departments in delivering more effective business strategies,” says Martin. “Microsoft believes that modeling is a way to tackle the complexity of distributed application development by helping developers and IT pros to create applications from models, and then execute the models in different runtimes as needed. Our model-driven investments with Oslo will help realize the vision of Dynamic IT by connecting runtimes across Microsoft products such as Windows Server, .NET Framework, Visual Studio, BizTalk Server, SharePoint, and System Center.”

Making it Simpler to Manage Data Across Multiple Sources

In building today’s business applications, developers need to access, manage and synchronize multiple sources of data. With Visual Studio 2008, developers can rapidly take advantage of offline synchronization capabilities to sync-enable applications and services easily, with rich support for designers.

Beginning this week, developers can download the community technology preview of the Sync Framework v2. By embedding the new Sync Framework into their applications, developers can now easily enable any type of data to follow users and customers wherever they go.

“The Microsoft Sync Framework extends the support featured in Visual Studio 2008 to also include offline and peer-to-peer collaboration using any protocol for any data type, and any data store,” says Mark Linton, director of Application Platform Marketing for Microsoft. “This is part of Microsoft’s long-term commitment to providing synchronization for partners and ISVs (Independent Software Vendors).”

In addition, the ADO.NET Entity Framework will enable developers to develop rich applications on top of any data source including SQL Server, IBM DB2, Oracle and many others, meeting developers’ needs for a provider-agnostic approach to data.

“Working with data is a big challenge for a lot of applications and services,” Linton says. “These technologies can help overcome that hurdle, so developers can build new ways to use the data itself and improve the end user experience.”

Along with greater access to and synchronization of data, another new technology announced this week allows information to move faster along the pipeline — Microsoft released the next community technology preview of a new application cache platform code-named “Velocity,” designed to make it easy for organizations to accelerate the development of new applications.

“Velocity” increases performance of applications by moving the data out of the data store and closer to the application in the middle tier, significantly reducing the number of trips made to and from the data store to retrieve it,” says Linton. “Velocity provides developers with a simple and integrated set of APIs, allowing them to easily cache data in the application memory, along with the session state or any other CLR Object.”

Project “Velocity” is also integrated with ASP.NET and the .NET Framework, and will be available for no cost in summer of 2009.

A New Model to Simplify Identity Management

Another time-consuming task for developers today, according to Linton, is managing user identities, which is becoming more important with the growth of cloud-based computing and its associated need for new ways to access software and services from any location or device.

“Working with user identities in applications is hard for developers today, because they must choose from many different identity technologies, and hard-code custom user access logic into every application,” says Linton. “This takes time away from core development work.”

To address this issue, Microsoft announced a new identify management strategy at PDC today, starting with a single, simplified identity model, code-named “Geneva” that works for on-premises and cloud-based applications in the enterprise, in federated networks, and on the consumer Web, using interoperable standards that can interface with a variety of technologies including WS-* and SAML. Geneva consists of three components:

•	Geneva Framework, which helps developers build claims-aware applications and services that externalize user authentication from the application
•	Geneva Server, a security token service (STS) that issues and transforms claims, manages user access, and enables automated federation
•	Windows CardSpace Geneva, which helps users navigate access decisions between multiple identities and control how personal information is used

Also announced as part of Microsoft’s cloud strategy are Microsoft Services Connector and .NET Access Control Service, which are both built on “Geneva” technology and share the same claims architecture.

Preparing for Windows 7

For Visual Studio 2010, the company has also invested heavily in C++ to ease development of native Windows applications.

“We are adding tools to assist developers in building new Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 applications and enabling existing native applications to take advantage of new Windows features,” Linton says.

According to Linton, the support includes full library and header support for Windows 7, significant updates to MFC to support Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 UI elements like the ribbon, live icons, search access, and even support for multi-touch enabled interfaces.

“With Windows 7, existing applications will have access to all the new features offered by Microsoft’s latest operating systems,” Linton says. “This gives developers even more opportunities to build engaging features into their applications.”

Reference : http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2008/oct08/10-29SSTools.mspx?rss_fdn=Top%20Stories