Microsoft Pushes Hardware Partners Toward 64-Bit - ' Page 2 ' (
Page 2 of 2 )
On the chip front, an Intel Corp. official told attendees that with regard to 64-bit computing, Itanium will scale up for the line-of-business applications and database environments of 50TB and more, while on x64 it will scale out across all workloads.
"Getting ready for Longhorn will take a lot of co-operation between both of us as well as the rest of the industry, he said, noting that Microsoft and Intel have established a joint lab in Washington state to encourage ISVs to come and test their applications and 64-bit drivers.
Ryan Waite, group program manager fore Microsofts High Performance Computing group, gave a demonstration at WinHEC of Microsofts Windows Server Compute Cluster edition, which will give users more computing resources, enabling them to run more complex models and get better performance.
Turning to growth opportunities, Muglia said the small-business side and the database market both have growth potential, with database and business intelligence markets continuing to grow strongly. "Our SQL Server product continues to gain market share, even though it is still the 2000 version," he said, pointing to a release of SQL Server 2005 coming later this year.
Microsoft is making the integration of SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 the centerpiece of its upcoming product launches. Click here to read more.
There is also a growth opportunity around storage, which continues to grow, particularly with the movement toward disk-based backup. In addition, Microsoft will be releasing System Center Data Protection Manager 2006 later this year, he said.
Microsoft is very aware that managing systems is a huge part of what IT administrators have to spend their budgets on, even though hardware and software costs are going down.
"The management cost is in people, as the software is only 6 percent of the total management cost. Identity is at the core of all manageability costs, and Active Directory brings opportunities for hardware integration and we are eager to work with those companies whose applications have an identity component to do so through Active Directory," Muglia said.
Virtualization is also a very important trend, and the first service pack for Virtual Server 2005 is currently in beta and will support non-Windows guests including Linux.
In the Longhorn timeframe, virtualization will deliver an extensible .vhd format and include hypervisor technology and support for hardware virtualization technology. "So, moving forward, you will see 64-bit drivers being written, new form factors released, Active Directory authentication across devices, a Microsoft Operations Manager Management Pack, WS-Management, disk data protection and Simple SAN.
"We are in the era of 64-bit computing, and in just two years 32-bit will be legacy. Remember that. We need all drivers to be 64-bit. There are great opportunities for all of us across the board, but we can only do it together," Muglia concluded.
Check out eWEEK.coms for Microsoft and Windows news, views and analysis.
