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LOS ANGELES—Microsoft Corp. is relying on partners to help the company execute on its Dynamic Systems Initiative plans.
During his keynote at the Professional Developers Conference here Thursday, Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsofts Windows Server Division, said companies such as AVIcode and Macrovision Inc. will help Microsoft implement DSI.
Muglia talked about how the combination of Visual Studio and DSI allows enterprises to create a bridge between their development shops and their IT operations.
In a Microsoft PressPass interview posted in relation to Muglias keynote, he said: “Self-managing dynamic systems are focused on lowering the cost of managing IT by embedding and transferring system knowledge in models throughout the application lifecycle and across the organization of developers, IT professionals and information workers. Our Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) aims to build manageability into systems, helping customers increase productivity, automate system compliance and boost ITs responsiveness to business needs.”
Indeed, “models change the way management works,” Muglia said in his keynote. “Developers can specify all the components in their application and the relationships between them. This is the first step to closing the gap between operations and development.”
Dmitriy Nikonov, program manager for enterprise tools management at Microsoft, then gave a demonstration of how AVIcode and Macrovision help support Microsofts strategy around DSI.
Nikonov showed how AVIcodes Intercept Studio can detect a problem and go right to the snippet of code that was causing the problem. “Thats closing the gap,” he said to a round of applause from the large audience of developers.
Mike Curreri, chief executive of Baltimore-based AVIcode, said, “The big picture is we delivered this concept for the MOM [Microsoft Operations Manager] audience first and now doing the same thing for the developer side as well. AVIcode is the operations part of design for operations from the Visual Studio point of view.”
Victor Mushkatin, co-founder and chief technology officer at AVIcode, said his companys approach differs from others. “Our health modeling is more realistic. We are addressing the dark side of the application—they model for expected behaviors; we model for unexpected behaviors,” he said.
Meanwhile, during the PDC, AVIcode announced the general availability of the AVIcode .Net Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005. The .Net Management Pack provides real-time, in-production monitoring of custom .Net applications, the company said. The .Net Management Pack is based on AVIcodes Intercept Studio technology, which monitors applications for exceptions and performance issues in pre- and post-deployment environments, company officials said.
Bob Corrigan, product manager for Installation Solutions at Santa Clara, Calif-based Macrovision, said Macrovision is also positioned to help bridge the gap between development and operations.
“Model-driven development is a wave of the future, and weve got some very unique capabilities,” Corrigan said. “With DSI [Microsoft has] some strong capabilities in design and deployment, but to deliver a complete end-to-end solution Microsoft and Macrovision teamed up.”
Next Page: Macrovision announces bridge.
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Meanwhile, Macrovision announced that it will provide a bridge between Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System and Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) for distributed enterprise applications. The new technology, demonstrated during Muglias keynote, is based on Macrovisions InstallShield and provides the ability to quickly and reliably deploy applications via SMS across distributed systems that are designed and validated using Visual Studio Team System, Corrigan said.
The Macrovision technology enables enterprises to package applications for deployment directly from Visual Studio Team Systems SDM model, Corrigan said. By automating the translation from the SDM model into packages that can configure servers, Macrovision enables the creation of a repeatable flow from design to deployment, he said.
“Macrovisions expertise and understanding of automating complex, interdependent software configuration across large, distributed systems makes the company an excellent option for customers looking to extend the capabilities of Visual Studio 2005 Team System, which provides greater value to our many mutual enterprise customers,” Rick Laplante, general manager of Visual Studio Team System at Microsoft, said in a statement. “In bridging the gap between the design of distributed systems and the deployment of applications across those systems, Macrovision is reducing complexity, streamlining the continuum between development and operations and providing an essential component in realizing the vision behind Microsofts Dynamic Systems Initiative.”
Meanwhile, “The AVIcode .NET Management Pack enables operations managers to further benefit from Microsoft Operations Manager 2005, an important component of the Dynamic System Initiative,” said Felicity McGourty, director of the Windows and Enterprise Management Division at Microsoft, in a statement. “With this new management pack, customers can gain valuable insight into the health and service level performance of custom .Net applications running in production.”
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