WinHEC 2007: What Did We Learn Today?
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LOS ANGELES - Last Monday, we entitled our WinHEC preview, "Time for Vista to Deliver the Goods." The truth ended up being, although goods were indeed delivered, the surprise was that Vista wasn't the delivery vehicle this time around.
Windows Server "Longhorn" got a name, but it got more than that: a mission to change the nature of Windows itself, in both the enterprise and the home.
Without a major new consumer-driven client operating system coming hanging out there in the distance, and with Windows Server 2008 now clearly upon us, this week was the first Microsoft conference in a handful of years not to depend on a truckload of promises of future technologies.
In fact, some reporters (though perhaps fewer attendees, proportionately) actually expressed disappointment that Microsoft didn't expound on the usual promises of four or five years down the road, concentrating this time around on what's available now and what will very likely be available for system developers and hardware engineers no later than the 2008 timeframe.
In this reporter's opinion, it was actually refreshing. For once, Microsoft was concentrating upon pipelines rather than pipe dreams.
Let's revisit the five flashpoints we introduced last Monday, and see how things panned out with respect to those topics we expected would be hot:
5. Flash memory as a PC component. The temperature on this issue was turned down a bit, but not off - from "High" to "Medium." There were some panels on flash memory technologies, but both the delivery and the response appeared to be tepid. During another industry panel on solid state hard drives and hybrid drives, both hard drive and flash memory industry leaders were reluctant to adopt the stance that even hybrid technology would take off significantly, among either consumers or enterprise customers, within the next five years.
4. Microsoft, the telephone company. A huge story for WinHEC, as Microsoft unveiled working phones from Polycom and LG-Nortel based on Microsoft reference designs. The prediction we heard from Chris Cullin, who manages Unified Communications for Microsoft - and who we'll hear more from later in BetaNews - is that USB-connective telephony could save businesses as much as 50% over PBX purchases, by the time UC comes into full fruition in 2010.
3. Making input meaningful again. From our vantage point, this topic appeared to fizzle somewhat, especially after Craig Mundie's demonstration of a pill-pushing checkerboard as part of the all-important opening keynote set.
2. The changes in the system kernels for Vista and Longhorn. Perhaps the single smartest hire Microsoft made in the last year is SysInternals developer Mark Russinovich, a generally respected engineer among engineers who's no stranger to BetaNews. In October 2005, Russinovich used his own hand-rolled tools to discover the presence of Sony BMG-delivered malware that masqueraded itself just like a rootkit. The tidal wave helped carry Russinovich to legendary status.
1. Virtualization, virtualization, virtualization. What we learned at WinHEC this year was that there were clearly two classes of hardware engineers - those who have come to rely on virtualization as a server consolidation tool, and others who are just now investigating the topic. When Microsoft cancelled its demonstration of live migration - a critical feature of Windows Server Virtualization, code-named "Viridian," that was delayed the week before the conference - we expected everyone to be disappointed.
