Microsoft Promoting Windows 7 for the Enterprise
link: original article - section: windows
Microsoft on Wednesday explained how the needs of enterprise users were considered in the early design stages of its new Windows 7 operating system. A blog post by Gavriella Schuster, senior director of Windows product management, described Microsoft's "behind the scenes" rationales.
The OS is currently being tested at the beta stage, and Microsoft has already received "over 500,000 Send Feedback reports" from beta testers, Schuster wrote.
Microsoft engaged its partners early in the design stage of Windows 7 and polled 4,000 customers on such areas as "risk management, compliance and mobility," Schuster explained. The respondents said they wanted three features in the new OS: help protecting data on corporate laptops (56 percent); control over user installs (61 percent); and support for remote worker access to the corporate network (49 percent).
In response, the Windows 7 team added BitLocker protection for laptops and portable hard drives. They added AppLocker to Windows 7 to lock down installs. To enable remote access, they included plans to support Direct Access capabilities in Windows 7, Schuster wrote.
Veteran Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley contradicted this view that Windows 7 includes many features for the enterprise. She suggested that most of the features in the beta were consumer oriented. A NetworkWorld article took a different tack and claimed that Microsoft has already briefed analysts on useful features in the Windows 7 Enterprise edition.
Schuster's blog post stays true to slow information-release concept championed by the Engineering Windows 7 blog. That blog took the view early on that Microsoft should be honest but still not release too much information about its new OS. The idea was to avoid misleading Microsoft's partners on the direction of the OS -- a problem that ostensibly tripped up the release of Windows Vista.
