Future of security-bundled Windows

Microsoft recently announced its plans to buy the anti-virus software maker Sybari Software to beef up security features in its Windows operating system. This is the third major security-related acquisition by Microsoft in the last few years and has sent jitters to anti-virus software vendors such as McAfee and Symantec. This move by Microsoft also indicates bundling of security features in all its future products including Longhorn to be released in 2006.

Microsoft Windows has always been the victim of virus and security attacks. Notable ones being Code Red worm released on July 19, 2001 which exploited vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Information Server, affecting more than 250,000 computer systems in less than nine hours. Released on January 25, 2003, Slammer exploiting vulnerability in Microsoft SQL Server 2000, spread with astonishing speed, infecting 90% of all vulnerable computers on the Internet within 10 minutes. Similarly W32/Blaster worm exploited Windows vulnerability and attacked more than 7,000 computers in minutes of its release on black Monday, August 11, 2003.

In its recent security bulletin, Microsoft warned computer users of eight new critical-rated flaws in its Windows, Office and other software products. By giving priority to ease of use in its Windows operating system, Microsoft has left security holes in its operating systems through sloppy code. As soon as a security attack is detected, Microsoft normally issues patches that plug the vulnerability. However, it has realised that the attackers soon discover other vulnerabilities and exploit them.

n its bid to bolster the security features of its operating systems, Microsoft has released a built-in Firewall in its Windows XP service pack 2. Typically Firewall, which consists of a set of hardware, software and security policies that determine which traffic should be allowed or disallowed, is deployed at the perimeter of the organisations' network. With built-in Firewall, Microsoft is moving the Firewall from the network to the desktop computer. Configuring the Firewall with policies is technology intensive. Normally the network administrators do this job on the network Firewall. Very few of us know how to configure the Firewall on our desktop computer running Windows XP.

With the recent acquisitions, day is not far off when Windows XP service pack 3 will be released which includes even anti-virus software! Normally anti-virus software, much like a Firewall, is installed on the network and is managed by network administrators. With all the security features bundled in to desktop operating system, Windows is becoming bigger and resource hungry! Soon you will find your Pentium 4 becoming sluggish to even run the operating system, forget about other applications! While it is impossible to produce software which is one hundred percent error free and reliable, poor software engineering practices and the pressure to release code on time due to market pressures have resulted in this alarming situation faced by Microsoft.

It is time that the software developers and code writers took responsibility for their code and adopted good software engineering practices to build robust systems. What are the possible solutions for victims such as us, the Windows users? Due to the strong network externality effects, it is very difficult for a desktop Windows user to switch to an alternative operating system such as Linux which reportedly has lesser security vulnerabilities.

However, network administrators can give it a try. Though open source server operating systems such as Linux or Unix are complicated to administer and maintain compared to Windows 2000/2003, a move towards running mission critical services on non-windows platform reduces vulnerability of at least the servers of the organisation. While the recent moves by Microsoft spells death knell for security vendors, whether bundling of security products in its operating system will take Microsoft to court as was the case with its media player is an open question!

Ready or not, Windows XP update is coming

Microsoft is alerting customers that it will soon start delivering Windows XP Service Pack 2 to all customers using Automatic Update, whether they want it or not.

In response to requests from businesses, Microsoft last year released a tool that allowed companies to continue using the automatic update feature but temporarily block the security-oriented update from downloading.

However, the grace period comes to an end on April 12. Microsoft has posted a Warning (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/sp2aumng.mspx) on its Web site, alerting people about the impending deadline.

"Time is running out!" Microsoft said. "Please note that the mechanism to temporarily disable delivery of Windows XP SP2 is only available for a period of 240 days (eight months) from Aug. 16, 2004. At the end of this period (after April 12, 2005), Windows XP SP2 will be delivered to all Windows XP and Windows XP Service Pack 1 systems."

Microsoft first released the SP2-blocking tool in August, saying it would allow customers to put off the upgrade for 120 days. In September, Microsoft said it would double the length of time, to 240 days, to give businesses more time to test the software.

In a statement, Microsoft said it is sticking to that schedule.

"SP2 is an important, free security update for Windows XP customers that is already delivering value to over 180 million customers worldwide," said Jon Murchinson, a Microsoft product manager.

The move affects only those who use Windows' automatic update to connect directly to Microsoft servers. Some businesses have reconfigured the automatic update feature to connect to their own corporate update servers. Those companies can continue to push out updates to their own schedule.

While recognizing the need for customers to test software, Microsoft has been urging businesses to move to SP2 for its enhanced security benefits, particularly for portable machines that frequently travel in and out of a corporate firewall.

Microsoft IM release expected soon

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is expected to take the wraps off Istanbul, the company's new instant messaging and real-time communications client, in a few weeks.

The software giant sent invitations to journalists and other insiders this week for a March 8 event in San Francisco, during which Gates will "unveil Microsoft's new and revolutionary real-time collaboration offerings."

A Microsoft spokesman said he couldn't specify that Istanbul would be the subject of the event, but the software has been widely touted as Microsoft's next major move in real-time communications. Istanbul is an internal code name. Microsoft has not said what the program might be called when it's ready for formal release.

Istanbul, which has been in the beta testing phase for several months, is a new client for Live Communications Server, Microsoft's corporate instant messaging software.

Istanbul goes beyond IM, though, handling a variety of functions based on "presence," the notion advocated by Microsoft and others of software being able to intelligently route communications among various applications and devices. Istanbul reads calendar information from Outlook, for example, to decide whether an incoming call should go to someone's desktop or mobile phone.

Microsoft executives have said Istanbul would be ready for final release the first half of this year.

Gates will be joined at the San Francisco event by Jeff Raikes, head of the division responsible for Office and Office-branded products such as Live Communications Server; and Anoop Gupta, head of the real-time collaboration unit and the company's chief evangelist for presence.

Microsoft launches Bengali interface

Microsoft Corporation India today signed an MoU with the government of West Bengal for the state-wide rollout of its 'Project Bhasha', a programme aimed at accelerating local language computing.

The MoU was signed for a period of one year, in the presence of state IT minister, Manabendra Mukherjee by IT secretary G D Gautama and Ranjiv Jit Singh, director-business & marketing operations, Microsoft Corporation India.

Under the MoU, Microsoft would collaborate with the government of West Bengal, for deployment of the freely downloadable Bengali language interface pack for Microsoft Windows and Office across government offices.

Singh said, 95 per cent of India's one billion population do not understand English and a vast majority of the segment incidentally was also on the fringes when it comes to access to information technology (IT).

"This obviously implies that if technology has to make an impact at the grassroots it has to be in the local language. Realising this latent need we conceptualised Project Bhasha which is a comprehensive programme aimed at accelerating local language computing in India" he explained.

Microsoft would also assist the state government in setting up of a Bhasha Language Lab at a premier education institute in West Bengal. Through the labs, Microsoft would organise regular events on latest technological trends related to local language based application development.

On the skills front, the company would organise a training workshop for government employees and host a "Writers Workshop" where there would be in-depth discussions on how to use Microsft products with Indian languages.

The minister said, "This complements our government's efforts to ensure that we can take the benefits of IT to the grassroots and ultimately usher in greater level of economic prosperity and growth led by IT adoption."

Today's MoU and the availability of Bengali language support on flagship Microsoft products will be a vital step to deliver in this direction."

Microsoft may offer peek at SQL Server code

Will the software industry's wave of open-source databases spill onto Microsoft's turf?

Perhaps. The software giant is considering making the source code for its SQL Server database available to customers, according to Tom Rizzo, director of product management in Microsoft's SQL Server unit.

In an interview with CNET News.com, Rizzo said that the company is thinking about including the forthcoming SQL Server 2005 in Microsoft's shared-source program for disclosing product source code to customers.

"It's not finalized. It's not anything there, but if a lot of customers demand it, we'll definitely look at doing shared source with SQL Server," Rizzo said.

Stephen O'Grady, an analyst at RedMonk, said Microsoft would do well to tap into some of the advantages of the open-source development model.

"There is an opportunity to realize a lot of the benefits around the community in terms of security, transparency and openness and just demonstrate that they're not a natural enemy to open source," O'Grady said.

Exposing the source code of a product generally leads to more scrutiny of that product, which will help customers spot security lapses and other hard-to-find faults, according to open-source proponents.

Indeed, the main motivation around sharing the source code of SQL Server would be mainly to assure customers of the security in the product, Rizzo said.

Microsoft already has a free database, Microsoft Database Engine (MSDE), and plans to release a revamped free database called SQL Server 2005 Express sometime this summer. Open-source databases are generally available for free download; vendors often charge service fees for ongoing support and updates for commercial customers.

"Not a lot of people touch the code. They just want the good warm feeling that there are no back doors, no security violations," Rizzo said.

He added that with SQL Server 2005, Microsoft has boosted security by complying with an international software benchmark called the common criteria certification, often used by governments. The database development team also has changed its processes to conform with Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing plan, which includes having Microsoft employees attempt to hack the database server.

More code to see
The practice of disclosing the source code of commercial products is becoming increasingly common.

By viewing the code, customers can make customizations, and third-party developers can more easily create add-on products, according to open-source proponents. Having a free product is also a good way to distribute software widely.

Microsoft, in fact, continues to look for areas in which making source code available is valuable, Jason Matusow, the director of Microsoft's shared-source program, said earlier this month. Last year, the company released the code to at least three products under its Shared-Source Program (http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/Licensing/default.mspx).

Others may be joining the roster: In a recent blog posting (http://www.shawnburke.com/default.aspx?document=185), a product development manager for Microsoft's Windows Forms development floated the idea of making the code for the Windows Forms tool, which is for building graphical user interfaces, available to developers.

The database market, in particular, has seen a rush of activity around open-source development in the past year.

Computer Associates International created an open-source project based on its Ingres r3 database. IBM started the Derby project at Apache around its Cloudscape embedded Java database. And Sybase made a Linux version of its database available for free with limitations on usage.

Open-source database company MySQL saw its revenue double last year to $20 million, and another well-established open-source database, PostgreSQL, last month got backing from Pervasive Software, a commercial database service provider.

The cost factor
The amount of open-source activity in the database world is an indicator of how important cost is becoming in database purchasing, said Noel Yuhanna, an analyst at Forrester Research.

The leading commercial providers--Oracle, IBM and Microsoft--will continue to compete with high-end features to win over larger customers. But at small and medium-size businesses, cheaper and simpler databases meet the needs of many applications, Yuhanna said.

Oracle and IBM were not immediately available to comment.

At a panel on open-source databases at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo last week, panelists from open-source database companies argued that freely available databases will become more commonplace.

"People don't expect to pay huge license costs for the database. The value should come from the application," said Tony Gaughan, senior vice president of development at Computer Associates.

Whether Microsoft decides to reveal the source code to SQL Server or not, it's clear that open-source alternatives are affecting the decisions of established database providers, Forrester's Yuhanna said. He noted that Oracle and IBM released cheaper, low-end editions of their databases last year in an attempt to win more medium-size businesses as customers.

"The open-source database community," he said, "is seeing a lot of traction among customers looking for low-cost databases."

Microsoft launches IT academy in Maharashtra

Microsoft Corporation India on Friday launched its first information technology (IT) academy in Maharashtra.

The academy will serve as a pivotal point for imparting IT training to 20,000 teachers and two lakh students across the state in five years.

Microsoft aims to set up 2 IT centres in Pune and Nagpur where students (from class III to class XII) and two lakh teachers would be trained over a five-year period.

The Pune academy is located at the MSCERT Campus, Kumthekar Road.

Microsoft will run a 12-day training programme free-of-cost for participating teachers on the use of technology in teaching students.

Vilasrao Deshmukh, chief minister of Maharashtra, said, "Our partnership with Microsoft compliments the government's focus and vision for empowering the education sector. We believe that through technology we can create a skilled resource base in the state comprising the next generation of professionals. The IT academy, inaugurated today, will encourage early adoption of technologies by both students and teachers across government schools in the state."

Ravi Venkatesan, chairman, Microsoft Corporation, said: "The IT academy in Maharashtra is a key initiative under our partners-in-learning memorandum of understanding, which is aimed at providing state-of-the-art infrastructure to unleash the next wave of IT education in the state."

Apart from setting up of the centres in Pune and Nagpur, the agreement between Microsoft and the state government entails the creation of a localised IT curriculum for students, rolling out of teacher and student scholarship programmes and the setting up of a teachers' portal.

Gartner takes Microsoft to task

Microsoft should be concentrating on securing Windows instead of trying to challenge security software companies, according to research firm Gartner.

Microsoft has bought two antivirus companies and an anti-spyware company--the latter acquisition has already produced an anti-spyware application for Windows--since Chairman Bill Gates launched the Trustworthy Computing Initiative. That effort changed the company's coding practices to make security developers' first priority.

But Microsoft has missed an opportunity to make it clear what role it wants to play in the security market, by not stating its intentions, Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald said in an advisory published Friday. The company needs to "articulate whether it plans to be a leader in consumer and enterprise security solutions across desktop, server and server gateway," he said.

"Microsoft's overriding goal should be to eliminate the need for (antivirus) and (anti-spyware) products, not simply to enter the market with look-alike products at lower prices," MacDonald added.

In the advisory, MacDonald predicted that Microsoft will launch a combined antivirus and anti-spyware product by the middle of 2005. That software will directly compete with established products such as Norton Antivirus from Symantec, he said.

"This move will challenge antivirus vendors that depend heavily on revenue from consumers--such as Symantec--and vendors that derive substantial revenue from upselling enterprises to antivirus product suites that include desktops and servers, such as McAfee and Computer Associates," MacDonald said.

James Turner, security analyst at Frost & Sullivan, told ZDNet Australia that Microsoft's security strategy is a "commercially sensitive" area and that the company is not obliged to reveal its strategy.

"The fact is that Microsoft have purchased a number of security-oriented companies--anti-spyware and antivirus. You don't buy a number of companies for the fun of it. This is part of a long term strategy," Turner said.

Additionally, Turner said Microsoft's attitude to security has changed since the launch of its trustworthy computing initiative. He pointed to the company's response to the recent attack on MSN Messenger.

"You don't just judge a company by what they say, you also judge them by what they do. Microsoft's recent clampdown on MSN Messenger to repair the vulnerabilities there is a clear sign that Microsoft can mobilize very quickly when something is completely within its control. If Microsoft was ignoring security, the market would punish it and so would the legal system," Turner said.

Gartner's MacDonald also rapped Microsoft's decision to create an updated version of Internet Explorer (7.0) for Windows XP only, hinting that motive for the decision could be to push corporate customers into upgrade their systems from Windows 2000.

"The decision to restrict IE 7.0 to the XP platform also suggests that Microsoft wants to force users of older platforms to upgrade, if they want improved security," he wrote. "If Microsoft wishes to be seen as a responsible industry leader in maintaining security for its products and its customers, it should provide IE 7.0 for Windows 2000 users."

MacDonald said that Microsoft should rebuild IE with security in mind from the bottom up, rather than make "evolutionary" security improvements to the browser software.

The Gartner advisory concludes with recommendations that are likely to cause some concern to traditional antivirus vendors.

The research firm suggests that corporate customers demand that their antivirus provider offers an enterprise-class solution--including anti-spyware--at no cost by the end of this year. It also advises businesses to demand a "converged desktop security product with antivirus, anti-spyware, personal firewall and behavior blocking at a total price no more than 20 percent higher than what you now pay for standalone (antivirus)."

Neither Microsoft or Symantec were available for comment.

Microsoft to give developers a new look at Longhorn

Microsoft plans in April to offer developers an updated test version of Longhorn, along with more details on what's in store with the next major update to Windows.

In an e-mail to developers on Wednesday, Microsoft said it would offer a new developer preview release of Longhorn at the company's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/default.mspx) April 25-27 in Seattle.

he company has also updated its WinHEC site (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/tracks2005/w05_clientsys.mspx) with a preliminary list of tracks--many of which are devoted to Longhorn.

The track descriptions suggest a number of the areas in which Longhorn will be seeking to improve on today's Windows, including enhancements to printing, improvements in power management and a new feature that will allow Longhorn-based PCs to connect directly to cellular phones. Other topics include enhancements that Longhorn will bring to mobile computing, including support for secondary displays.

Microsoft lists a session devoted to the hardware requirements for Longhorn. "This session explores the components that define a Windows Longhorn-ready PC and covers core system requirements, marketing considerations, and the timeline for customer awareness leading up to Windows Longhorn PC availability," Microsoft said on the site.

The updated developer preview software will be the first look at Longhorn since the software maker announced plans last fall to scale back several planned features of the OS.

The company announced last August that it would make changes to all three major pillars of Longhorn. The company pulled out the new WinFS file system feature, while changing the Indigo Web services and Avalon graphics engines so that they would work with both Longhorn and Windows XP.

The company has served up a couple of prior developer preview versions of Longhorn already, but those editions predated the Longhorn changes.

In addition to the new developer preview, Microsoft said earlier this month that it plans to have a more full-featured beta release of the OS by the end of June. The final release of Longhorn is planned for the second half of next year, Microsoft has said.

A Microsoft representative was not immediately available for further comment.

Microsoft, eBay join antiphishing initiative

Microsoft, eBay, PayPal and Visa have joined a new antiphishing initiative spearheaded by WholeSecurity, the companies said Monday.

Dubbed the Phish Report Network, the effort will attempt to slow the spread of phishing attacks by reporting deceptive Web sites to a central database operated by WholeSecurity, an IT security company based in Austin, Texas.

Once a site has been reported to the network and confirmed as fraudulent, the organization notifies all of its members about the URL, allowing companies to block the suspect site and encourage their customers to follow suit.

Phishing schemes typically consist of e-mail messages that appear to come from trusted companies. These messages attempt to lure people to bogus Web sites, where they're asked to divulge sensitive personal information, such as bank account details and Social Security numbers. Once armed with that data, criminals will often use it to commit identity theft.

WholeSecurity is orchestrating the initiative--which was announced at the RSA Security Conference taking place this week in San Francisco--through the use of its Web Caller-ID technology. The tool is already in use at eBay and its PayPal subsidiary, two of the most common brand names used by phishing fraudsters. Offered as part of eBay's free Internet toolbar, the application notifies consumers when they enter a site that WholeSecurity has confirmed as fraudulent.

The Phish Report Network will distribute aggregated lists of banned sites so that its members can incorporate the data into their own software, e-mail applications and browser services. The group is also encouraging any other company that has been targeted by phishing sites to join in its efforts, saying that the more companies sign up for the initiative, the more effective it will become.

Many e-commerce sites have called for greater vigilance on the part of financial services companies such as Visa to help stem the tide of online fraud, as credit cards are involved in a majority of the criminal schemes. Visa executives cited the Phish Report Network as a prime opportunity to respond to some of those requests.

"Visa is focused not just on shutting down phishing sites but preventing phishing e-mails from ever reaching consumers worldwide," Brad Nightengale, department head of the emerging-products division at Visa, said in a statement. "Working with the participants in this solution, Visa can play a key role in stopping this crime before it happens and in maintaining global consumer confidence online."

Microsoft to buy antivirus software firm

Microsoft plans to acquire Sybari Software, marking its latest effort to bolster its presence in the corporate security market.

Sybari, a privately held company based in East Northport, N.Y., develops security software that can be used with Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes messaging servers. Sybari's technology is designed to fight viruses, worms and spam, with such products as Antigen file-filtering.

"Through this acquisition, we're excited...to provide customers with a server-level antivirus solution that delivers advanced file- and content-filtering capabilities," Mike Nash, vice president of Microsoft's Security Business and Technology Unit, said in a statement Tuesday.

Sybari sells technology that enables customers to run antivirus or spam-blocking software from other vendors on top of its own products, analysts said.

"Microsoft can put its Microsoft antivirus engine on top of Sybari, or a customer can continue to use Symantec's and McAfee's antivirus engines," IDC analyst Charles Kolodgy said.

The benefit for Microsoft is it gives the software giant a "much needed platform" to provide content security for its Exchange messaging servers at the gateway, Kolodgy added.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Microsoft did not release a schedule for closing the transaction, but noted that Sybari will maintain its current operations until regulatory approval is obtained.

The plan to acquire Sybari is part of the software titan's larger effort to strengthen its presence in security.

Microsoft already owns some antivirus technology, which it bought from Romania's GeCad in 2003, but it has not yet released its own antivirus product. Two months ago, Microsoft announced plans to acquire anti-spyware vendor Giant Company Software.

Microsoft to release more source code?

Microsoft is considering the release of source code for a popular tool used to build Windows programs.

In a blog posting last week, Shawn Burke, a development manager at Microsoft's Windows Forms team, floated the idea of releasing the source code to Windows Forms to its developer customers. Windows Forms is a programming model used with Microsoft's Visual Studio tools to build the user interface portion of Windows desktop applications.

Burke made clear that open sourcing Windows Forms is under consideration, but that no decisions have been made.

He said that the idea faces hurdles, including legal issues, security and cost, and that the move is not universally supported within Microsoft. But at the same time, Burke noted that other teams within the developer division are working on projects to make code available as well.

Jason Matusow, the director of Microsoft's Shared Source program, said there are many products being evaluated on a case-by-case basis for inclusion in the program.

Before releasing source code, Microsoft weighs many considerations, including backward compatibility, interoperability and the need to balance open source code releases with Microsoft's proprietary "closed source" products. "We have to look at who the users are and what problem they are trying to solve," Matusow said.

The open-source development model allows collaborators to view code and submit changes, such as bug fixes or enhancements. Many open-source software projects, such as the freely available Linux operating system and the OpenOffice desktop application suite, pose a competitive threat to Microsoft's business, and the company, in general, closely guards access to its source code.

However, the software giant continues to add to the list of products that have a license that allows big companies, government customers, partners or academics to view all or portions of the source code. Its shared source program addresses several products, including the Windows CE operating system for devices and other tools targeted at programmers.

In September, Microsoft made the code for FlexWiki--collaborative Web authoring software--freely available and available under an open-source license. Also in 2004, the company released Windows Installer XML, or WiX, to SourceForge.net, following up a month later with the posting of the Windows Template Library, or WTL, project. All three products were released under the Common Public License (CPL).

In 2002, Microsoft submitted its Rotor Project , which included the source code to its Common Language Infrastructure--the software underpinning Microsoft's Visual Studio development tools--to the standards body ECMA International.

As with these other efforts, making the source code of Windows Forms available is meant to appeal to programmers, who covet access to the inner-workings of products.

"(Source code) helps them become better programmers," said James Governor, an analyst at RedMonk. "The best developers like to know how things work."

Microsoft's Burke said he would like to release the code of Windows Forms as well as a bug-tracking database. In theory, access to the code and known bugs will allow programmers to better understand the tool and separate a product bug from their own.

Releasing the source code of any product does carry the risk that virus writers will have more insight into how to cripple a product. Yet Burke took the opposite view, saying that the security risk would be minimal.

"If you have a security hole and you 'hope' someone doesn't find it because it's difficult to find, you're in trouble. They'll find it," he wrote.

Having gathered feedback from customers, Burke said he would pursue the plan to release the Windows Forms code in the most expedient manner possible. Most likely, he said, Microsoft would strip out human-readable comments within the code, which could have references to specific customers or inappropriate language.

"No promises but I'm feeling optimistic," Burke wrote.

MSN Messenger outage blamed on 'data center' issue

Microsoft said late Tuesday that it had resolved problems that had caused a significant outage affecting its MSN Messenger service worldwide.

A company representative declined to elaborate on the nature of the problem, or the steps Microsoft took in fixing it. In an earlier statement, the representative said the outage was caused by an "isolated issue that we've located in the data center."

The problem had affected a "significant" number of MSN Messenger users intermittently since Monday afternoon, the representative said.

The latest outage comes days after security monitors discovered the Bropia worm was using MSN Messenger to spread. The Microsoft spokeswoman denied the outage was caused by the worm.

Last October, a glitch crippled many MSN Messenger users around the world. In March of last year, MSN suffered a couple of outages over a weeklong period. Some speculated that one of the blackouts was caused by sign-in problems from its Passport service. Microsoft denied Passport experienced any problems during the down period.

Instant messaging has become one of the most popular services among Internet users, and it's gaining more traction among businesses. Popularized by America Online's AOL Instant Messenger, millions of Internet users now have an IM client loaded on their PC desktop.

While AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo account for most of these users, the three networks remain proprietary. Many consumers have more than one IM client running on their screen to chat with various contacts on different services. All three companies have stated their intention one day to interoperate, but results have yet to be seen.

Microsoft: Longhorn beta will arrive by June

Microsoft is on track to release the first full test version of the next major Windows release by the end of June, a Microsoft executive told CNET News.com on Monday.

The company has said publicly that Beta 1 of Longhorn would arrive by the end of 2005, though internally, the company has been aiming for a release by midyear. The final version of Longhorn is slated for the second half of next year.

"There will be a beta 1 of Longhorn...happening in the first half of this year," John Montgomery, a director in Microsoft's developer division, said during an interview at VSLive, a conference devoted to the company's Visual Studio .Net toolkit. The release will be primarily aimed at developers, Montgomery said. "I do, however, expect that you will find IT departments starting to look at it, kick the tires, figure out what's in it and what's not in it."

Beta 1 will be the first look at Longhorn in its current form. Microsoft released a developer preview version of Windows at the Professional Developers Conference in the fall of 2003 and updated that early code last spring.

However, Longhorn has changed significantly since then, with Microsoft announcing changes in August affecting all three of the key pillars of Longhorn. Two of the components--a presentation engine called Avalon and a Web services architecture called Indigo--are being pulled out of the next Windows release so they can be offered for both Longhorn and the current generation of Windows operating systems.

The third major component, a reworking of the Windows file system known as WinFS, has been delayed past Longhorn's release and is expected to be in beta testing when Longhorn ships. It is unclear when WinFS will be integrated into Windows itself.

Microsoft has not talked a great deal about what features will be part of the beta release. Montgomery said many of the updates have to do with improving the "operational characteristics" of the operating system--basically making Windows easier to manage and more reliable. Among the changes will be a new model for drivers--the bits of code that allow Windows to work effectively with hardware add-ons such as graphic cards and peripherals.

Another improvement will come in the way businesses are able to install Windows on large numbers of machines. Today, mass deployment is done through a process known as "ghosting" an image of the operating system. An improved method will come with Longhorn, Montgomery said.

Montgomery said Microsoft is on track for two other key releases for this year. The 2005 editions of the Visual Studio programming tools and the SQL Server database are slated to get new test versions in the coming weeks, with final releases scheduled for late summer.

Earlier Monday, Microsoft said that by March, it will release an update to the preview version of Avalon. Servers and tools Chief Eric Rudder is slated to talk about Indigo on Tuesday.