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Gates Gives Long-Term Preview of Longhorn
Security is a focus for the next version of Windows.
by John Zipperer

PDC, October 29, 2003

For Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates, the solution to the frustrations its customers have felt with earlier releases of Windows lies in future releases that he believes will enable the platform to deliver the next generation of functions and features. Speaking in his keynote address to his company's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles on Monday, Gates said the company has been working hard to address security problems, an improvement that will continue and be further enabled by the connected-system structure of future releases.

Gates acknowledged that the two initiatives are intimately connected. "The issues around spam and security—those are very prominent in people's minds," he said. "Unless we show with software [that] we can reduce those problems, we won't be able to drive forward."

Jim Allchin, group vice president of Microsoft's Platforms Group, echoed his boss's sentiments, saying that Microsoft's dedication to security has led it to start back with the fundamentals and carry it through every step and every form of product or service.

"There are a lot of things Microsoft has to do," said Gates, "in terms of inspecting our code, making sure the APIs aren't vulnerable, having testing methodologies—so when systems are improved, you understand whether or not there can possibly be regressions against the technology."

Reducing Complexity Is a Goal
That approach to total security should be welcomed by administrators and managers facing increasing complexity in their systems. Gates' answer is to reduce that complexity and make his products simpler to manage, change, customize, and leverage throughout an enterprise.

"The constraint in this era is not the microprocessor, it's not the cost of network," Gates said. "It's software—software that is managing itself, software that is reducing complexity."

In this first public unveiling of the next release of Windows, code-named Longhorn, the emphasis was on systems that do more automatically (making them easier to maintain), are more flexible in their handling of structured and unstructured information (giving end users more-intuitive access to their information and its organization), and easier for developers to use. Instead of traditional management software layered on top, Gates said future releases will include policies that let the users automate as much as possible and help the administrators understand the types of failures that take place, "so it's not just thousands of error messages when the system goes down."

He says the "breakthroughs" in the next wave of Windows products will include advanced Web services, improved workflow capabilities, distributed management, and the ability to handle and integrate ad hoc connections such as P2P networking. To handle all of that (and, again, to tie it into the need for deep security), Gates says more needs to be handled at the server level, to prevent applications from competing with each other to prioritize themselves in the end user's automated alerting and updating features.

Security has to be built-in (and thorough) just to address angry customers. But it also is absolutely critical in a world of connected businesses, with enterprises sharing and accessing Web services, employees looking to leverage peer-to-peer technology for communications and collaboration, and with the power of shared data being necessary to achieve the productivity gains Gates forecast for the next decade.

About the Author
John Zipperer is Executive Editor of Windows Server System Magazine.