Microsoft gives glimpse of product pipeline

REDMOND, WASH. — Microsoft executives on Thursday gave financial analysts and press members a look inside its plans for future products and enhancements to existing servers, tools, and applications.

Speaking at the Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting 2003 here on the corporate campus, Microsoft officials detailed what technologists can expect to see later this year and into 2004, with a bent toward what Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates and others called “Integration Innovation.”

Gates kicked off the day by saying that Microsoft plans to spend $6.8 billion on research and development during 2004 and hire as many as 5,000 new employees.

The key areas for that spending will be on technology management, increased product integration, business intelligence, model-based programming, and speech and language technologies.

“We have to take the products we have today and make them applicable to more scenarios,” Gates said.

The theme of increased integration peppered talks from other Microsoft executives, including Group Vice President of Platforms Jim Allchin, Senior Vice President of Servers and Tools Eric Rudder, and Senior Vice President of Microsoft Business Solutions Doug Burgum.

Gates said, for instance, that most of the key R&D spending areas he mentioned will come to market via intermediate releases between now and the final version of the Windows operating system currently code-named Longhorn. He said that Longhorn will include advances in the user interface, unified storage, and improved messaging.

“In the same time frame, we’ll have advances in Office,” Gates said.

When Allchin took the stage he said that at Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, slated to take place in late October, the company will give developers a CD containing an early version of Longhorn code. Following that and into next year, Microsoft plans to issue the first of beta of Longhorn, Allchin said.

Allchin also said that in 2004 Microsoft will deliver more client pieces, such as Service Pack 2 for Windows XP, a new version of media center, and update to the Tablet PC edition of Windows.

Allchin summoned Office Product Manager Roan King to the stage to demonstrate integration of One Note 2003 with Office. King showed how a user can run a search on a word to have One Note pull up several instances of the word in various forms including text and electronic handwritten notes, and then with one click create an Outlook e-mail message out of the document.

Showing how hardware will play a role in integrating various communication applications, Chad Magendanz, lead program manager of hardware innovation team, showed off the Athens system and claimed that the PC increases productivity by enabling communications methods such as voice, data, video, and text.

Pieter Knook, corporate vice president of the Mobile and Embedded devices group, said that next year Microsoft will issue a new version of Windows Mobile that will include tighter integration with Exchange Server. By the new release date, Knook said, more than 1,000 applications will be certified for Windows Mobile. The new version also will be accompanied by more deals with Tier 1 operators and major worldwide operators.

On the enterprise applications side, Burgum said that in the first calendar quarter of 2004 will bring to market an enhanced iteration of its CRM software with support for eight more languages.

Rudder took the floor to discuss what’s on the horizon for servers and tools. New versions are scheduled to be released in 2004 for a number of servers, including Microsoft Operations Manager, Internet Security and Acceleration Server, Speech Server, Real-Time Communications Server, and BizTalk Server.