Microsoft News Tracker

The final version details for Windows Server 2008 were revealed today at the Microsoft TechEd IT Forum 2007 in Barcelona by Bob Kelly, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Infrastructure Server Marketing. To anyone familiar with Microsoft’s past server operating systems, there isn’t much that’s particularly novel except in regard to the new Viridian virtualization capability which has now been formally named Hyper-V:

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Yesterday, Microsoft released the February Community Technical Preview (CTP) of Windows Server Longhorn to select beta testers. So far there is no word on whether it will be available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers as was the December CTP. The ostensible plan is for a public beta around midyear and shipment before the end of 2007, hopefully without the eccentricities of the Vista release.

Update 2/21: David at Microsoft’s Windows Server Division Weblog reports that MSDN and TechNet subscribers will have access to the CTP shortly. Also:

This build also marks the appearance of many of the various editions in which we will release Windows Server “Longhorn”. The list of editions shouldn’t come as a surprise to most people, with Windows Server “Longhorn” Standard, Windows Server “Longhorn” Enterprise, and Windows Server “Longhorn” Datacenter, each being available in both 32-bit and 64-bit editions. One other change where the SKUs are concerned is the availability of a separate Windows Server “Longhorn” for Itanium-based Systems edition. This is different from what we did with Windows Server 2003, where we had separate Itanium versions of the Enterprise and Datacenter SKUs, but as disclosed before, this edition will focus primarily on the Application Server and database workloads.

We expect to release one more CTP before Beta 3 and we hope to have it soon.

It’s not clear whether the Web edition that appears today in Windows Server 2003 is being dropped or is just not in the CTP.

This week both Gartner and IDC announced their server sales rankings for 2005 and there was a variety of news. Stephen Shankland at CNET:

Windows narrowly bumped Unix in 2005 to claim the top spot in server sales for the first time, according to a new report from IDC.

Computer makers sold $17.7 billion worth of Windows servers worldwide in 2005 compared with $17.5 billion in Unix servers, IDC analyst Matthew Eastwood said of the firm’s latest Server Tracker market share report. “It’s the first time Unix was not top overall since before the Tracker started in 1996.”

And in another first, fast-growing Linux took third place, bumping machines with IBM’s mainframe operating system, z/OS. Linux server sales grew from $4.3 billion in 2004 to $5.3 billion in 2005, while mainframes dropped from $5.7 billion to $4.8 billion over the same period, Eastwood said.

On the hardware side, Shelley Solheim at InfoWorld:

Worldwide server revenue rose in 2005 driven largely by increased sales of x86-based servers, according to figures released by market research firms Gartner and IDC Research this week.

Worldwide server revenue in 2005 grew 4.5 percent to $51.7 billion, while server shipments grew 12.7 percent to 7.6 million units from the previous year, according to Gartner. IDC estimates revenue grew 4.4 percent to $51.3 billion, while shipments grew 11.6 percent to 7 million servers.

For the 4th quarter, Gartner had somewhat slower growth year to year while IDC estimated a slight decline.

Although the two research firms’ numbers vary, the overall message was the same: lower-end servers based on x86 microprocessors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices continue to outpace sales of midrange and higher-end enterprise servers.

Revenue for the x86 server market grew 11 percent year-over-year to $25.7 billion, while shipments were up 14.3 percent to 7 million units, according to Gartner. Revenue for RISC-Itanium Unix servers remained about flat year-over-year, increasing 0.5 percent to $15.4 billion, while shipments were down 5.3 percent to 460,000 units, said Gartner.
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IBM continued to lead the server market with 32.1 percent revenue share followed by Hewlett-Packard, at 28.2 percent, Dell, with 10.5 percent and Sun Microsystems Inc. with 9.6 percent share, according to Gartner. IDC reported similar figures, with IBM accounting for 32.9 percent of the market, HP with 27.7 percent, Dell with 10.3 percent and Sun with 9.5 percent.

Jeffrey Burt also has more at eWeek.

None of the above are really surprising - they reflect longstanding trends in server software and hardware commoditization. Windows would have reached first place some time ago if not for Linux which takes server OS commoditization one step further.

Stephen Shankland at CNET:

Intel, Hewlett-Packard and seven other server companies will spend $10 billion through 2010 to try to increase adoption of the Itanium processor.

The money is coming from Intel and HP–Itanium’s co-developers and top backers–as well as from Unisys, Silicon Graphics Inc., NEC, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Fujitsu-Siemens and Groupe Bull. The companies said Thursday that they will spend the money on research and development, marketing, and work to help software companies support the high-end processor.

“Itanium has been taking share from both IBM power and Sun Sparc. We’re on the right trajectory, but we want to go faster,” Tom Kilroy, general manager of Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group, said at a press event here. “The $10 billion investment is a statement that we want to accelerate as a unified body.”

The companies are members of the Itanium Solutions Alliance, which includes Microsoft, Red Hat, Novell, Oracle and other software companies.

Yes, Microsoft was in the audience, although they didn’t ante up. The Silicon Valley Sleuth is a little skeptical:

But as it turns out, the alliance simply wrapped an old stone in some shiny gift-wrap. Because the $10bn adds up to what the alliance members are already investing anyway.

In related news, the next Itanium version, Montecito, will have reduced power consumption and will eliminate under-performing x86 emulation hardware as Stephen Shankland relates at CNET in Intel scraps once-crucial Itanium feature:

The change, which Intel had refused to discuss until now, reflects the company’s diminished Itanium ambitions, which cast the chip as being only for higher-end servers. Intel’s retreat to that market segment was in part because Itanium couldn’t run x86 software effectively, which imposed major transition burdens on software companies and server customers.

That article apparently rankled Intel VP Will Swope who fired off a rather cryptic letter to the editor which was greeted by Ashlee Vance at The Register with amazement. Excerpt:

Brag and Itanium should never be linked unless you’re a manager at IBM, Dell or Sun Microsystems talking about how you didn’t bet your company on Intel’s hapless chip.

Intel, for example, has recently been talking up Itanium’s market gains and the broad software support for the processor.

According to IDC, the quarter-by-quarter unit volume for Itanium servers since the fourth quarter of 2003 goes as follows:

- Q403 7616
- Q104 8678
- Q204 8085
- Q304 8235
- Q404 8996
- Q105 8127
- Q205 8500
- Q305 8596

It’s true that Itanium server revenue has gone up as a result of larger systems being sold, but you can see how flat shipments have been. Meanwhile, IBM has surged from similar Power volumes in 2001 to shipping more than 100,000 servers per year, and Sun is up to more than 300,000 SPARC servers shipped per year.

I guess that’s the “taking share from IBM and Sun” that Mr. Kilroy mentioned in the first quote.

I’ve already mentioned the Great Plains and Enterprise Desktop Search announcements but there’s more:

Microsoft Corp. today kicked off its premier European conference for IT professionals, IT Forum 2005, in Barcelona, Spain, by announcing a range of new software technologies and applications.
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Muglia made several product announcements during his keynote address.

• As part of its commitment to 64-bit computing, Microsoft has been delivering products that are optimized for 64-bit, including the newly released SQL Server™ 2005, Visual Studio® 2005 and Virtual Server 2005 R2. To help customers take full advantage of the power of 64-bit computing, products including Microsoft® Exchange Server “12,” Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, Windows Server™ “Longhorn” Small Business Server, and Microsoft’s infrastructure solution for midsize businesses, code-named “Centro,” will be exclusively 64-bit and optimized for x64 hardware. In a future update release to Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Server “Longhorn” operating system, code-named Windows Server “Longhorn” R2, customers will see the complete transition to 64-bit-only hardware, while still benefiting from 32-bit and 64-bit application compatibility. For the highest-scale application and database workloads, Windows Server on 64-bit Itanium-based systems will continue to be the premier choice for customers for years to come.

Now that is a shock, and not only will Exchange 12 and Longhorn Server R2 be 64-bit only, but that forces everything built on top to go 64-bit too like the SMB offerings. Harold Wong has some Q&A on Exchange 12.

Also announced:

- “Microsoft has released to manufacturing (RTM) Virtual Server 2005 R2, which will be available in volume licensing and retail the first week of December.” (This was expected, but not the prices: “Microsoft will be offering Virtual Server R2 Standard Edition for $99 (U.S.) estimated retail price and Virtual Server R2 Enterprise Edition for $199 (U.S.) estimated retail price. This new pricing represents Microsoft’s commitment to making server virtualization more accessible to customers at the lowest price point.”)

- “Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 Beta 2 is now publicly available.” (We’ll likely hear more about this today from Bill Gates. More here and here.)

- “The company announced the December RTM of System Center Capacity Planner 2006, which brings an unprecedented level of functionality and flexibility to the process of performance analysis and planning of Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 system deployments. Microsoft also detailed plans for a midmarket offering called System Center Essentials. The new product will bring the commitment of the Dynamic Systems Initiative to midsize companies, allowing them to easily and cost-effectively secure, update, monitor and track their IT environment and better support end users.”

System Center used to be a planned product, but now it’s the new brand for Microsoft management products.