Microsoft launches new server software

But analysts say Windows Server 2008 is an incremental update

An article By Jessica Mintz

Microsoft Corp. launched a new version of its server operating system with great fanfare Wednesday, but analysts said Windows Server 2008 is an incremental update rather than a giant leap forward.

At a Los Angeles event that opened with a speech by former news anchor Tom Brokaw, Microsoft also unveiled a new edition of Visual Studio 2008, used by computer programmers to create desktop and Web applications. The event also promoted a third program, Microsoft's SQL Server 2008 database system, which won't be available until the third quarter of this year.

The three franchises are part of Microsoft's lucrative server and tools division, which brought in $3.28 billion in revenue in the three months ended Dec. 31, 2007 — a fifth of the company's total revenue in the period.

Notably absent from the server launch was a final version of "Hyper-V," a software layer that allows IT people to turn a single server computer into many virtual machines. While a beta version is available, Microsoft has said that component won't be complete for another six months, even as Chief Executive Steve Ballmer touted virtualization as one of the key trends addressed by Microsoft's new generation of programs.

"There are a ton of really interesting features, but really no single feature that says, 'I gotta have it,'" said Gartner analyst John Enck in an interview about Windows Server 2008.

"The only thing we're really negative on is the late hypervisor," he said, referring to the virtualization technology.

Enck and other analysts pointed to new features that make the new version of server software easier for IT people to manage their companies' armies of laptop and desktop PCs and data center servers.

It also added features analysts expect will appeal to people who chose open-source Linux or Unix-based servers in the past.

For example, IT people can now pick and choose different server components based on what kind of job they want a single machine to perform, reducing costs and improving security by giving hackers fewer places to attack. Microsoft also added a command-line interface familiar to open-source aficionados, as well as better support for popular free applications like the Apache Web server.

"Microsoft, for the last five to 10 years, has been slowly adding capabilities that have been the domain of other operating systems," said James Staten, an analyst for Forrester Research. "They're doing it again."

Computing

Computing the distance between the thirty-first and forty-fifth degrees, it amounts to nine hundred and seventy-three common miles; computing it from thirty-one to forty-two degrees, to seven hundred and sixty-four miles and a half..The term computing is synonymous with counting and calculating. Originally, people that performed these functions were known as computers. Today it refers to a science and technology that deals with the computation and the manipulation of symbols. "Computing" also refers to the operation and usage of computing machines, the electrical processes carried out within the computing hardware itself, and the theoretical concepts governing them (computer science). Crooks and his companions had been completely disheartened by this retrograde march through a bleak and barren country; and had found, computing from their progress and the accumulating difficulties besetting every step, that it would be impossible to reach Henry's Fort and return to the main body in the course of the winter

Hardware

Hardware implies permanence and invariability. Software or programming can easily be varied. You can put an entirely new program in the hardware and make it create an entirely new experience for the user. You can, however, change the modular configurations that most computers come with by adding new adapters or cards that extend the computer's capabilities.Computer is so called in contrast to computer hardware, which encompasses the physical interconnections and devices required to store and execute (or run) the software. In computers, software is loaded into RAM and executed in the central processing unit. At the lowest level, software consists of a machine language specific to an individual processor

Software

Software is the programs that run on a computer. Explanation: Software is made up of instructions that tell the computer what to do. It is stored on disks in bits and bytes. ClarisWorks and Kid Pix are examples of software. "Please load the ClarisWorks software on the computer." Computer software is a general term used to describe a collection of computer programs, procedures and documentation that perform some task on a computer system. The term includes application software such as word processors which perform productive tasks for users, system software such as operating systems, which interface with hardware to provide the necessary services for application software, and middleware which controls and co-ordinates distributed systems.

Program

Programs can be characterized as interactive or batch in terms of what drives them and how continuously they run. An interactive program receives data from an interactive user (or possibly from another program that simulates an interactive user). A batch program runs and does its work, and then stops. Batch programs can be started by interactive users who request their interactive program to run the batch program. A command interpreter or a Web browser is an example of an interactive program. A program that computes and prints out a company payroll is an example of a batch program. Print jobs are also batch programs. A Program may not be sufficiently complete for execution by a computer. In particular, it may require additional software from a software library in order to be complete. Such a library may include software components used by stand-alone programs, but which cannot work on their