delphi

Microsoft’s John Hazen has posted on the official Building Windows 8 blog about the security and reliability principles in the Metro platform in Windows 8. Hazen explains how apps are installed from the Windows store, use contracts to interact with the operating system, and have to ask user consent for access to device capabilities such as the webcam or GPS, or to access user data such as documents and music.

The most intriguing part of the document comes when Hazen appeals to developers to stick to the API that is referenced in the official Windows 8 Metro SDK:

Resist the temptation to find ways to invoke APIs that are not included in the SDK. This ultimately undermines the expectations that customers have for your app. APIs that are outside the SDK are not guaranteed to work with Metro style apps either in this release or in future releases, so you may find that your app doesn’t function properly for all customers. These APIs may also not function properly in the async environment that is foundational to Metro style app design. Finally these APIs may undermine customer confidence by accessing resources or data that Metro style apps would not normally interact with. For all these reasons, we have provided checks in the Windows App Certification Kit to help you catch places where you might have inadvertently called interfaces not exposed by the SDK.

While it is possible to hide or obfuscate calls to APIs that are not included in the SDK, this is still a violation of customer expectations and Store policy. In the end, we have created this platform to help developers like you to build amazing apps that work well with the system and with other apps and devices to delight customers. Working with the Metro style SDK is fundamental to your realizing that goal.

The worrying aspect of this appeal to developers to play nice is Hazen’s admission that crafty developers may find ways to escape the Metro sandbox, undermining both the security and the privacy protection built into Metro. The main protection against this is such such an app should be blocked from the Windows Store, but can Microsoft check with 100% confidence that no hidden or obfuscated API calls exist? How effective is the Metro sandbox?

My guess is that the danger will be greater on the x86 version of Windows 8 than in Windows RT, which is locked down to prevent any third-party desktop applications from being installed. Nevertheless, a large part of the non-Metro Windows API must exist in Windows RT, to support the desktop, Explorer and Microsoft Office.

Related posts:

1. Developers: will you do Metro?
2. Windows Phone, Windows 8, and Metro Metro Metro feature in Microsoft’s last keynote at CES
3. Run Metro apps in a window on Windows 8

Last month I was at Intel’s software conference learning about Many Integrated Core (MIC), the company’s forthcoming accelerator card for HPC (High Performance Computing). This month I am in San Jose for NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference learning about the latest development in NVIDIA’s platform for accelerated massively parallel computing using GPU cards and the CUDA architecture. The approaches taken by NVIDIA and Intel have much in common – focus on power efficiency, many cores, accelerator boards with independent memory space controlled by the CPU – but also major differences. Intel’s boards have familiar x86 processors, whereas NVIDIA’s have GPUs which require developer to learn CUDA C or an equivalent such as OpenCL.

In order to simplify this, NVIDIA and partners Cray, CAPS and PGI announced OpenACC last year, a set of directives which when added to C/C++ code instruct the compiler to run code parallelised on the GPU, or potentially on other accelerators such as Intel MIC. The OpenACC folk have stated from the outset their hope and intention that OpenACC will converge with OpenMP, an existing standard for directives enabling shared memory parallelisation. OpenMP is not suitable for accelerators since these have their own memory space.

One thing that puzzled me though: Intel clearly stated at last month’s event that it would support OpenMP (not OpenACC) on MIC, due to go into production at the end of this year or early next. How can this be?

I took the opportunity here at NVIDIA’s conference to ask Duncan Poole, who is NVIDIA’s Senior Manager for High Performance Computing and also the President of OpenACC, about what is happening with these two standards. How can Intel implement OpenMP on MIC, if it is not suitable for accelerators?

“I think OpenMP in the form that’s being discussed inside of the sub-committee is suitable. There’s some debate about some of the specific features that continues. Also, in the OpenMP committee they’re trying to address the concerns of TI and IBM so it’s a broader discussion than just the Intel architecture. So OpenMP will be useful on this class of processor. What we needed to do is not wait for it. That standard, if we’re lucky it will be draft at the end of this year, and maybe a year later will be ratified. We want to unify this developer base now,” Poole told me.

How similar will this adapted OpenMP be to what OpenACC is now?

“It’s got the potential to be quite close. The guy that drafted OpenACC is the head of that sub-committee. There’ll probably be changes in keywords, but there’s also some things being proposed now that were not conceived of. So there’s good debate going on, and I expect that we’ll benefit from it.

“Some of the features for example that are shared by Kepler and MIC with respect to nested parallelism are very useful. Nested parallelism did not exist at the time that we started this work. So there’ll be an evolution that will happen and probably a logical convergence over time.

If OpenMP is not set to support acclerators until two years hence, what can Intel be doing with it?

“It will be a vendor implementation of a pre-release standard. Something like that,” said Poole, emphasising that he cannot speak for Intel. “To be complementary to Intel, they have some good ideas and it’s a good debate right now.”

Incidentally, I also asked Intel about OpenACC last month, and was told that the company has no plans to implement it on its compilers. OpenMP is the standard it supports.

The topic is significant, in that if a standard set of directives is supported across both Intel and NVIDIA’s HPC platforms, developers can easily port code from one to the other. You can do this today with OpenCL, but converting an application to use OpenCL to enhance performance is a great deal more effort than adding directives.

Related posts:

1. New OpenACC compiler directives announced for GPU accelerated programming
2. Multicore processor wars: NVIDIA squares up to Intel
3. GPU computing with NVIDIA in Beijing

Yesterday NVIDIA announced the Geforce GRID, a cloud GPU service, here at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose.

The Geforce GRID is server-side software that takes advantage of new features in the “Kepler” wave of NVIDIA GPUs, such as GPU virtualising, which enables the GPU to support multiple sessions, and an on-board encoder that lets the GPU render to an H.264 stream rather than to a display.

The result is a system that lets you play games on any device that supports H.264 video, provided you can also run a lightweight client to handle gaming input. Since the rendering is done on the server, you can play hardware-accelerated PC games on ARM tablets such as the Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab, or on a TV with a set-top box such as Apple TV, Google TV, or with a built-in client.

It is an impressive system, but what are the limitations, and how does it compare to the existing OnLive system which has been doing something similar for a few years? I attended a briefing with NVIDIA’s Phil Eisler, General Manager for Cloud Gaming & 3D Vision, and got a chance to put some questions.

The key problem is latency. Games become unplayable if there is too much lag between when you perform an action and when it registers on the screen. Here is NVIDIA’s slide:

This looks good: just 120-150ms latency. But note that cloud in the middle: 30ms is realistic if the servers are close by, but what if they are not? The demo here at GTC in yesterday’s keynote was done using servers that are around 10 miles away, but there will not be a GeForce GRID server within 10 miles of every user.

According to Eisler, the key thing is not so much the distance, as the number of hops the IP traffic passes through. The absolute distance is less important than being close to an Internet backbone.

The problem is real though, and existing cloud gaming providers like OnLive and Gaikai install servers close to major conurbations in order to address this. In other words, it pays to have many small GPU clouds dotted around, than to have a few large installations.

The implication is that hosting cloud gaming is expensive to set up, if you want to reach a large number of users, and that high quality coverage will always be limited, with city dwellers favoured over rural communities, for example. The actual breadth of coverage will depend on the hoster’s infrastructure, the users broadband provider, and so on.

It would make sense for broadband operators to partner with cloud gaming providers, or to become cloud gaming providers, since they are in the best position to optimise performance.

Another question: how much work is involved in porting a game to run on Geforce GRID? Not much, Eisler said; it is mainly a matter of tweaking the game’s control panel options for display and adapting the input to suit the service. He suggested 2-3 days to adapt a PC game.

What about the comparison with OnLive? Eisler let slip that OnLive does in fact use NVIDIA GPUs but would not be pressed further; NVIDIA has agreed not to make direct comparisons.

When might Geforce GRID come to Europe? Later this year or early next year, said Eisler.

Eisler was also asked about whether Geforce GRID will cannibalise sales of GPUs to gamers. He noted that while Geforce GRID latency now compares favourably with that of a games console, this is in part because the current consoles are now a relatively old generation, and a modern PC delivers around half the latency of a console. Nevertheless it could have an impact.

One of the benefits of the Geforce GRID is that you will, in a sense, get an upgraded GPU every time your provider upgrades its GPUs, at no direct cost to you.

I guess the real question is how the advent of cloud GPU gaming, if it takes off, will impact the gaming market as a whole. Casual gaming on iPhones, iPads and other smartphones has already eaten into sales of standalone games. Now you can play hardcore games on those same devices. If the centre of gaming gravity shifts further to the cloud, there is less incentive for gamers to invest in powerful GPUs on their own PCs.

Finally, note that the latency issues, while still important, matter less for the non-gaming cloud GPU applications, such as those targeted by NVIDIA VGX. Put another way, a virtual desktop accelerated by VGX could give acceptable performance over connections that are not good enough for Geforce GRID.

Related posts:

1. Pros and cons of Adobe’s LiveCycle services in the cloud
2. NVIDIA’s GPU in the cloud: will you still want an Xbox or PlayStation?
3. Flash to get 3D acceleration with “Molehill”

NVIDIA’s GPU Technology conference is an unusual event, in part a get-together for academic researchers using HPC, in part a marketing pitch for the company. The focus of the event is on GPU computing, in other words using the GPU for purposes other than driving a display, such as processing simulations to model climate change or fluid dynamics, or to process huge amounts of data in order to calculate where best to drill for oil. However NVIDIA also uses the event to announce its latest GPU innovations, and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang used this morning’s keynote to introduce its GPU in the cloud initiative.

This takes two forms, though both are based on a feature of the new “Kepler” wave of NVIDIA GPUs which allows them to render graphics to a stream rather than to a display. It is the world’s first virtualized GPU, he claimed.

The first target is enterprise VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). The idea is that in the era of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) there is high demand for the ability to run Windows applications on devices of every kind, perhaps especially Apple iPads. This works fine via virtualisation for everyday applications, but what about GPU-intensive applications such as Autocad or Adobe Photoshop? Using a Kepler GPU you can run up to 100 virtual desktop instances with GPU acceleration. NVIDIA calls this the VGX Platform.

What actually gets sent to the client is mostly H.264 video, which means most current devices have good support, though of course you still need a remote desktop client.

The second target is game streaming. The key problem here – provided you have enough bandwidth – is minimising the lag between when a player moves or clicks Fire, and when the video responds. NVIDIA has developed software called the Geforce GRID which it will supply along with specially adapted Kepler GPUs to cloud companies such as Gaikai. Using the Geforce GRID, lag is reduced, according to NVIDIA, to something close to what you would get from a game console.

We saw a demo of a new Mech shooter game in which one player is using an Asus Transformer Prime, an Android tablet, and the other an LG television which has a streaming client built in. The game is rendered in the cloud but streamed to the clients with low latency.

“This is your game console,” said NVIDIA CEO Jen-Sun Huang, holding the Ethernet cable that connected the TV to the internet.

The concept is attractive for all sorts of reasons. Users can play games without having to download and install, or connect instantly to a game being played by a friend. Game companies are protected from piracy, because the game code runs in the cloud, not on the device.

NVIDIA does not plan to run its own cloud services, but is working with partners, as the following slide illustrates. On the VDI side, Citrix, Microsoft, VMWare and Xen were mentioned as partners.

If cloud GPU systems take off, will it cannibalise the market for powerful GPUs in client devices, whether PCs, game consoles or tablets? I put this to Huang in the press Q&A after the keynote, and he denied it, saying that people like designers hate to share their PCs. It was an odd and unsatisfactory answer. After all, if Huang is saying that your games console is now an Ethernet cable, he is also saying that there is no need any longer for game consoles which contain powerful NVIDIA GPUs. The same might apply to professional workstations, with the logic that cloud computing always presents: that shared resources have better utilisation and therefore lower cost.

Related posts:

1. Sony’s Flash advantage for PlayStation 3 vs Xbox 360
2. NVIDIA talks up GPU computing, presents roadmap
3. Microsoft fixes Xbox 360 license transfer

17 мая 2012 года в 10:00 компании Softline и Embarcadero приглашают Вас принять участие в БЕСПЛАТНОМ вебинаре: «Новые возможности Delphi XE2 – FireMonkey в действии» К участию в вебинаре приглашается широкий круг IT- и технических специалистов, связанных с разработкой программного обеспечения. Новая версия Delphi XE2 обладает принципиально новой библиотекой визуальных компонентов – платформой разработки FireMonkey. Она дает возможность создавать яркие приложения с потрясающим интерфейсом пользователя, однако ее эффективное освоение на начальном этапе требует ознакомления с принципами работы и основными механизмами. Базовые классы, варианты выбора проекта приложения FireMonkey, принципиальные отличия HD и 3D-интерфейсов, методы анимации объектов, а также много другой полезной информации. На вебинаре будет рассказано о новой платформе разработки приложений FireMonkey, а также примеры приложений, созданных с ее помощью. Вебинар проводит Всеволод Леонов – менеджер по продуктам Embarcadero Technologies. Предварительная регистрация на вебинар является обязательной!    Вносить данные необходимо на русском языке! После регистрации участник получит письмо с дальнейшими инструкциями.    Зарегистрироваться можно:        http://seminars.softline.ru/event/5885/register?utm_source=softine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=embarcadero_17_may

Кроме того!!!

Вебинары Embarcadero серии Developer Direct.

NVIDIA has ported its Nsight development tools, previously a plug-in for Visual Studio, to run within the open source Eclipse IDE for use on Mac and Linux.

The Nsight tools include profiling, refactoring, syntax highlighting and auto-completion, as well as a bunch of code samples.

The Windows version for Visual Studio has also been updated, and now supports local GPU debugging as well as new support for DirectX frame debugging and analysis.

Although Eclipse of course runs on Windows, Nsight users should continue to use the Visual Studio version. NVIDIA is not supporting use of the Eclipse Nsight on Windows.

The tools are in preview and you can sign up to try them here.

Another significant development is the availability of the CUDA LLVM Compiler. NVIDIA has contributed CUDA compiler code to the open source LLVM project. This means that other languages which compile to LLVM intermediate assembly language can be adapted to support parallel processing on NVIDIA GPUs. The CUDA Compiler SDK will be made available this week at the NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference in San Jose.

Related posts:

1. NVIDIA releases CUDA Toolkit 4.1 with LLVM compiler
2. NVIDIA CUDA 4.0 simplifies GPU programming, aims for mainstream
3. GPU programming for .NET

Subtitled Apple, Google, Microsoft and the battle for the internet, this is an account by the Guardian’s Technology Editor of the progress of three tech titans between 1998 and the present day. In 1998, Google was just getting started, Apple was at the beginning of its recovery under the returning CEO Steve Jobs, and Microsoft dominated PCs and was busy crushing Netscape.

Here is how the market capitalization of the three changed between 1998 and 2011:

This book tells the story behind that dramatic change in fortunes. It is a great read, written in a concise, clear and engaging style, and informed by the author’s close observation of the technology industry over that period.

That said, it is Apple that gets the best quality coverage here, not only because it is the biggest winner, but also because it is the company for which Arthur feels most affinity. When it comes to Microsoft the book focuses mainly on the company’s big failures in search, digital music and smartphones, but although these failures are well described, the question of why it has performed so badly is not fully articulated, though there is reference to the impact of antitrust legislation and an unflattering portrayal of CEO Steve Ballmer. The inner workings of Google are even less visible and if your main interest is the ascent of Google you should look elsewhere.

Leaving aside Google then, describing the success of Apple alongside Microsoft’s colossal blunders makes compelling reading. Arthur is perhaps a little unfair to Microsoft, because he skips over some of the company’s better moments, such as the success of Windows 7 and Windows Server, or even the Xbox 360, though he would argue I think that those successes are peripheral to his theme which is internet and mobile.

The heart of the book is in chapters four, on digital music, and five, on smartphones. The iPod, after all, was the forerunner of the Apple iPhone, and the iPhone was the forerunner of the iPad. Microsoft’s famous ecosystem of third-party hardware partners failed to compete with the Ipod, and by the time the company got it mostly right by abandoning its partners and creating the Zune, it was too late.

The smartphone story played out even worse for Microsoft, given that this was a market where it already had significant presence with Windows Mobile. Arthur describes the launch of the iPhone, and then recounts how Microsoft acquired a great mobile phone team with a company called Danger, and proceeded to destroy it. The Danger/Pink episode shows more than any other how broken is Microsoft’s management and mobile strategy. Danger was acquired in February 2008. There was then, Arthur describes, an internal battle between the Windows Mobile team and the Danger team, won by the Windows Mobile team under Andy Lees, and resulting in 18 months delay while the Danger operating system was rewritten to use Windows CE. By the time the first new “Project Pink” phone was delivered it was short on features and no longer wanted by Verizon, the partner operator. The “Kin” phone was on the market for only 48 days.

The Kin story was dysfunctional Microsoft at its worst, a huge waste of money and effort, and could have broken a smaller company. Microsoft shrugged it off, showing that its Windows and Office cash cows continue to insulate it against incompetence, probably too much for its own long-tem health.

Finally, the book leaves the reader wondering how the story continues. Arthur gets the significance of the iPad in business:

Cook would reel off statistics about the number of Fortune 500 companies ‘testing or deploying’ iPads, of banks and brokers that were trying it, and of serious apps being written for it. Apple was going, ever so quietly, after the business computing market – the one that had belonged for years to Microsoft.

Since he wrote those words that trend has increased, forming a large part of what is called Bring Your Own Device or The Consumerization of IT. Microsoft does have what it hopes is an answer, which is Windows 8, under a team led by the same Steven Sinofsky who made a success of Windows 7. The task is more challenging this time round though: Windows 7 was an improved version of Windows Vista, whereas Windows 8 is a radical new departure, at least in respect of its Metro user interface which is for the Tablet market. If Windows 8 fares as badly against the iPad as Plays for Sure fared against the iPod, then expect further decline in Microsoft’s market value.

Related posts:

1. Fragmentation and the RIA wars: Flash is the least bad solution
2. Can Microsoft repeat history and come from behind with Windows Phone 7?
3. Nokia results: hope for Windows Phone?

Over the last two weeks I've been playing a bit with the three main cloud storage services and their respective Windows applications, that let you map a folder to remote storage. I've read countless blog posts about the license agreements and I really think that despite the different wording they are almost identical; I've read debates about the price comparison (but they are difficult to compare, because they do different things). What I'm not seen covered is the cabability of the Windows client applications and the quality of their integration with Windows Explorer. If you want to use them to keep a local copy of your main PC files on a safe location, and move others to a public folder to share them with the world, you don't want to use the browser and upload or download file. You want this to happen seamlessly. That's why Google released a Windows application for GDrive and Microsoft (after a few years) released one for SkyDrive. DropBox? They had one for quite some time...

Microsoft SkyDrive

Microsoft has had SkyDrive for quite some time and now gave us early users some extra free space... until the change the service name (I notice that changes Windows Live and Azure to something else). After a few years they released a client application in the same week Google released theirs. Don't tell me Microsoft doesn't need competition to put its act together!  Anyway, after you install it and connect it to your Microsoft account (or Windows Live ID) you get to pick a folder that's kept in synch with cloud storage. Choose wisely, as you cannot change the folder later on but need to uninstall and re-install. Not good. After the process, you get an icon in the notification area:

Quite scanty. You can open the local folder or open the online view in the browser. The configuration settings are also a bit bare bone: there are two check boxes!

As you look into the selected folder, or one of the subfolders, you see your files with a modified icon, loosely cloning TortoiseSVN, with the file status. That's all as there is no special menu, folder configuration or any other setting. You move files there, they get backed up online. And you can share them with other computers. This is much better than in the past, when there was only the web interface, but not a huge effort.

Google GDrive

Google's storage service has been rumored for years, and it was finally released recently. it is integrated with Google Docs (and Google Apps), which already provided file storage at least for those (like myself) with a paid company account. Now you get integration with the Windows file system. Again, when you install GDrive you point it to a folder and it show a nice icon in your notification area, with some more menu items:

There are the two core menu items (view local drive, open in browser) plus a few more direct links 8buy more storage, view items shared with me) and some nice status information (active account, available space). Also the preferences are a bit more complete than Microsoft ones:

For example you can synch only some of the folders under the main GDrive folder and, well, you can buy more storage (the message is not so subtle...). GDrive specific features is that is merges in its files and folders the local files on your PC and the documents on Google Apps and the "virtual folders" you arranged your documents into. On the local file system you get placeholders for the online documents, which can make it much faster to open them. But it you copy a local file (like a Word or PowerPoint file) you can still open it online, if you want. I use Google Apps a lot and find this feature quite handy. This is a view of a folder:

In this case there is no visual clue about the file status, which is a bit disappointing. 

DropBox

DropBox is the service that first integrated remote or cloud document storage with Windows. I think they still use Amazon's S3 behind the scenes, which explains why they are considerably more expensive. I do have quite a lot of free storage from they referral program... if you want to contribute some more signup to DropBox from this link.

From the installation, you can notice that DropBox has more flexibility. It's notification icon keep telling you of the files is it downloading or uploading, and using it for shared content among multiple computers is really very nice. The icon and its menu look like this:

Notice the "all files up to date" which is the more detailed than the other services, and the recently changed files, and the pause... but if you open the preferences dialog you can see that it is not even comparable to Google and Microsoft apps in terms of flexibility and customization. Yes, it might be geared towards power user, more than the average user, but I certainly appreciate the difference:

This is only one of the 5 configuration pages. For example, you have the option to move the entire DropBox repository to a different location on your file system. And other advanced features.

But the real difference between DropBox and the other services becomes visible as you start moving to Windows Explorer itself. DropBox enabled files and folders have extra menu items that let you perform specific actions, like making a folder public, retrieving the URL of a public resource, getting past versions of the files, and perform many more actions without having to open the web browser. As Microsoft's solution (and well before it), the files and folders are marked with status icons. Here are the two instances of the folder and file menus, but their actual content depends on the sych and accessibility status:

Conclusion: DropBox clearly wins on Windows Integration

Online services must work nicely and easily give you power without having to resort to a browser, be geared towards synchronizing different computers and devices. For now on Windows DropBox is a clear winner (and I'm not saying this because of the affiliation, as I'm also a Microsoft and Google Partner). Too bad the price difference is significant. Cannot Google or Microsoft or Amazon go buy DropBox (make Joel happy) and deliver us the best of the two worlds? Or hire a good Windows programmer and make Windows Explorer integration a little more rich for their online storage services? Microsoft should have the knowledge to do this and I was expecting a bit more from them.

PS. Or maybe one of us could write a Delphi application for integrating with Explorer, and sell it to them. Microsoft already bought a Delphi application for a few millions (Skype), you never know. ;-)

Перед разработчиками современных систем масштаба Enterprise стоит нелёгкая задача, состоящая из трёх основных аспектов:

• Обеспечить эффективное взаимодействие компонент и устойчивое функционирование многоплатформенной системы;
• Объединить и связать решения на разных платформах в рамках единой системы;
• Выбрать наиболее подходящую платформу среди значительного многообразия.

Эти вопросы детально будут обсуждаться на конференции «КРОСС-ПЛАТФОРМА», которая состоится 5 июня 2012 г. В МГУ. В программе мероприятия – доклады, панельные дискуссии, мастер-классы по новым продуктам и технологиям. Один из ключевых докладчиков конференции - Дэвид Интерсимоне, главный Евангелист Embarcadero, влюбленный в свою работу ветеран отрасли программного обеспечения. Будучи активным участником многих обсуждений, он знакомит окружающих со своими взглядами и выступает в качестве эксперта в СМИ. Г-н Интерсимоне многие годы представляет интересы проектировщиков, разработчиков и специалистов по работе с базами данных. До перехода в Embarcadero Дэвид Интерсимоне в течение 20 лет работал в компании Borland, занимаясь проектированием и разработкой продуктов компании, продвижением ее идеологии и созданием программы взаимоотношений с разработчиками. Дэвид Интерсимоне имеет степень бакалавра по вычислительной технике, полученную в Калифорнийском Политехническом университете, Сан –Луис-Обиспо. Помимо Дэвида, в конференции примут участие Сергей Орлик с докладом «Принятие архитектурно-технлогических решений: ключевые вопросы и подходы»; Артем Кузнецов, «Особенности проектирования iPad приложений для бизнеса»; Всеволод Леонов, «Многозвенная архитектура мульти-платформенных проектов», и другие эксперты отрасли.  Основные темы конференции:

• Платформы СУБД и инструменты кросс-платформенной работы;
• Мобильные платформы для корпоративных решений;
• Разработка сложных корпоративных систем;
• Инструменты разработки для  разных платформ;
• Управление базами данных  сложных корпоративных систем.

Современное понимание слова «платформа» включает в себя множество разных смыслов: это и архитектура аппаратного обеспечения, и операционная система, и реализация СУБД, и совокупность технологий разработки программного обеспечения. Встретиться с коллегами и спикерами и обсудить эту тему Вы можете на конференции «КРОСС-ПЛАТФОРМА». Зарегистрироваться на конференцию и получить более детальную информацию можно на сайте http://www.cpconf.ru/.

Yesterday I attended a UK Microsoft MMS catch-up session in Manchester, aimed at those who could not make it to Las Vegas last month. The subject was the new System Center 2012, and how it fits with Microsoft’s concept of the private cloud, and its strategy for supporting Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), the proliferation of mobile devices on which users now expect to be able to receive work email and do other work.

The session, I have to say, was on the dry side; but taken on its own terms System Center 2012 looks good. I was particularly interested in how Microsoft defines “private cloud” versus just a bunch of virtual machines (JBVM?). Attendees where told that a private cloud has four characteristics:

• Pooled resources: an enterprise cloud, not dedicated servers for each department.
• Self service: users (who might also be admins) can get new server resources on demand.
• Elasticity: apps that scale on demand.
• Usage based: could be charge-back, but more often show-back, the ability to report on what resources each user is consuming.

Microsoft’s virtualization platform is based on Hyper-V, which we were assured now represents 28% of new server virtual machines, but System Center has some support for VMWare and Citrix Xen as well.

System Center now consists of eight major components:

• Virtual Machine Manager: manage your private cloud
• Configuration Manager (SCCM): deploy client applications, manage your mobile devices
• Operations Manager: monitor network and application health
• Data Protection Manager: backup, not much mentioned
• Service Manager: Help desk and change management, not much mentioned
• Orchestrator: a newish product acquired from Opalis in 2009, automates tasks and is critical for self-service
• App Controller: manage applications on your cloud
• Endpoint protection: anti-malware, praised occasionally but not really presented yesterday

I will not bore you by going through this blow by blow, but I do have some observations.

First, in a Microsoft-platform world System Center makes a lot of sense for large organisations who do not want public cloud and who want to move to the next stage in managing their servers and clients without radically changing their approach.

Following on from that, System Center meets some of the requirements Microsoft laid out as the start of the session, but not all. In particular, it is weak on elasticity. Microsoft needs something like Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk which lets you deploy an application, set a minimum and maximum instance count, and have the platform handle the mechanics of load balancing and scaling up and down on demand. You can do it on System Center, we were told, if you can write a bunch of scripts to make it work. At some future point Orchestrator will get auto scale-out functionality.

Second, it seems to me unfortunate that Microsoft has two approaches to cloud management, one in System Center for private cloud, and one in Azure for public cloud. You would expect some differences, of course; but looking at the deployment process for applications on System Center App Controller it seems to be a different model from what you use for Azure.

Third, System Center 2012 has features to support BYOD and enterprise app stores, and my guess is that this is the way forward. Mobile device management in Configuration Manager uses a Configuration Manager Client installed on the device, or where that is not possible, exploits the support for Exchange ActiveSync policies found in many current smartphones, including features like Approved Application List, Require Device Encryption, and remote wipe after a specified number of wrong passwords entered.

The Software Center in Configuration Manager lets users request and install applications using a variety of different mechanisms under the covers, from Windows Installer to scripts and virtualised applications.

Where this gets even more interesting is in the next version of InTune, the cloud-based PC and device management tool. We saw a demonstration of a custon iOS app installed via self-service from InTune onto an iPhone. I presume this feature will also come to Software Center in SCCM though it is not there yet as far as I aware.

You can also see this demonstrated in the second MMS keynote here – it is the last demo in the Day 2 keynote.

InTune differs from System Center in that it is not based on Windows domains, though you can apply a limited set of policies. In some respects it is similar to the new self-service portal which Microsoft is bringing out for deploying Metro apps to Windows RT (Windows on ARM) devices, as described here.

This set me thinking. Which machines will be easier to manage in the enterprise, the Windows boxes with their group policy and patch management and complex application installs? Or the BYOD-style devices, including Windows RT, with their secure operating systems, isolated applications, and easy self-service app install and removal?

The latter approach seems to me a better approach. Of course most corporate apps do not work that way yet, though app virtualisation and desktop virtualisation helps, but it seems to me that this is the right direction for corporate IT.

The implication is two-fold. One is that basing your client device strategy around iPads makes considerable sense. This, I imagine, is what Microsoft fears.

The other implication is that Windows RT (which includes Office) plus Metro apps is close to the perfect corporate client. Microsoft VP Steven Sinofsky no doubt gets this, which is why he is driving Metro in Windows 8 despite the fact that the Windows community largely wants Windows 7 + and not the hybrid Metro and desktop OS that we have in Windows 8.

Windows 8 on x86 will be less suitable, because it perpetuates the security issues in Windows 7, and because users will tend to spend their time in familiar Windows desktop applications which lack the security and isolation benefits of Metro apps, and which will be hard to use on a tablet without keyboard and mouse.

Of course IT admin empires have been built on the complexity of managing Windows, System Center and the rest of it; and another point for reflection is whether there is really an appetite for radically simplified enterprise computing in those departments.

Related posts:

1. Microsoft re-imagining client computer management for Windows 8
2. Windows Media Center madness
3. Adobe Document Center shutting down, protected documents to become unreadable

Microsoft has responded to user feedback by re-introducing colour into the Visual Studio 11 IDE. The top request in the official feedback forum was for more colour in the toolbars and icons.

Now Microsoft’s Monty Hammontree, who is Director of User Experience, Microsoft Developer Tools Division – it is interesting that such a post exists – has blogged about the company’s response:

We’ve taken this feedback and based on what we heard have made a number of changes planned for Visual Studio 11 RC.

That said, developers expecting a return to the relatively colourful icons in Visual Studio 2010 will be disappointed. Hammontree posted the following side by side image:

This shows Visual Studio 10 first, then the beta, and then the forthcoming release candidate. Squint carefully and you can see a few new splashes of colour.

You can also see the the word toolbox is no longer all upper case, another source of complaint.

Hammontree explains that colour has been added to selected icons in order to help distinguish between common actions, differentiate icons within the Solution Explorer, and to reintroduce IntelliSense cues.

Did Microsoft do enough? Some users have welcomed the changes:

You have to appreciate a company that listens to there [sic] users and actually makes changes based off feedback. You guys rock!

while others are doubtful:

with respect, I fear that the changes are token ones and that whoever’s big idea this monochromatic look is, is stubbornly refusing to let go of it in spite of the users overwhelming rejection of it.

or the wittier:

I’m glad you noticed all the feedback about the Beta, when people were upset that you chose the wrong shade of gray.

While the changes are indeed subtle, they are undoubtedly an improvement for those hankering for more colour.

Another issue is that by the time a product hits beta in the Microsoft product cycle, it is in most cases too late to make really major changes. The contentious Metro UI in Windows 8 will be another interesting example.

That said, there are more important things in Visual Studio 11 than the colour scheme, despite the attention the issue has attracted.

Related posts:

1. Developers dislike monochrome Visual Studio 11 beta
2. Visual Studio 2010 nine months on: how good has it proved?
3. What’s coming in Microsoft Visual Studio