At TechEd in Orlando today, Microsoft made a few product announcements and demonstrated a lot of Windows Server 2012's new virtualization features. Microsoft highlighted what is coming soon, especially from Windows Server 2012. Virtualization is the name of the game, and Microsoft showed off migration of virtual machines between on-premises servers and the cloud (using the new Azure virtual machine capability), showcased the scalability of Hyper-V 3 (up to 64 virtual CPUs, 1TB RAM per virtual machine, and a test virtual machine managing more than 900,000 I/O operations per second, bottlenecked only by hardware), and demonstrated management of its virtual switch using software from Cisco.

These capabilities are going to be production-ready soon. For Microsoft, in fact, they're already here; the company said that it has migrated the front-end servers for the Bing search engine to the Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate. The purpose of TechEd is not to announce major new features: it's to get Windows admins and developers ready for the imminent future.

While once Microsoft might have put Linux in its crosshairs, these days, the target is VMware. Hyper-V 3 may not be able to match VMware vSphere 5 in every possible regard, but it's much closer than past versions. Hyper-V is already the default choice for many Windows-only shops, and Hyper-V 3 will only extend Redmond's reach. Major stumbling blocks with the current version, such as the lack of live migration, have been addressed, meaning that even more organizations will be able to move away from the "VMware tax."

Redmond is also being smart in its embrace of heterogeneous datacenters: System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012, the imminent update to its virtual machine management platform, can manage Citrix's XenServer and VMware ESXi in addition to Hyper-V, allowing easier migration to Microsoft's platform, or even the long-term use of mixed environments to avoid lock-in.

Microsoft is out to eat VMware's lunch, and it needs admins on-board to do this to create "private clouds." The TechEd audience gave what they saw a warm reception, but their mere attendance at the event shows that they're that bit more dedicated to, or at least, interested in, what Microsoft has to offer.

The reception among other admins may be a little frostier. The demos today avoided all the more contentious parts of Windows Server 2012 and showed the platform in the best possible light. Readers of our Server Room forum are a little more concerned—they're keen on the features, but not happy with the use of the Metro interface.

Windows Intune 3 and Visual Studio LightSwitch

In addition to the tour of Windows Server 2012, Microsoft also announced that its cloud-based management and security software, Windows Intune 3, has gone live after a beta release in April. Major new features include management of mobile devices and Active Directory integration.

Intune mobile device management supports Windows Phone, Android 2.1 and up, and iOS 4 and up. It provides a front-end for administration of ActiveSync policies such as device encryption and password strength. On iOS and Android devices, Intune 3 can also be used to deploy line-of-business applications.

The other announcement was that Visual Studio LightSwitch has been updated to include support for HTML output. LightSwitch enables rapid development of data-driven line-of-business applications. Previously it supported creation of Silverlight applications and deployment to Azure; the update brings the ability to create standard HTML front-ends, suitable for both desktop and mobile users.

While this addresses one concern with LightSwitch—Silverlight's future is uncertain, making the purpose of a program that creates Silverlight apps unclear—the new HTML support still doesn't address the product's bigger market problems: professional developers find it too simplistic, but nonprofessional developers don't know it even exists and probably can't get access to it anyway.

Listing image by Microsoft