Road MAP Redefined

摘要

Microsoft's Web-Services Strategy, until now focused on the tactical issue of IT plumbing, is shifting to the more strategic, and tougher, set of problems involving business processes. Products in development, described for the first time last week, aim not only to connect employees and companywide operations but also to improve collaboration and maybe even reinvent processes. It's a big step for a company with a 25-year reputation as a platform provider. The new spin became clearer last week, as Microsoft executives appeared at events on both coasts to describe how new XML-based products will address collaboration, business-process management, and real-time visibility of data. Microsoft plans to deliver a desktop application, code-named XDocs, that will let users create business forms that store data formatted in XML for easy sharing across systems. A new server, code-named Jupiter, will fuse the vendor's BizTalk, Content Management, and Commerce servers into a package that can route documents in a workflow, in part through its sup-port of the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services. Microsoft also detailed the next version of its E-mail software, Exchange Server.