Microsoft discussed the future of Windows NT Server and the BackOffice suite at Thursday's TechEd conference. Microsoft's Bob Muglia, VP of the Server Application division, told attendees about a new small business server, code-named "Sam," that will be easy to administer and set up. It's due later this year.
"We are taking all the capabilities in BackOffice and wrapping them up in a small package and making them available," he said.
Also mentioned was the Windows NT 5.0 Enterprise Edition, which will be formally announced on May 20th at Scalability Day. "Our focus is to build the basic foundation that will let you create the applications you want in whatever market you want to target," he said.
A new edition to the BackOffice suite, Site Server, will provide intranet Web hosting. The next version of SQL Server--code-named "Sphinx"--will allow users to send databases in e-mail with "the click of a mouse button." It will also include a special "self-configuring" desktop edition for Windows 95 users. Windows NT 5.0 will be bundled with Microsoft Transaction
Server and the Microsoft Message Queuing systems. The next version of Proxy
Server will include new security features and better caching. A future version of Exchange Server will support IMAP, NNTP extensions, and the HTTP DAV extensions now under consideration with the World Wide Web Consortium. It will also support Active Server Pages
