With commentators still trying to make sense of Microsoft`s December reorganisation of its platforms group, the vendor yesterday announced another change.
According to reports, the e-business server group, which develops the upcoming BizTalk server 2004 and the merged e-commerce/content management server (Discovery), has seen a management reshuffle. Both these products have slipped beyond their shipping date.
In addition, the Content Management Server work was moved to the SharePoint Portal Server group last year.
Platforms group
Microsoft reshuffled its platforms group in December, creating a central engineering division - the Windows Core Operating System Division. In preparation for Longhorn, the next-generation Windows platform, an internal memo advised that the server and client product businesses would also be spun off.
This move has local commentators scratching their heads. Gary Marsden, associate professor at the University of Cape Town`s computer science department, says it is unclear why Microsoft split operating systems into client and server versions when it has spent so much energy integrating them.
Danny Naidoo, Microsoft SA director, developer and platform groups, says although many similarities exist between the core engines of the client and server platforms, the requirements for each is vastly different.
International commentators further liken the move to the Linux situation, which has split kernel and product development. However, Simon Stewart, head of sadeveloper.net, the South African Microsoft developer community, says the two have nothing in common. Naidoo argues that Microsoft has no concept of a kernel, which leaves the two wide apart.
Naidoo stresses that the development encapsulates the desire to achieve operating and engineering efficiencies, also in terms of the Trustworthy Computing and Integrated Innovation undertakings within Microsoft. It aims to ensure quality standards of engineering.
"We have determined what commonalities there are between client and server operating systems, and the central engineering group reflects those commonalities. What differences there are will be addressed in the client and server groups."
Stewart concludes that Longhorn "will represent a huge change from what we currently have in Windows and this move may be their way of ensuring they can deliver this product to the market around the 2006 timeline".
Naidoo says these were not the reasons communicated to the SA team for the move. "The core driver for this remains a desire to achieve more optimised development results."
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