WinHEC 2007: What Did We Learn Today?

2. The changes in the system kernels for Vista and Longhorn. Perhaps the single smartest hire Microsoft made in the last year is SysInternals developer Mark Russinovich, a generally respected engineer among engineers who's no stranger to BetaNews. In October 2005, Russinovich used his own hand-rolled tools to discover the presence of Sony BMG-delivered malware that masqueraded itself just like a rootkit. The tidal wave helped carry Russinovich to legendary status.

Last year as an independent engineer, Russinovich and a SysInternals colleague presented a preview of the upcoming changes in Windows Vista's kernel that was among the best delivered and best received single hour of education in a decade of conferences. Perhaps it was there that Microsoft realized that Russinovich knew more about Vista than many of its own programmers. The quickest way to solve that little problem was obvious.

This year at WinHEC, Russinovich updated his Vista kernel changes presentation; but before that, he was invited to deliver one of the coveted Day 2 keynote sessions. There, his rapid-fire delivery of facts and ideas like Rip Taylor zinging confetti to Johnny Carson's old audience, astounded and pleased the crowd. Reporters, analysts, and general attendees alike reported learning more from Russinovich's hour than during the rest of an entire day.

What's more important, attendees came away understanding the architectural differences in Vista and the former Longhorn without the candy coating and hyperactive metaphors that marketing typically attaches.

While new Windows VP Mike Nash consumed all of 22 minutes speaking about Vista as, among other fluffy things, the deliverer of "aspirational experiences" to consumers (which, with all due respect to Nash, had me and others reaching for our aspirins right away), Russinovich talked sense. He was one of WinHEC's bright spots this year, and you'll see more of what he talked about later in BetaNews.

1. Virtualization, virtualization, virtualization. What we learned at WinHEC this year was that there were clearly two classes of hardware engineers - those who have come to rely on virtualization as a server consolidation tool, and others who are just now investigating the topic. When Microsoft cancelled its demonstration of live migration - a critical feature of Windows Server Virtualization, code-named "Viridian," that was delayed the week before the conference - we expected everyone to be disappointed.

As it turned out, we were a little surprised: The first group was disappointed, but there were many in the second group who attended some of the remaining talks on virtualization, including from Microsoft's Mike Neil, who were clearly not clued in about the significance of Viridian's postponed features: the hot-adding of components such as memory to a running VM, scaling up to 64 logical processors, and live migration of physical machines to virtual machines.

So when Neil responded to BetaNews' inquiry by saying the postponed features didn't really square with the market segment Viridian was targeting anyway, we listened for the response from the attendees. While some snickered, we noticed others didn't seem to know what we were talking about anyway. And with respect to them, Neil may very well be correct.

The caught-off-guard, hottest topic of the show: Windows Home Server. Sure, we knew it was coming, but at WinHEC, we were awakened to a trend that was already going on but which we frankly hadn't noticed until this week: System builders and OEMs want to start making this new class of home server component, or they want to make peripherals and software to support home servers. For them, it's as if a completely new class of PC market were opened up overnight, a fresh market waiting to be harvested.

In fact, it's such a new market that BetaNews happened to be present when Windows Home Server engineers Charlie Kindel and Chris Gray got their first look at an AMD reference design for the Micro DTX form factor, manufactured by Gigabyte. Yes, it's a do-it-yourself motherboard for building your own home server, and it's a whole new world for builders who can now enter the uncharted world of home media equipment.

The next day, a "Deep Dive" session presented by Gray was attended by a standing-room-only crowd flooded with questions about how system builders can implement their own unique software features in both professional and homebrew home servers.

Moments like this one are proof that events like WinHEC can be extremely informative, even without the omnipotent presence of a "down-the-road" operating system, when you follow the crowd and you listen intently to what they're saying. What we learned from WinHEC this week is that Microsoft is getting better at communication. Maybe they're a little late to the game, but it's obvious they're figuring it out.