In the past 12 months, Microsoft has released major versions of Visual Studio (Team System), SQL Server, Windows, SharePoint, and Office. Any one of these products alone would provide enough new features and development possibilities to keep me writing into next year (both code and articles!). Clearly it is a monumental year in Redmond and they aren't finished, as the release of Windows Server 2008 looms later this year.

Windows Server 2008 promises to be a boon to developers because it provides a more powerful, and yet simpler, foundation for building applications than previous Windows Server versions. Microsoft has positioned the benefits of Windows Server 2008 around three core themes of control, protection, and flexibility.

• More control—Windows Server 2008 provides the tools required to centrally manage server roles and resources required for your applications. For example the new Server Manager console serves as the single source for managing Windows Server 2008 servers in your server farm. Also, no longer does a server include all services without regard to the role it plays on the network. Thanks to Role-Based Installation, a server only hosts the services required to fulfill its assigned role. Furthermore, Windows Server 2008 provides administrators with Configuration Wizards and Enhanced System Management features to help automate configuration tasks and to identify issues before they occur (i.e. hard drive failures, overheating CPU, etc.). These tools reduce the effort needed to manage your resources on the server and network as you can control resources using network policies.
• Increased protection—Windows Server 2008 is the most secure version of Windows Server to-date thanks to a reduced attack surface. This is largely due to the fact that only the services required for the server's assigned role are installed and running. Since fewer applications are running, there are fewer potential security holes that could threaten the server. Unused features are not installed. This has the added benefit of reducing the need for patches. If your server is not running a service that requires a patch or hotfix, you don't need to install it.
• Greater flexibility—Windows Server 2008 allows you to deploy and manage features that suit your applications. For example, with the manageability options in IIS 7, you can provide a remote user with admin access to an IIS application and allow the user to manage Web applications while maintaining control over IIS's overall security settings.

These are great themes and they serve to get the discussion of Windows Server 2008 started on a mass scale.

New Features Open a Multitude of Possibilities
Before I dig into some of the features, I want to state clearly that there are more features than can be covered in an overview such as this. Windows Server 2008 offers something for everyone, so I encourage you to spend some time researching all that it has to offer as your interests will most certainly vary from mine. The remainder of the article will cover features that I, a developer and ISV business owner, find the most compelling.

IIS 7.0
IIS has been great ever since the version 6.0 included with Windows Server 2003. Without a doubt, it is the best Web server in the market today. But once you take a look at IIS 7, you will be ready to migrate your applications as quickly as possible. IIS 7 is composed of over 30 different, independent, modularized components. Microsoft has moved away from the tabbed dialog window approach of configuring IIS to a "Control Panel" approach. Each component is an icon within the IIS manager application. This strategy simplifies configuration, as it allows you to quickly install and configure only the components that you require for a Web application.

IIS 7 adopts the same configuration method as ASP.NET, which means you can copy your entire ASP.NET application to a Web server and control the configuration settings with a configuration file. The config file works the same as the ASP.NET web.config XML file. The IIS config file is an XML file that defines the configuration settings for an IIS application. As a result, deploying Web applications are truly XCopy deployments as the IIS configurations are stored with the Web application's source code and related content.

Using the web.config file, you can enable and disable IIS features (i.e. FTP, SMTP, etc.), configure security, and much more. The bottom line is that, with IIS 7, you can completely automate deployment of your Web applications—thanks to the modular architecture of IIS 7.0. This ease of deployment will save you time when deploying new applications for your client base. In addition, it will allow you to automatically enable enhanced features of your application when a client purchases them. In fact, they could purchase these advanced features within the application and have them enabled without any interaction from your staff.

Also, if you want to add additional features to the base functionality provided by IIS 7, you can build them using either native or managed code. IIS 7 provides a powerful extensibility model that allows you to support custom scenarios not supported out-of-the-box. For example, you could build a module that adds a 2-pane HTML frame for a demo version of your application in which one pane displays instructions and the other pane displays the application. Or you could build a module to rewrite or shorten URLs. And given the modular architecture of IIS 7, any extension you build can be enabled only in the sites that require it. You are not limited to only adding new features. The extensibility API lives up to its name and allows you to extend or even replace out-of-the-box IIS modules.

Another great feature of IIS 7 is the increased manageability of application pools. IIS provides the Windows Process Activation Services (WPAS) to manage both HTTP and non-HTTP sites. A non-HTTP site is any site that does not rely on HTTP for exchanging packages (i.e. MSMQ). The technologies that comprise Windows Communication Foundation (discussed below) are great examples of non-HTTP technologies. WPAS gives you the ability to manage the application pools and configurations for both HTTP and non-HTTP sites from a single console. This dual-management of HTTP and non-HTTP sites makes it possible for you to run applications with protocols within the same application pool. For example, you could have two sites that receive packets: one via an ASP.NET Web Service and the other via a WCF Service with a Named Pipe binding. MSMQ. Each could have the same application pool settings and could also be configured within one central application, IIS 7.

Another benefit of WPAS, besides increased manageability of applications pools as illustrated above, is the ability to host non-HTTP sites within IIS 7. Since application pool management in IIS 6 was handled by the WWW Service, applications hosted within IIS 6 were limited to being HTTP-based. Since WPAS is largely protocol agnostic, you can now host sites using technologies like WCF Services within IIS 7. This is true even if the site is using a non-HTTP-based binding, like MSMQ, TCP, or Named Pipe. So, where before you would have to potentially write your own application hosting environment for WCF Services (like a Windows Console, or Windows Service), you can now directly leverage the new capabilities in IIS 7.

The majority of features that will be shipped with the Windows Server 2008 version of IIS 7 are already available in the Windows Vista version of IIS 7. This means it's relatively painless to familiarize yourself with IIS 7 and begin the process of determining how to best utilize its new features in your applications.

The .NET Framework 3.0
Think of the latest version of the .NET Framework as the .NET Framework 2.0 + 4 (components). This version of the framework includes the four components that previously comprised what was known as WinFx: Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, Workflow Foundation, and Windows CardSpace. Here, I am only concerned with the server aspects of these components so I will not discuss Windows Presentation Foundation or Windows CardSpace are they are primarily targeted for the client-side of Windows.

Workflow Foundation (WF) provides a programming model and engine that enables you to build workflows into your applications. Business of all shapes and sizes are looking to automate repetitive tasks and WF provides you with a Rules Engine, and Activity Model, a Workflow Designer, and Workflow Runtime to seamlessly automate both people and other software components. Using the Workflow Designer (accessed within Visual Studio) you can graphically build an Activity Model comprised of a series of Activities. You can create your own activities (by writing code) or choose from a set provided by Microsoft. The Rules Engine provides the capability to build rules into the workflow—for example, checking for proper credit before accepting an order. The rules engine gives the ability to check for conditions and branch the activities of your workflow as you desire. The Workflow Runtime is the engine that executes a workflow's activity model. The runtime is .NET and can be hosted within any .NET application (i.e. WinForm, WebForm and Windows Service applications).

Although Microsoft already has other workflow engines in BizTalk and Exchange, WF will serve as the foundation for additional Microsoft products in the future, as it is the unified workflow model that is part of .NET 3.0.

The goal of WF is to provide developers with the components required to build workflows into their applications (both automated and manual steps). Developers can use WF to build workflows and tools intended to support business users and their processes. Therefore, WF represents a significant opportunity for any ISV to integrate workflows into their applications. This could be done in a couple of ways. The first is to provide a library of workflows for performing activities relevant to your application. This is just common sense. However, using WF as a foundation, you could also incorporate a "wizard" framework that allows your users to build custom workflows of their own. For example, in a Forums ASP.NET application, you could add design a set of workflows around forum management (i.e. reviewing new posts, identifying foul language, approving new users, etc.). If your focus is server management, you could build workflows that archive log files, alert and schedule hardware maintenance based or desired metrics, and much more. Again, you are only limited by your creative mind.

Windows Communication Foundation—WCF consolidates features provided by several existing technologies(i.e. MSMQ, .NET Remoting, Web Services Extensions, COM+, etc.) to create a unified communication API. This API reduces the complexity of sending messages and data across application barriers. Thanks to this unified model, you can adopt a single strategy for application communication and use the components you need versus the old method of stringing together the various required components from the differing available communication APIs.

Think of WCF as simplifying your ability to create inter-connected applications through a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). WCF's unified programming model provides a single namespace (System.ServiceModel) for sending and receiving messages between applications. Using this namespace you can send messages via using Web services, remoting, System.Messaging, and more but you will only need to know one programming model. This loosely-coupled strategy will allow you to build modularized applications in a simplified manner. By taking advantage of the SOA features of WCF, you can build modules easily, separate your application into modules, and offer your customers a more tailored version of your software that meets their needs. For example, you could build a hosted project management application that allows a team to chat securely from remote locations. In addition, you could more easily roll-out new modules that operate within your SOA architecture as your application matures. Using the same project management application example, you could add a whiteboard module or a screen-sharing module for increased team collaboration.

There are many more features and it is worth your while to start your own research efforts today. In fact, Microsoft has simplified this process by creating the Innovate on Windows Server Program. This is a free program for any Microsoft partner (the partner program itself is free at its lowest level) that provides you with deep technical resources as they become available (i.e. whitepapers, Webcasts, TechNet forums). One final benefit is the opportunity to have your application tested to be "Certified for Windows Server." This certification is a way to provide extra credibility to your customers that your product is ready for Windows Server 2008. Also, inclusion in the Microsoft marketing for Windows Server 2008 is a nice benefit too.

Windows Server 2008 is currently in Beta 2 with a Beta 3 scheduled in the very near future (first half 2007). And with the RTM version not expected until the latter part of 2007, I readily admit you may have more pressing concerns. However, I offer to you that Windows Server 2008 will provide you with a significant number of features and capabilities that will be of benefit to your application and its user base. Given this fact, it isn't much of a leap to realize that a small investment in learning about Windows Server 2008 benefits and planning to incorporate its features into your application will put you in a position to lead the market for your type of application.

*This article was commissioned by and prepared for Microsoft Corporation. This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.