Microsoft does not plan to take on systems management heavyweights such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Computers Associates. But management software has become a key element of the company's plan to convince corporate customers to base their most important systems on Windows, Hamilton said.
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Microsoft's two main management products--SMS and MOM--differ in capabilities. SMS is geared toward letting large companies distribute software updates and patches automatically to PCs over corporate networks. MOM, meanwhile, is for monitoring network events to head off problems, such as an overloaded server or dropped network connection.
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With DSI, Microsoft is seeking to automate many data-center operational jobs and reduce the labor involved. The idea is that management software can be clever enough to know when a given application will have a problem and take actions to avoid it. For example, the systems management software could fire up an extra Web server when the existing machines are being overloaded because of a spike in traffic.
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Central to DSI is an Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based data format, or schema, called Systems Definition Model (SDM). Microsoft calls a SDM a blueprint, or description, for how software and hardware components can be controlled.
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