All Photos Copyright 2005 SYS-CON Media

On Monday June 6, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer opened Microsoft's largest annual technology education conference, Tech·Ed 2005, with an address entitled "Delivering New Value to the Business."

Ballmer discussed how business change and innovation offered increased opportunities for IT professionals and developers.

The keynote started at 9:00AM EDT and .NET Developer's Journal was in attendance.

Delegates this year were hoping that Ballmer repeated in some way, shape, or form, his now legendary "Monkey music" conference entrance back in 2001, when he jumped around the keynote platform for fully 40 seconds before taking up a more conventional position behind the lectern to catch his breath.

When he did, it was to say:

"I have four words for ya: I...love...this...company
...yessssssss!"

There was also the equally memorable time he opened:

"Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers...Yes!!!"

What would today's Ballmer keynote entrance hold in store? One thing was certain, and that was that he would make a reference to the announcement that Microsoft was allying with AT&T to enter the VoIP market. Other news would doubtless include references to Windows Mobile 5.0 and to the new Microsoft Office XML Open Format that was announced just last week.

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Quipping that she’d be interviewing Steve Ballmer about his new book, The Joy of Service XP Service Pack Installation, a mock TV host called “Ms. Samatha Bee” did a routing about the hy_Pod, result of a spoof alliance between Apple and Toyota, Google’s partnership with the US Govt. to search for oil reserves.

Ballmer then came on, a little hoarse, and chided the audience for lacking “pep” during the introductory minutes.

“We got through the dotcom bubble, we got through the bust. We are in a period of sustained long-term growth for our industry,” he said. “There has never been a more interesting time to be in IT than now.”

With over 11,000 people at Tech•Ed 2005, Ballmer noted that it was the 10-year anniversary of Windows 95, which he called “the event that had the most palable energy and excitement of anything we had done.” But the next ten years were going to be “even more exciting,” he gushed.

Echoing the “New World of Work” theme already used by Bill Gates last month, Ballmer recounted how 125 CEOs heard from Gates how the employees were now “information workers” and how these workers were at the sweet spot of IT just now.

Tools to communicate and collaborate with others were essential, in such a world; and in such a world, too, “curing the pain of the users that we serve” was the new priority no. 1 as these information workers became increasingly dependent on IT.

“So if we and all of you are really going to do our jobs we have to allow the employees in the businesses we serve to engage in this new world of work.”

Here was the opportunity for Microsoft. And for developers using Microsoft tools. A video from avanade was next. A Microsoft partner committed to making technology work for people, avanade was a particularly interesting case, Ballmer said, because they themselves are IT professionals. A double proof of concept, if you like.

To provide the infrastructure that connected people and information and facilitated the new world of work was the goal, he continued.

This started with the designing and building of applications, so .NET and the tools around .NET were crucial. But then came the need for those apps to be up and running. Later this year Visual Studio 2005 will ship, connecting the “flywheel” where you build the applications.

End user-oriented tools like Outlook and Office were part of it, but search, directory, etc. – an infrastructure building on three core principles that Ballmer enumerated as follows:

1. Allowing information workers to have access to the information they want and need without compromise
2. More and more of the infrastructure has to be “self-service,” so that information workers engage directly with IT
3. Security building-blocks: identity, presence, rights management, network access.

Active Directory was a key enabler to this new world of work. Windows Server was the carrier for this, just as it was the carrier for .NET and for DSI (Dynamic Systems Initiative).

”It is the no.1 server on the market,” Ballmer said. “We want to be the best at directory, the best at network access, the best at file-sharing, the best at e-mail, the best at web services apps, the best at computational clusters. We have absolutely by far the best product on the marketplace in each of these sectors,” he said. Microsoft has continued to invest in the product, making improvement and gaining market share.

Other announcements concerned Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 and Windows Mobile Messaging.

Microsoft’s Mike Hall – Technical Product Manager for the Mobile and Embedded Devices Group – brought on stage a “Thinkpad Tablet” from Lenovo, launched today, and handed it to Ballmer who promply disappeared backstage to play with it while the keynote got “down and dirty” and entered its technical phase.

.NET Developer's Journal, this year's Tech Ed Media Sponsor

OTA Configuration Demo’ed

Hall opened up his Longhorn desktop and demo’d how the Longhorn OS allowed desktop search, so that an information worker can find a forgotten piece of information by searching Word docs, PDFs, all in one go. Then he used Exchange System Manager to show how Windows Mobile Devices can be configured over the air.

Hall showed how to remotely manage and secure the Windows Mobile devices.

Samantha Bee returned for some more banter, this time based on helping developers and IT pros mend fences by means of “hand puppet therapy.”

Ballmer rounded off the keynote with some words on what MS has coming for developers and for IT managers. He started with .NET: the primary development tool of choice for 43% of all developers was .NET, he said (with Java at no.2).

MS would in 2005 be taking .NET to the next level, Ballmer assured his audience. SQL Server, too, would be taken to the next level, as would Visual Studio with Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office.

Office 12 (being released next year), with the new XML Open Format as the default file format, prompted Ballmer to invite Microsoft’s Bill Anderson to demo Microsoft’s new cross-platform strategy, using Web services.

Connecting People and Information Using .NET and Office

Last, but not least: security. "We have really made security “Job One” – if we don’t do the right job, the whole idea of connecting people and information falls down," Ballmer said.

What would Microsoft be doing all 2005 and beyond? "We will invest, invest, invest, invest: in the innovations that will allow you as developers and IT professionals to be successful connecting people and information."

The last piece of the puzzle was about management, about the Dynamic Systems Initiative, Ballmer said, as the keynote reached its conclusion.

"It’s an exciting time to be a developer, to be an IT pro." That was Ballmer’s overall message.

For the 11,000 attendees, all of them developers and IT pros, what’s not to like about that?