For Those Managing Our Information Highway Comes a Simpler, More Flexible Web

Author: Mark Kornegay

April 2008

It’s perhaps ironic that our businesses, institutions and media gain stability from one of the most fickle resources known to man:  the Web.  Because the Internet is ever-changing and evolving, it has become a main source of innovation, inspiration and support for our world.  It mirrors the main tenets that we as humans seek to derive from our innovative technology in the 21st century:  expansion into more arenas, with the ability to shake off recent capabilities and to practice trying on even newer ones.  
Since an evolving, adaptable Web is so vital to every aspect of our lives,  it’s important that those of us involved in building and maintaining Web destinations be able to do so with increasing speed, convenience and assurance.  Organizations hosting Web sites, IT professionals and Web developers continually search for easier ways to manage a growing number of Web sites while lowering their costs and heightening security—a tall order for groups with limited technology staffs.  The most current tools, however, have simplified the creation and control of Web infrastructures.

Organizations that host Web sites are lowering costs through a new, easily expandable structure that can reliably host numerous sites on one server.  The Internet Information Services backbone for Web hosting now is totally customizable and can host applications in a full range of formats, including classic Active Server Pages (ASP), next-generation programming languages and Web services.

IT professionals now have ways to improve security by minimizing the attack surface of operating system kernels, patching requirements and memory footprint of their Web infrastructure.  This capability is achieved in large part by isolating from one another each of those thousands of Web sites on the server.  In this “sandboxed” configuration, the server provides each new site with its own process identity by default.

The once hair-pulling complexity of managing Web servers and sites has become easier with new administration tools that allow an entire farm of Web servers to be managed from a single location, a Universal Naming Convention share where every Web server can read its configuration.  This development greatly reduces the time previously spent on replicating and synchronizing complicated configurations.  Moreover, applications now can be deployed in a preconfigured form with technology that allows site configuration to be stored with the application in simple XML files.

The administrator’s burden is reduced further by the ability to delegate control of site administration to those in the organization who produce the content or to the Web developer.  Rather than relying on the IT staff to upload new content as it is updated, the content’s owner can accomplish the upload from the desktop.

Additionally, IT administrators now have a degree of control over their Web servers that never has been available previously.  They can run only the components they require, eliminating the exposure of unused components to security intrusions.  They also can control the speed of Web downloads to the desktops of employees as a way of saving bandwidth and streamlining network traffic.

More server-related tasks have been automated in the newest technology, and troubleshooting of issues in Web sites and applications can be carried out more rapidly.  Problems can be isolated relatively simply with functions providing more details on errors than earlier technology presented.  These features include automatic tracking when requests to the server fail and in-depth data on the runtime state of a site.

Web site developers are finding more flexibility in the latest technology that enables them to create new features.  Today, developers can build applications using whatever Web framework they prefer, without sacrificing high levels of performance and reliability.  Silverlight is an example.  It’s a new technology that helps Web sites deliver rich interactive experiences to visitors.  This technology works on almost any Web browser or device, and the latest servers support more ways to use and combine these Web applications, helping reduce costs.

The greater security, reliability and ease of caring for Web sites inherent in a new generation of servers, exemplified by recently released technology such as Microsoft Windows Server 2008, are shaking up the Web again, while building an even firmer foundation for its expansion.

Mark Kornegay is the general manager for Microsoft’s Heartland Area.  He works with customers and partners in a four-state area composed of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.  For more information, please visit www.microsoft.com/midsizebusiness.