The Hindu Business Line : Microsoft India centre working on Windows 7

Hyderabad, Aug. 3 Designers and engineers at Microsoft R&D centre in India have a new mandate for development of Windows 7, the next generation operating system from Microsoft Corporation, slated for release in 2009-10.

This new operating system will have in-built features to address networking-related issues, virtualisation that helps create separate machines within a PC and various plug-ins for accessories for the new OS.

The Senior Vice-President, Windows Core Operating System Division, Mr Jon DeVaan, said they have created the necessary platform for development work in India following a recent meeting of the Windows 7 group at Redmond, the Microsoft headquarters. This team headed by Mr Sunil Bansali, and comprising members of the Windows and Windows Live development teams, has now been given the task of working on the next generation operating system.

The new operating system was earlier codenamed Blackcomb and Vienna. The interesting feature is it will have backward compatibility and work with older operating systems as well.

Referring to the virtualisation aspect of the next generation operating system, Mr DeVaan said “Virtualisation creates virtual machines on the Windows desktop, each of which virtualises the hardware of a complete physical computer. These virtual machines can be used to run operating systems such as MS DOS, Windows OS2. Engineers have built on lot of learning from Windows 2 days onwards and this is reflected in new development methodologies.”

SP3 beta release

The Indian developers have played vital role in XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), which is one of the important releases from the Microsoft Corporation. This is likely to benefit more than 400-500 million users globally providing important updates covering even security related issues, he explained.

Now in India, to be part of the SP3 beta release, Mr DeVaan said this provides for necessary fixes and vital updates.

Working with dispersed engineering teams is always a challenging task and yet exciting. This brings in lot of innovative work and yet executed in a collaborative manner. Using what Microsoft calls Trustworthy Computing and Engineering Excellence, they ensure these engineers collaborate for seamless development. The processes have been standardised and yet some of the development that come through localisation gets incorporated.

Referring to the IP creation, Mr DeVaan said that more than 180 patents have already been secured over the last three years by engineers at Microsoft centre. They always come up with new patentable ideas. Strengthening the IP is a constant endeavour.

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