The statistics say it all for Microsoft’s India development center. From 20
people and two products in August ‘98, the company’s India center has now
grown to 120 engineers and has four products in it’s kitty–Services For Unix
(SFU), VJ#.net, Windows server components and add-ons for Office XP. Not only
this, encouraged by the performance of its development center in the country,
the software major is planning to scale up its operation in India and assign new
product development responsibility to the team.
According to Srini Koppolu, managing director, Microsoft India Development
Center, his team is also working on some new ideas, the proposals of which have
been forwarded to the company’s Redmond headquarters. While declining to
specify or elaborate on the details of the product-in-pipeline, Koppolu
suggested that the new product would be in the finance management segment. He
also said that the company’s internal target is to increase the strength of
the India center to 300 engineers by the end of next year. However, as the
existing 50,000 square feet facility can accommodate only 200 developers, the
company also plans to create a new facility soon. ‘‘We are confident about
achieving our target but will think about a new facility only when time comes,’’
said Koppolu.
SFU 3.0: The Add-Ons |
|
Features | Description |
NFS Client |
Sticky/setuid/setgid bits support |
Symbolic links support |
|
Additional language options |
|
NFS Server |
Support for active-active clustering of NFS shares |
sticky/setuid/setgid bits support |
|
Per share handling of root and anonymous access |
|
Improved model for mapping Windows NT <-> UNIX |
|
Mapping Server |
Cluster-enabled mapping |
Performance, security and scalability improvements |
|
Support for redundant mapping servers |
|
Server for NIS |
Suport for MD5 encryption |
Scalability and performance improvements |
|
Password Sync |
Support for setting password using pluggable authentication model on UNIX |
Telnet Server |
Security and scalability improvements |
IPv6 support |
|
Dumb terminal support (handheld) |
|
Telnet Client |
IPv6 support |
Interix | All new services for UNIX and improved since version 2.2 of Interix |
As of now, the hottest thing at the development center–also the reason why
the Hyderabad facility was opened up for a seven-member media team from Delhi–is
the new version 3.0 of SFU. According to Koppulu, the product that provides
seamless integration between Windows and Unix platforms has been conceptualized
and developed from scratch at the Indian center. What this means is that the
India center also has an independent responsibility and ownership for the
development of SFU.
SFU 3.0
Since its introduction in 1999, Windows SFU has played a major role for
those trying to make Windows and UNIX networks co-exist. Microsoft claims that
the version 3.0, will not only be easier to use and run much faster, it would
also have built-in Interix technology for the compilation of UNIX based
applications on the Windows platform. Besides, the new product would also
provide better application portability and reliability among others. According
to Koppulu, the addition of Interix was based on user feed back and is important
because it allows system administrators to compile and natively run UNIX
programs and scripts on three versions of Windows–NT, 2000 and XP. The Interix
subsystem and utilities replace the previously provided UNIX Korn Shell and
utilities with a new POSIX compliant subsystem and a full set of utilities and
shells. Besides having both C and Korn shell, it also provides support for a
single rooted file system and symbolic links.
‘‘SFU 3.0 has been designed to work with a broad range of UNIX and Linux
platforms and uses industry standard protocols and utilities,’’ Koppulu said
adding, ‘‘We have explicitly tested it for interoperability with Solaris 2.6
and 2.7, HP-UX 10.2 and 11, AIX 4.3.3 and Red Hat Linux 7.0.’’ The product
is scheduled for production in May and would probably be launched in the global
market in the third quarter of this calendar year.
SHUBHENDU PARTH in Hyderabad