The software company is also creating a virtualization management tool code-named "Carmine," Muglia said, though he did not give a release date.

The keynote's lightest moment came when Microsoft showed a video produced by its U.K. division purporting to show Microsoft employees so willing to "share the pain" of its customers that they suffer physical abuse from mechanical chair tacks, electrocuting armrests and more.

Regarding Microsoft's Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), the overarching strategy to help make IT systems more self-managing by using information about applications that is captured in models, Muglia said the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) had accepted the Web Services for Management (WS-Management) specification as a preliminary standard.

The lack of news surrounding DSI, first announced three years ago at this show, prompted one attendee, who declined to have his name used, to complain that he felt the keynote was "a bit light" on news.

"Some of the features they showed were nice, but I was looking for more architect-scale news," he said.