SharePoint Services in the new OS includes Active Directory Federation Services to boost collaboration, Goldfarb said. Customers and suppliers inside and outside the firewall can access information through a single credential management solution.

Goldfarb noted that the Nov. 7 release of the Visual Studio 2005 developer tool platform and SQL Server 2005 database are critical parts of Microsoft's application-platform story. A member of Microsoft's Visual Studio team, John Rivard, however, has posted a blog that explains why Visual Studio 2005 only supports .Net Framework 2.0 and not the previous 1.0 and 1.1 versions of the framework.

"Every version of Visual Studio that we've released has been tied to a specific version of the framework," Goldfarb said when asked about the blog.

"By doing that, we're able to provide greater productivity features and even more tools enhancements for customers that are specific to a given framework," he said. Users can continue to use older versions of the framework with older tools, or upgrade to the new framework using a migration wizard, Goldfarb added.