With another half day of vision keynotes, Microsoft delivered an overview of new and emerging ways in which partners can take advantage of the company's platform to drive revenue, with a focus this time on Microsoft's server business and some of its new technologies.

Andres Lees, corporate vice president of the company's server and tools business, presented a discussion of the powerful and improving position held by Microsoft's Windows Server products in the market. With 64-bit server technology becoming standard, he says, Microsoft-powered server solutions will soon be capable of addressing any issue in terms of server technologies.

Tom Keane, lead program manager for the Windows enterprise management division described Microsoft's move, for the first time, toward a comprehensive security portfolio, part of an overall solution it is offering up as Microsoft Forefront. This, he says, is a good opportunity for partners to provide "secured" versions of tools like Exchange or Sharepoint.

Corporate VP of developer and platform evangelism Sanjay Parthasarathy described the strong momentum of Microsoft's application development platform, describing .NET's overtaking of Java-based development tools, and the growth seen by partners committing either partly or entirely to the Microsoft development platform.

Parthasarathy describes a transition from what he calls "generation infrastructure," to "generation user," in which new and more visual ways of presenting information to users will see user interfaces adapting to what users are doing. XML web services, he says, will not just apply to integration and interoperability in the back end, but will power user interfaces that span applications.

Along those lines, Chris Capossela, corporate VP of Microsoft's information worker product management group, described some of the ways in which partners can leverage Microsoft's Live initiative now - for instance, by building mashups into their applications using tools like Virtual Earth.

One of Microsoft's key new initiatives is its AdCenter, an advertising platform similarly comprehensive to Google's AdWords, to which Microsoft will drive traffic through its Live.com and MSN.com properties. The referral pilot program, for which partners can sign up, will begin in the fall of 2006.

Wednesday afternoon "value" keynotes included a heavily attended presentation by Michael Seivert, Corporate VP of Windows client marketing, describing the software development opportunities surrounding the launch of the company's Windows Vista operating system. Sievert says vista has the potential to become the fastest deployed operating system in history, and describes a culture around the software focused on "premium" offerings, a strategy designed to encourage customers to invest more in systems and software.

The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2006 concludes Thursday with additional keynotes and a Gold Certified Partner luncheon.