A reader asks:

What about those of us that cannot attend MMS?
Is there anything available that describes what Indy does?

Hmmm, let’s see. Right now we’ve got no official web presence, partly because we don’t have a name. Both situations should be remedied within the next month, and I think we’re promising a white paper by MMS — I just hope that I don’t get roped in to write it! In the meantime you can read about what we showed last year, and the analyst’s reactions.

Indy was also demonstrated in Bill Gates’ keynote at IT Forum 2004. Here’s a smattering of news stories from last November that mention it:

• Gates expands on Microsoft's IT management vision
  “In a demonstration during Gates' presentation, Microsoft plans to show how the health and task information provided by server software and used by a capacity planning tool code-named Indy can help an organization merge two IT environments”
• Microsoft releases management tools, expands on DSI model
  “Microsoft currently does health models using MOM management packs and won’t start wading into configuration and task models until the release of Whidbey and with a capacity planning tool called Indy, that will ship with the second version of System Center sometime in the Longhorn timeframe”
• Microsoft IT Forum Day One
  “A capacity planning application named Indy was also demonstrated. Not only can this application suggest a graphical topology but it can also run simulations against it”

I’ll add that we’re not just shipping in the Longhorn timeframe – we’re shipping earlier than that as well. There’ll be a full product road-map at MMS, or you can just stay tuned to the “Capacity Planning” (RSS) category of this blog.

Tomorrow I’ll dive into capacity planning a little deeper.