Microsoft stunned its customers last month with a swarm of product announcements at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) and first-ever Business Summit. Add a huge company reorganization that consolidated six divisions into three (Platform Products
& Services, Entertainment & Devices, and Business) and even a casual observer might conclude that something big is afoot in
Redmond.
Analysts see the reorg as primarily a streamlining effort, although some note that placing “Services” alongside “Products”
revealed just how serious Redmond is about fending off software-as-a-service plays from Google and its ilk. When it comes
to the glut of new software and technologies, however, many IT folks are left to wonder what it all really means for the enterprise.
The answer isn’t all that difficult to see when you step back a bit. Microsoft is marshalling its resources to continue what
the .Net initiative started five years ago: use Microsoft’s desktop dominance to drive its software ever deeper into the heart
of enterprise computing. The difference is that this is Microsoft’s widest-ranging, best coordinated assault in a long time.
To begin with, all the new APIs originally associated with Longhorn -- plus a new one just announced, WWF (Windows Workflow Foundation) -- are now in beta, laying the groundwork for a much richer Windows app dev environment. Meanwhile, new Web services connectivity
and new versions of Office and SharePoint may fulfill Microsoft’s promise to make Windows desktop apps front ends for enterprise
apps. Lastly, the new Vista version of Windows, shipping late next year, promises to be the most enterprise-worthy ever.
The Penguin Terror
Why the swarm of product intros now? Jon Rymer, a vice president at Forrester, thinks heated competition has something to
do with it. “A lot of this new development started when Linux and open source first became a real market threat back a few
years ago,” he says. “That galvanized Microsoft management much more than most people realize. The stuff we’re seeing today
is a direct result of that.”
Several technologies were demonstrated at PDC, but three were key: WinFX generally, WWF specifically, and the newfound importance
of Windows SharePoint Services. The WinFX SDK contains everything developers need to build applications using this next-gen set of APIs, including .Net Framework 2.0,
WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation, formerly known as Avalon) and WCF (Windows Communication Foundation, formerly code-named
Indigo).
Whereas WPF provides developers with a richer GUI than ever before, WCF provides the new programming communications model,
which is heavily Web Services-oriented, with a deep reliance on XML that also includes efficiency benefits, like a single
API for secure app-to-app communication.
WWF: Whatcha Gonna Do?
WWF may not have Hulk Hogan’s physical brawn, but in terms of Microsoft platform integration, it has just as much muscle.
For developers, WWF promises to become the glue that binds disparate Microsoft applications together.
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