However, the continuing delay of MBF is not bad news for everyone, DeMichillie pointed out. Providing the plumbing for the Windows platform is the bread and butter of many service providers and they stand to gain from the delays, DeMichillie said. "Microsoft is getting squeezed from multiple sides," he said.
MBF is not just key for third-party software vendors and corporate developers building on the Windows platform: a new family of Microsoft ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) applications -- known as "Project Green" -- is also supposed to rely on the framework, Microsoft has said.
Microsoft recently disclosed that it is slowing down development work on Project Green and is instead focusing on its existing offerings. The software maker even reduced the number of developers assigned to Project Green from 200 to 70 because the first products are not expected out until 2008 at the earliest, Microsoft Senior Vice President Doug Burgum said in June. Microsoft originally had planned to ship the first results of Project Green as early as the end of this year.
Longhorn will ship in 2006 with a new user interface supported by the Avalon graphics subsystem and a new communications subsystem called Indigo, but without WinFS. Microsoft also said late last week that it will add support for Avalon and Indigo as well as the Longhorn WinFX application programming model to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
Microsoft plans to provide early MBF code, so-called alpha code, to its early-adopter partners for MBF later this year, the company spokesman said.
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