The arrival of 7,500 developers in Barcelona for Microsoft's TechEd
conference again denotes the company's success in engaging the
people who build software, with Microsoft eager to hammer home just
how successful its .Net strategy has been
The event held little news for those in attendance. Instead,
Microsoft used TechEd as an opportunity to underline the perceived
benefits of .Net. In Microsoft speak, it is an architectural
approach that aims to deliver massive benefits in a world where
collaborative software engages other software as Web services
hosted on the Internet and using XML as the lynchpin.
The .Net message was ably delivered by Anders Hejlsberg, a
distinguished engineer at Microsoft and the man who is writing the
new C# programming language. .Net has evolved from a patchwork of
ideas 12 months ago, to a cluster of technologies that you can now
install and start developing with.
Developing for .Net
Moving beyond the hype is critical
for .Net. The key here is the arrival in beta 2 of Visual
Studio.NET. This development environment is aimed at helping
programmers take the first steps to creating the next generation of
applications that live as Web services.
The Visual Studio.NET tool suite was handed over to all attendees
following its delivery last month to US developers at TechEd in
Atlanta. On the first day Microsoft talked of over 1,000 of its
customers already building and deploying/testing .Net applications
using the early Visual Studio.NET code. By buying through a
software licence from Microsoft called ASP.NET Go, some companies
have taken this early development code and put it into production
systems.
In true Microsoft fashion, the company distanced itself from its
COM, (common object model) architecture, the predecessor to .Net on
which many Windows applications have been built. Hejlsberg's
address of the TechEd audience saw him cast doubts over the
Microsoft COM architecture as a mechanism for building distributed
applications, endorsing .Net and XML as the true way forward.
Little was said of the recent Corel investment by Microsoft,
although Hejlsberg confirmed to CW360.com that one of the goals of
this deal was to see the delivery of C# for Linux aimed at the
education arena. He also indicated that other platforms could
indeed follow due to the deal with Corel.
Partnering in .Net
Within .Net there are many
initiatives designed to bring third party software suppliers on
board. One such move is HailStorm, a move by Microsoft to define
baseline Web services (such as its Passport authentication
technology and Messenger real-time collaborative messaging tool)
that third party companies who want to build .Net services can
utilise in their own applications.
But HailStorm is already causing a few headaches, with the recently
announced Shared Development Process (SDP) eliciting scepticism
from some third parties as to its viability. SDP is about
kick-starting a rush of second-generation Web service ideas, beyond
Microsoft's initial 12 offerings, and is arguably much needed if
.Net is to become as all encompassing as Microsoft wants it to be.
XP, 64-bits and beyond
As expected, Windows XP took a
high profile at TechEd, touted as the ideal platform from which to
build upwards into the .Net architecture. The October release date
was re-affirmed many times and companies interested in the 64-bit
version of the XP server operating system can obtain an early cut
of the code now from the likes of Compaq and other hardware
OEMs.
Called 64-bit Windows Advanced Server Limited Edition, the RC1 code
will be sold at full price now and upgraded for free in October
when the final code ships. The logic being that any corporate eager
to test the 64-bit Itanium platform now has access to a Windows
server operating system.
Brian Valentine, senior vice president of the Windows division at
Microsoft, talked of the huge number of ISVs eager to port their
32-bit applications to 64-bit, endorsing his company's decision to
release 64-bit Windows XP early. He also said that that the testing
facilities made available to these ISVs as they port their
applications would increase.
TechEd 2001 was all about reinforcing the message that .Net is
critical to the future of Microsoft in that it impacts all code it
creates and therefore impacts its customers on a global basis. The
delivery of Visual Studio.NET as a stable beta is key to getting
the developers on board, with Microsoft all too aware that a
failure to capture their hearts and minds will make the emptying of
customers' wallets a hard task indeed.