One only needs to watch the now infamousSteve Ballmer "developers" videoto
see where Microsoft comes from. The firm is, has, and probably
always will be about the people who use its products to write
interesting stuff that runs on its products.
In that way, says Neil Ward-Dutton, co-founder of and research
director at Macehiter Ward-Dutton, the firm can be lumped into a
single category with arch-rival Sun, as a developer-led company, as
opposed to the other four suppliers in this article who are focused
less on developers than on the upper layers of the
middleware stack, where the CIOs live.
"It is partly about enterprise developers but it is at least as
much about Independent Software Vendor (ISVs) partners who sell
applications," he says.
Since 2000, the firm has based its entire middleware strategy
around .net, the platform that effectively replaced its Distributed
Internet Applications (DNA) architecture. That in turn replaced the
Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) architecture that it
launched in the 1990s.
"Its story is that once you understand .net, you as a developer
can use it to apply existing skills in traditional client/server,
service oriented architecture (SOA), mobile, or cloud-based
software as a service (SaaS)," says Ward-Dutton. "It lets people
who are not rocket scientists do cool stuff really fast. It is
about getting mainstream developers doing what they love, and that
has not really changed."
Microsoft's .net has been through several iterations since it
launched, but the most significant was version 3.0, which Microsoft
unveiled in 2005. This structured the architecture into several key
pillars: the Windows Presentation Foundation user interface system,
the Windows Communication Foundation service-oriented messaging
system, the Windows Workflow Foundation, used for workflow
integration, and Windows Cardspace, its identity management
system.
"The whole strategy has been to enable third-parties to build
business process management (BPM) products," says Ward-Dutton.
"Microsoft provides the basics through Windows Server and .net,
along with tools and libraries for other companies to build more
focused solutions on top." To this end, it launched the Business
Process Alliance early last year, designed to marshal like-minded
partners into this role.
Now, the firm is planning .net 4.0, which includes some
significant enhancements. It will make building REST-based services
(resources manipulated via URIs) simpler, and makes it easier to
use its own markup language, Extensible Application Markup
Language, to manipulate the Workflow Foundation and Communications
Foundation services. It is promising a tenfold performance increase
in the Workflow Foundation, along with enhancements including
persistence control and an enhanced visual interface. But the most
important overhaul lies in the Windows Server itself, which will
include an application platform called Dublin.
Initially released as an add-in pack for Windows Server, Dublin
will eventually be folded directly into the server platform. It is
a set of extensions to Internet Information Server that make it
easier to host Windows Communication and Workflow Foundation
services on the platform. It is essentially designed to make the
assembly and running of composite applications easier, thereby
bolstering the firm's position in the SOA market.
Dublin will interoperate with Oslo, which is Microsoft's
next-generation modelling platform. This will include a new visual
design tool called Quadrant, a modelling language code named "M",
and an SQL Server database that will be used to store model
schemas.
All of this developer-focused middleware activity is
complemented by the firm's other middleware strand, BizTalk, which
focuses on uniting line-of-business applications. Itself based on
.net, the system, first launched in 2000, is used to orchestrate
workflow across multiple applications, and between organisations,
whereas Workflow Foundation is designed for managing workflow
inside an application.
BizTalk has evolved considerably over time. Starting out as
little more than a product for exchanging XML messages between
applications, it added third-party adaptors for enterprise
application integration in 2002, and gained BPM functions with its
third version in 2004. Since then, it has been enhanced with SOA
functionality, and in its latest version (Biztalk Server 2006 R2)
released in 2007, it included RFID support.
Expect to see support for the new Windows Server 2008 platform,
along with
Hyper-V virtualisation support, in the next version of the
BizTalk server (BizTalk 2009). This will also cement support for
the Oslo modelling architecture, while containing backwards
compatibility with BizTalk's XLANG orchestration language.
Underpinning both Biztalk and .net's workflow orchestration
system is Sharepoint, which is a middleware of sorts, but which is
used for human collaboration rather than for communication between
software.
So, Microsoft's focus continues to be the developer, but it has
also been astute in developing the line of business application
integration software that will attract CIOs whose job it is to make
IT accountable and relevant to the business community.
Timeline
2000: Releases first edition of Biztalk
Server.
Launches Windows 2000.
Outlines .net strategy.
2001: Launches Visual Studio.net.
2002: Launches Biztalk Server 2002.
2003: Replaces .net Enterprise Servers with
Windows Server family.
Launches Windows Server 2003.
2004: Buries hatchet with Sun, launches
initiative to collaborate on technology.
Launches Biztalk Server 2004.
2005: Unveils WinFX.
2006: Changes WinFX name to .net Framework
3.0.
Launches Biztalk Server 2006.
2007: Launches Biztalk Server 2006 R2.
2008: Launches Windows Server 2008.
Announces .net Framework 4.0, Oslo, Dublin.
Customer references
Tesco built the order processing system for Tesco Direct based
on Biztalk Server 2006. The company was able to process 5000 orders
per hour using no more than a quarter of its processor
capacity.
Deutsche Telecom subsidiary T-Com worked with Sapient to build a
customer provisioning system for services such as web hosting. The
firm has reduced provisioning costs by 10-15%.
Neil Ward-Dutton on Microsoft strengths and
weaknesses:
Strengths:
Very strong developer and ISV relationships.
Its focus on one technology platform enables Microsoft to
integrate technologies through the software lifecycle more
effectively.
Weaknesses:
The company still sometimes struggles to explain technology
stack in a consistent, coherent way to enterprise customers.