November 20th, 2009

Will Microsoft's Silverlight dampen the appeal of Google's Chrome OS?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:40 am

Categories: .Net Framework, App Compatibility, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Google, Internet Explorer, OEMs, Silverlight (wpf/e), Web 2.0, Windows client

Tags: Google Inc., Microsoft Silverlight, Operating System, Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation, Microsoft Corp., Google Chrome, Chrome OS, Web Browsers, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems

I’m not one of those ready to write Windows an RIP certificate now that Google has finally taken (some of) the wraps off its Chrome OS. In fact, after reading through industry watchers’ questions and Google’s answers about it, I’m thinking that Chrome OS may not look quite so appealing by the time it rolls out in late 2010. Here’s why.

First, as others have noted, Google’s Chrome OS is a new windowing system layered on top of Linux that is being customized to run on netbooks. Chrome OS is an “extension to Chrome,” the company’s browser, in Google execs’ own words. Google officials are billing Chrome OS, among other things, as a way to provide Web applications with the functionality of desktop applications.

Microsoft offers an extension not just to its browser, Internet Explorer, but also to Firefox, Apple’s Safari and Google’s own Chrome. That extension is Silverlight. Among other things, Silverlight is a vehicle for providing increasingly complex consumer and business apps via a browser.

At the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) this week, Microsoft rolled out its strategy and plans for Silverlight 4, the version of its browser plug-in that is slated for final release by mid-2010. Silverlight 4 is adding support for data binding, enterprise networking and printing, and lots of other features that are likely to make the platform more appealing to folks writing not just single-function, lightweight Web apps, but enterprise apps, as well.

Silverlight is a slimmed-down, cross-platform version of Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) programming model. Each successive iteration of Silverlight includes more and more WPF functionality (and vice versa).

Some day — Microsoft won’t say exactly when — Silverlight and WPF are going to merge into one Web programming and app delivery model that, most likely, will be known as Silverlight, Brad Becker, Director of Product Management for Microsoft’s Rich Client Platforms, told me this week at TechEd. Now that the two share the same compiled assemblies, tools and the like, that idea isn’t really so far-fetched. Until that happens, Microsoft plans to continue to offer both WPF and Silverlight, steering developers of more complex, resource-intensive applications toward WPF and Web-centric app developers toward Silverlight.

When Google execs were asked during this week’s press conference where they shared more information (but no code or systems) about the Chrome OS as to whether Silverlight would be able to work on Chrome OS, they said no comment. Maybe they see Silverlight might be more foe than friend of the Chrome OS.

I understand Silverlight is not an operating system. But some Google watchers are questioning whether the Chrome OS is actually an operating system, either, or just a glorified browser. Unlike Silverlight, which can run on a variety of PCs and soon, phones, Google OS is going to be a dedicated Linux-based netbook OS that will only work with certain predesignated peripherals. Microsoft already offers a netbook OS — Windows — which doesn’t force you to run all apps inside your browser — and which works with lots of different devices.

Would you go so far as to say the Chrome OS is going to be more of a Silverlight competitor than a WIndows one? I’m thinking right now that may seem a bit far-fetched, but as more and more apps are designed to run in Silverlight, maybe not….?

November 17th, 2009

What's next for Microsoft's Azure cloud platform?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 3:47 pm

Categories: Azure, Code names, Corporate strategy, Database, Google, Management tools, PDC 2009, Red Dog, SQL Server, System Center, Utility/cloud computing, Virtualization, Web 2.0

Tags: Microsoft Azure, Data Center, Microsoft Corp., Data Centers, Microsoft Windows, Storage, Operating Systems, Hardware, Data Management, Software

In the past year, customers and developers testing Windows Azure have been running primarily brand-new (and largely Web 2.0 style) apps on Microsoft’s cloud operating system. But when will Azure be tuned to handle host legacy enterprise apps? And when and how will users be able to take advantage of some of the Azure technologies inside of their own “private clouds”?

Microsoft officials didn’t share dates for its next phases of the Windows Azure platform. But they did talk about some of their plans for their next steps with Microsoft’s cloud platform during meetings and sessions at the company’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) on November 17.

Microsoft said the Windows Azure platform — which is the Windows Azure operating system and the SQL Azure database — is feature-complete as of today. (Officials said a few weeks ago that Microsoft wouldn’t begin charging customers to use the platform until February 1, 2010.)

“Our initial focus on the platform was on enabling Web 2.0 customers to develop and run their apps on it,” said Amitabh Srivastava, Senior Vice President in charge of Windows Azure. These kinds of applications are Xcopy-deployable, while older, legacy apps typically are not, Srivastava said.

Microsoft’s next Azure steps — which it will be executing largely in parallel — will be to get existing, and typically more complex, line-of-business apps to run on the platform and to make it possible for customers to implement Azure technologies in their own data centers (a k a, to be able to create private clouds).

To enable existing apps to run on Azure, Microsoft is planning to make virtual machines (VMs) available to developers, which they will be able to customize and run their legacy apps inside them. Srivastava wouldn’t provide a timetable or more details as to how or when Microsoft will do this. Apps running in VMs won’t be able to take full advantage of the elasticity, multitenancy, and other cloud functionality, but they still will derive some benefits, such as automatic cloud backup for apps running on the Azure platform. (The name of this VM capability will be “Windows Server Virtual Machine Roles on Windows Azure,” Microsoft execs later told me.)

On the private cloud front, Microsoft didn’t have much new to say at the PDC. Microsoft officials have said in the past that Microsoft won’t allow customers to run the Azure operating system in their own datacenters. Microsoft’s main focus here continues to be to provide customers with software like Windows Server, SQL Server, Exchange Server, etc., for them to run in their own datacenters. That said, Microsoft isn’t simply leaving the delivery of a private cloud solution to Amazon and other cloud competitors.

“Lots of the technologies we have in the cloud are things people want to run in their datacenters,” Srivastava
acknowledged.(He cited as an example the ability to run a scalable cloud-storage appliance on premises.)

Microsoft is working on a longer-term solution that would allow the company to offer datacenter containers that can be dedicated to individual customers, Srivastava said. That way, clouds can be customized for individual users and users will be able to manage these containers themselves. Again, Srivastava wasn’t ready to talk about deployment specifics or timetables for this. That said, “Project Sydney” (Microsoft’s newly announced connectivity offering for private datacenters and public clouds) shows the general direction where we are going,” Srivastava said.

Microsoft officials made a vague reference in this morning’s keynote to System Center in the cloud. I asked Srivastava if this meant Microsoft was looking to offer System Center as a Microsoft-hosted service, the way that it is offering Exchange and Office Communications Server as Microsoft-hosted offerings. That isn’t the case, he said; instead, Microsoft has opened up the Windows Azure management programming interfaces so that System Center — as well as third-party management products like HP OpenView — can manage Azure-hosted applications.

Not everything about what’s next for Azure is a longer-term direction. In sessions on November 17, Microsoft officials outlined some of the nearer term deliverables for Microsoft’s cloud platform. The recently introduced content-delivery-network (CDN) support for blobs in Windows Azure’s storage system is one of those deliverables. Another is a capability MIcrosoft is calling “Windows Azure Drive” (also known as Xdrive) which allows Azure developers to create a drive inside their virtual machines, providing them with an automatic back up capability. Microsoft plans to officially “turn on” Xdrive support in January, officials said.

September 8th, 2009

Microsoft Doloto: Making Ajax page downloads faster

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 7:21 am

Categories: .Net Framework, Code names, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Multicore/distributed computing, Research, Web 2.0

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Tool, AJAX, WANs, Productivity, Networking, Internet, Software/Web Development, Web Development, Web 2.0

Microsoft is making available for download a tool developed by Microsoft Research that is designed to make Web pages more responsive by decreasing the initial download size of Ajax applications.

That tool, known as Doloto, analyzes Ajax app workloads and performs code splitting of large Web apps. That way, apps can transfer initially only the part of the client-size JavaScript code needed for application initialization. The rest of the function code is transferred later, according to Senior Vice President of Microsoft’s Developer Division Soma Somasegar, who blogged about Doloto on September 4.

Microsoft is moving the Doloto project to its Dev Labs incubator, home of a number of other developer-focused prototypes, including the Axum parallel-processing language and CHESS concurrency testing tool.

According to the Dev Labs site:

“Doloto reduces the size of initial application code download by hundreds of kilobytes or as much as 50% of the original download size. The time to download and begin interacting with large applications is reduced by 20-40% or dozens of seconds…depending on the application and wide-area network conditions.”

Doloto is short for “Download Time Optimizer” and is also the Russian word for chisel, according ot the Microsoft Research site.

September 3rd, 2009

Bing and Ping (but not on Windows Live)

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 1:33 pm

Categories: Corporate strategy, Search, Web 2.0, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Windows Live, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft’s Bing team is working on a new sharing feature, known as Bing & Ping, that will allow Bing searchers to share their findings with a few clicks.

But at least so far, the feature is only designed to allow sharing of sports scores, restaurants, movie times, flight statuses and other search results with Facebook, Twitter and e-mail users. As a number of users are complaining in talkbacks on the Bing Community blog post on September 3 which explained the Bing and Ping feature, Microsoft isn’t enabling sharing on its own Windows Live social-networking site or other Windows Live services.

Commentator “Ali” noted:

“What about sending an IM? Or using Windows Live ‘Shared Favourites’ or updating my WLM (Windows Live Messenger) status?  I think it’s great that you’re embracing all the other web services out there, but how can MS expect other web sites/businesses to embrace their online services when MS’s own properties often don’t…  Be great to see a little more integration.”

Poster “Peter” added:

“Where is the benefit for me? Yes, I know how I can handle this, it’s easy, install the new AIM Messenger… o_O . The other thing I could use is a vista sidebar gadget. :|

“No sorry without any interaction with other MS apps or services it’s pointless for me.”

In order to get an invitation to test the service, users need to become a Bing fan via the Bing Facebook page.

August 31st, 2009

Office 2010: What Microsoft will and won't say

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 4:08 pm

Categories: Corporate strategy, Office, Office 2010/Office 14, Office Live, SharePoint Server, Utility/cloud computing, Web 2.0

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Ribbon, Backstage Feature, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Mary Jo Foley

A new build of Office 2010 — more recent than the Community Technology Preview (CTP) Microsoft delivered in July to a select group of testers — allegedly has leaked. (But as of this posting, not yet leaked to the Web.)

The new build, which, according to Wzor, is labeled “Beta 1,” (Build 14.0.4417.1000) includes some updates to Office 2010’s built-in Backstage document-management platform and some of the new volume-licensing-activation tweaks that company officials recently acknowledged were coming. There is also a new “upload center” in the leaked build, which could be related to Office Web Apps, the Web-ified versions of key Office apps that Microsoft is planning to release to testers this fall.

Microsoft officials declined to comment on the leak. I asked whether the allegedly leaked bits would be what Microsoft is planning to release as part of the public Beta 1 of Office 2010 due out later ths fall. A spokeswoman provided this statement in response:

“Microsoft officially released the Office 2010 technical preview in July and we are on track to deliver the public beta later this year. No additional Office 2010 code has been released by Microsoft since the technical preview. We strongly recommend that customers only download or use officially released Microsoft products, through appropriate Microsoft channels, since unofficial copies might contain malicious code.”

Even though Office 2010 seems pretty well baked, there’s still lots the company won’t say about the release, which Microsoft execs indicated to partners will ship in May/June 2010.

However, there are a few things the Office team is willing to talk about, especially regarding the product’s user-interface changes.

As Microsoft officials have said before, with Office 2010, all of the Office apps are getting the Ribbon interface. In Office 2010, OneNote, Publisher and Visio all will become “Ribbonized,” as will the rest of Outlook, said Aaron Butcher, Senior Program Manager on the Office User Experience Team. The Ribbon works a bit differently with each app, so adding it isn’t as straightforward a task for the User Experience team as it might seem. (The User Experience Team, a group of about 70 testers, designers, programmers and usability engineers, are the ones behind the UI changes in Office.)

Read the rest of this entry »

August 28th, 2009

No Microsoft Office Web Apps test build in August, after all

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:39 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Google, Office, Office 2010/Office 14, Office Live, SharePoint Server, Utility/cloud computing, Web 2.0, Windows Live

Tags: Web Application, Microsoft Corp., Office Web Apps, Cloud Computing, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft isn’t going to make its August deadline for delivery of a wide-scale test build of its Office Web Apps technology.

But officials told me they’re close to delivering the promised Technical Preview test build of the four Webified Office apps that the company first demonstrated publicly last fall. A company spokesperson provided the following statement when I asked about the Web Apps’ whereabouts yesterday:

“At Worldwide Partner Conference, we said the Office Web applications technical preview would tentatively be available in the August timeframe.  While they will not be available by the end of August, we are still planning to release them soon.”

For the record, when Microsoft officials told me about their self-imposed August deadline for the tech preview, the word “tentatively” wasn’t used. The rest of the Office 2010 suite was released to thousands of testers in July as part of an invitation-only Tech Preview.

In May, a build of Office Web Apps leaked to the Web, along with the rest of the Office 2010 Tech Preview; Microsoft officials haven’t answered when I asked whether that Web Apps build will be the same as the officially sanctioned one that is now looking like it will go to testers in September.

Office Web Apps is the working name for the Web-centric versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote that Microsoft is planning to release alongside the rest of Office 2010 when it ships in May/June 2010. Microsoft brass are positioning the Web Apps as being complementary to Office, not a replacement for the client-based productivity suite.

Microsoft officials have said there will be free and paid versions of Office Web Apps. Consumers will be able to get them for free via Windows Live. Software Assurance customers will have the added option of running the Office Web Apps on premise, accessing their on-premise SharePoint Servers. And Office Web Apps also will be accessible as part of some kind of Microsoft-hosted service/services (under the Microsoft Online brand).

Office Web Apps will work with PCs and devices running Internet Explorer 7 and 8, Firefox 3.5 on Windows, Mac and Linux and Safari 4 on Mac. I saw a demo of them running on a Windows Mobile phone when I was at the Worldwide Partner Conference, and Microsoft has said that they will run on unnamed mobile devices at some point. Users with Microsoft’s Silverlight plug-in installed will see more Office Web Apps features “light up,”

Microsoft officials have been attempting to set expectations regarding Office Web Apps since first showing the product last year. Office Web Apps won’t offer all the functionality of or look exactly like their client-based counterparts. They are designed for viewing and lightly editing Office documents, not creating them from scratch. But I think many users still are expecting Office Web Apps — or whatever they ultimately are called — to be head-to-head Google Docs/Apps competitors. It’ll be interesting to see what testers think the Office Web Apps test build finally does hit….

July 23rd, 2009

Microsoft rolls out new developer toys: Bing#, Gestalt and more

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 12:35 pm

Categories: .Net Framework, Code names, Development tools, Silverlight (wpf/e), Web 2.0

Tags: Developer, Sharp Corp., Microsoft Corp., Gestalt, Bing, C#, .Net, Programming Languages, Software Development, Software/Web Development

While Windows 7 is stealing most of the headlines this week, Microsoft — and one of its MVPs — also are rolling out some new developer toys.

Bing# (Bing Sharp) is one of these. (Thanks to Softie Scott Hanselman for the tweet.)  As described on Microsoft’s CodePlex repository site:

“Bing Sharp is a C# API that wraps the Bing API 2.x XML requests. It provides an object model for interacting with the Bing Api so you do not have to deal with the XML, JSON or Soap.”

Bing# shares a naming convention with a number of Microsoft’s growing stable of “Sharp” tools. Others include C#, Spec#, F# and X#. Bing is the renamed and updated version of Microsoft’s search engine that was formerly known as Live Search.

(Update: I have modified this post to rectify my error in describing Bing# as a Microsoft-developed technology. In fact, Bing# is the brainchild of  Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Joseph Guadagno.)

Another new developer-focused “project” — this one from the Mix Online folks — is “Gestalt.” Gestalt is a library that allows coders to use Python and Ruby as alternatives to the JavaScript language in building (X)HTML pages on PCs or Macs.

In chatting with Microsoft Principal Program Manager Hanselman, I learned that Silverlight is part of Gestalt.

“Gestalt lets developers plug in different languages that make developers happy,” he said. “It’s done with the Silverlight engine, the run-time environment. Other developers can extend it to support other languages,” Hanselman said.

A beta of the Gestalt code and related tools are available for download under the Microsoft Public License from the VisitMix site.

Microsoft also released this week the final version of its Expression 3 designer tools. (Microsoft delivered the RC of Expression 3 earlier this month.)

Expression 3 adds a couple of new features Microsoft showed off earlier this year, specifically SketchFlow in Expression Blend and SuperPreview in Expression Web.

Prices for the various Expression 3 tools are on the Expression purchase page.

July 16th, 2009

Microsoft to shut down its Popfly mashup tool

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 10:56 am

Categories: Code names, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Google, Popfly mashup tool, Web 2.0, Yahoo

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Tool, Mashup, Popfly, Collaboration, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft is shutting down its Popfly mashup tool, company officials are confirming.

Microsoft fielded a beta of Popfly back in 2007, at the height of the Web 2.0 mashup craze. Popfly was designed to allow non-professional programmers and hobbyists to build mash-ups, gadgets, Web sites and applications using pre-built “blocks.” There were tens of these Web-programming blocks from which Popfly users could choose, including Flickr, Windows Live Spaces, Virtual Earth and news service blocks.

A note on the Popfly beta site confirms the service will be shut down next month:

“Thanks for stopping by. Unfortunately, on August 24th, 2009, the Popfly service will be discontinued, all resources will be taken down, and access to your Popfly account, including games and mashups, will cease.”

In a July 16 note from the Popfly team on its blog, Microsoft officials are advising those who still interested in “express(ing) your creativity and pursuing a path to software development” to check out other Microsoft tools and products, like Microsoft XNA, Microsoft Kodu and Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer.

Microsoft isn’t providing (publicly, at least) any reason for the Popfly shutdown. I’d guess it’s a victim of budget cuts. If I hear more, I’ll update this post. Todd Bishop is confirming Popfly’s demise is due to economic concerns.

(Thanks to “Vasudevg” for the Popfly pointer via his tweet.)

July 7th, 2009

What is Microsoft's Web platform (and what's Chris Wilson's part in it)?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 10:20 am

Categories: .Net Framework, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Expression Studio, Google, Internet Explorer, Mix '09, Open source, Silverlight (wpf/e), Visual Studio 10 ("Hawaii"), Web 2.0, Worldwide Partner Conference (WWPC), Yahoo

Tags: Web, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corp., Tool, Web Platform, Chris Wilson, Installer, Web Browsers, Channel Management, Productivity

Those who keep close tabs on what Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) team is doing no doubt heard that IE veteran and Platform Architect Chris Wilson left IE back in May.  He’s still with Microsoft but has a broader though equally challenging role: Helping the company flesh out its “open Web platform.”

Wilson, who first joined the IE team back in 1995, has spent a lot of his time on the hot seat. Wilson has represented Microsoft — a company many have come to see as throwing a monkey-wrench into Web standards, rather than championing them — as part of various standards groups. Wilson has been part of groups forging standards for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), HTML, the Document Object Model and XSL through various W3C working groups, and currently remains co-chair of the HTML working group.)

Wilson’s new job is Principal Program Manager of the Open Web Platform in Microsoft’s Developer Division. In that role, Wilson reports to John Montgomery, who is group program manager of the year-old browser programmability and tools unit. The new post marks the first time that Wilson hasn’t been part of the Windows client division (IE is part of the Windows unit) since he joined Microsoft.

In his new role, Wilson is part of the team building the JavaScript runtime and tools for IE, he said. He still will be working closely with the IE team as it moves toward developing IE 9 and its successors. But he’ll be broadening his focus, too.

“There’s been a recognition (at Microsoft) that the Web platform is a programming platform and runtime APIs (application programming interfaces) are super-important,” he said.

So, what, exactly, is “the open Web platform” in Microsoft’s view? I’ve only seen it described fairly vaguely as something encompassing core Web products for developers, designers and end users.

The open Web platform is not a single, definable entity, Wilson said. “But to me, it’s CSS, HTML 5, JavaScript and other APIs developed by the W3C,” he said.

At the Mix ‘09 conference, Microsoft officials rolled out a new test version of the company’s Web platform installer (version 2.0), as well as a gallery of third-party Web-development tools from both open-source and closed-source vendors. Is this part of Microsoft’s open Web platform, as well, I asked Wilson. The Installer provides a single download for everything from Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio, to IIS 7.0, to PHP (Community Version 5.2.9-1). Microsoft may make a follow-up announcement about the platform/installer at the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) next week in New Orleans.

“We have disparate pieces that aren’t tied together at Microsoft,” Wilson acknowledged. “We need more than debuggers. We need to explain ‘how do I sit down with a blank slate and write Web apps’?”

In other words, it’s not just the server-side components upon which Microsoft largely focused at Mix ‘09, but also tools like Expression Web — “whch isn’t seen right now this way, but is actually an open Web tool,” according to Wilson.

What do you think Microsoft should do to help developers who want to write Web apps? What kinds of tools, products and standards (other than the obvious, like HTML 5) do you want to see the company offer? and support?

July 2nd, 2009

Microsoft's Gazelle browser: A layperson's explanation

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:41 am

Categories: Code names, Corporate strategy, Internet Explorer, Research, Security, Web 2.0, Windows client

Tags: Operating System, Microsoft Corp., Web Browser, Microsoft Research, Web Browsers, Operating Systems, Internet, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft Research has published a new article that explains in more layperson-like terms exactly what its “Gazelle” Web browser is and why the company’s researchers believe it’s needed.

Microsoft is slated to present a paper on Gazelle at the Usenix Security Symposium in August. At that event, the Gazelle team will describe “the design and construction of a browser that is actually a multi-principal operating system.” (A copy of Microsoft’s Gazelle Usenix paper is available now.)

I’ve had Gazelle (the project which started life as “MashupOS”) explained to me a couple of times, but I never quite understood it. The new Microsoft-authored article, however, actually helped me understand more about where Microsoft is going with this project.

It’s worth reiterating that Microsoft hasn’t said when, how or if it plans to commercialize Gazelle. It’s not accurate to call Gazelle the next version of Internet Explorer (or replacement for IE) or a future iteration of Windows. For now, it’s a Microsoft Research project only. (But most Microsoft Research projects do end up ultimately becoming commercialized in some way, often times years after they first debut.)

Microsoft researchers describe Gazelle’s design as that of a “multi-principal OS.” What does that mean, exactly? From the new Microsoft Research article:

“In browser parlance, a principal generally equates to a Web site. Given that there is usually just one user at a time on a PC, the sharing of resources is actually across applications from different origins; in the case of Web pages, each page could consist of content from different principals, each staking out a share of computing resources. The browser is therefore the natural choice of application platform for managing principals and resource requests.”

Up until the past few years, it’s been assumed that applications require operating systems to run. But Web apps don’t have this limitation. And because they don’t, Web apps often can be less secure. Current-day browsers also don’t handle resource management for devices, the new article said.

These are the driving forces behind the way Microsoft Research is architecting Gazelle’s “browser kernel.” The kernel — a layer that sits between underlying operating systems and the principals — will  protect principals from one another and from the host machine, according to the article.

The Gazelle team decided “the time has come to apply decades-old operating-system experience to the browser-design space.,” the article said. “Gazelle essentially leverages the existing mechanisms of operating systems and tailors them to the needs of Web applications.”

If you’re interested in where the Softies are going in security, browser design and OS design, the Gazelle article is worth a read….