June 12th, 2009

Microsoft takes off its xRM platform-as-a-service gloves

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:24 am

Categories: .Net Framework, App Compatibility, Azure, CRM Live/CRM Online, Channel, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Dynamics CRM, PDC 2008, Red Dog, SharePoint Server, Systems integrators, Utility/cloud computing

Tags: PaaS, Microsoft Corp., xRM Platform-as-a-service, Advertising & Promotion, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Cloud Computing, Enterprise Software, Marketing, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Two years ago, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer mentioned for the first time publicly that Microsoft was building a new platform based on its CRM core engine. Since that time, it’s been tough to get the Softies to provide any real specifics on that technology, once known as the “Titan” platform, and now known as xRM.

But with Salesforce.com stepping up its Force.com push, Microsoft seems to have decided it’s finally time to talk turkey about xRM and how Microsoft plans to position a Microsoft-hosted version of it as part of its Azure cloud platform.

Anyone who has been studying Microsoft for a while knows “platform” is one of the company’s favorite terms. Microsoft execs love nothing better than to take a standalone technology and figure out a way to build it into a developer ecosystem, encouraging its reseller partners and independent software vendor (ISV) allies to write apps that layer neatly on top of the Microsoft stack.

xRM is an “anything relationship management” platform, upon which hundreds of partners,ISVs and customers already have written line-of-business apps (LOBs) using the core stack that powers Microsoft Dynamics CRM, explained Bryan Nielson, Microsoft’s Director of Worldwide Product Marketing for Dynamics CRM and XRM. The kinds of LOBs built using XRM range from a seeing-eye-dog application to complex human-resource-management systems, he said.

Some customers are relying on xRM to help them consolidate their applications, making them more easily customizable and manageable because they are written on top of a common, .Net-based platform. Others are using xRM to create extensions to CRM, Microsoft execs said. Some users decide to “turn off” Dynamics CRM but still use the xRM core to create and maintain other applications, they added, as part of their move to reduce use and dependency on legacy applications.

The element of xRM I was most interested in hearing about during my meeting with Nielson and his colleagues this week, was how it fits in with Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform.

Remember Microsoft’s fall 2008 rollout of Azure, when execs briefly outlined forthcoming “SharePoint Services” and “Dynamics CRM Services” that would be part of the services layer that sits on top of the Red Dog (Windows Azure OS)? (See the Azure architectural diagram if you’re feeling dazed and confused.) It turns out that mysterious “Dynamics CRM Services” box is actually “xRM application services,” the team told me this week, and said Microsoft’s slideware department would be updating their diagrams accordingly.

What that means to customers and partners is when Microsoft launches the first final release of Azure this fall, the ability to host relationship-management applications in Microsoft’s cloud — something to which Ballmer alluded vaguely two years ago — will be live, too. This hosted xRM offering is Microsoft’s answer to Force.com and other “platform-as-a-service” competitors.

Any customers or partners out there who potentially might be interested in Microsoft’s xRM platform-as-a-service offering? What kinds of features/pricing would make you more curious?

April 2nd, 2009

There's more than one way Microsoft could bring Office to the iPhone

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 11:54 am

Categories: Advertising, Apple, Corporate strategy, Google, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), Office, Office 2010/Office 14, Office Live, Office Live Workspace, Office for Mac, PDC 2008, SharePoint Server, Utility/cloud computing, Web 2.0, Windows Live, Windows Mobile

Tags: Apple iPhone, Mobile, Web Application, Microsoft Corp., Office Web Apps, Office Live Service, Office Team, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software

Choice is good. But too many choices with too much overlapping functionality isn’t a plus.

Microsoft execs haven’t done the best job articulating the difference in the constantly expanding family of Office versions. The result: Company watchers, partners and customers are having trouble keeping it all straight — as the current obsession over a Microsoft exec’s comment that the company plans to make Office available on the iPhone — makes all too clear.

Microsoft actually noted back in October 2008 that it planned to support its forthcoming Webified versions of its Office 14 apps, known as “Office Web Applications,” running not just in Internet Explorer, but also in Safari for the Mac and Firefox (on a variety of platforms). Company officials reiterated that cross-browser commitment in February in an interview with News.com.

So was Stephen Elop, the president of Microsoft’s Business Division — whose comments this week at Web 2.0 on Office’s planned support for the iPhone set off a chain reaction in the blogging echo chamber –  simply revisiting Microsoft’s Office Web Apps strategy yet again? Or was Elop promising that Microsoft might port its Office Mobile suite to non-Windows Mobile phones (which would be big news, if true)? Or could Elop be hinting that Microsoft might Webify its Office for Mac suite, like it’s doing with Office 14? Hey, truth can be stranger than fiction….

It’s hard to be sure. In fact, it’s getting harder and harder to figure out exactly which of Microsoft’s Office software, services and software-plus-services offerings are best suited for what.

Here’s my attempted breakdown of what Microsoft has said will be coming next on the Office front:

Client: Office 14 is the next release of Office for Windows client machines. It is in alpha test now and expected to hit beta this summer. Final release is expected in the first half of 2010. We don’t know yet how many Office 14 SKUs Microsoft will release or what pricing will be. There’s also a new version of Office for Mac in the works, too, which will be a follow-on to the Office 2008 release.

Server: SharePoint 14 is the next release of Microsoft’s back-end suite of Office servers. It is in alpha test now and expected to hit beta this summer, simultaneously with Office 14 client. The new version is widely expected to add offline support to SharePoint. Final release expected in first half of 2010.

Mobile: Microsoft continues to evolve its Office Mobile suite for mobile phones. The 6.1 release of Office Mobile, which is the most recent one out there, runs on Windows Mobile phones only. Microsoft’s mobile strategy du jour seems to be to separate software and services from the base phone platform and sell these offerings (like My Phone, Zune services, Windows Live for Mobile, and maybe even Office Mobile) for a variety of phone platforms. Microsoft hasn’t committed to a date, a feature set or any other details about the next Office for Mobile release (as far as I know).

Read the rest of this entry »

March 23rd, 2009

Microsoft: No on-premise Azure hosting for business users

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 11:53 am

Categories: App Compatibility, Azure, Corporate strategy, PDC 2008, Red Dog, Utility/cloud computing, Virtualization, Windows server

Tags: Data Center, Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Azure, Windows Azure, Data Centers, Microsoft Windows, Storage, Servers

Will Microsoft allow enterprises to do on-premise hosting based on its cloud computing Azure platform? The latest — and perhaps final — answer is no.

Since Microsoft first rolled out its Azure cloud platform last fall, I’ve seen conflicting reports about whether or not the Redmondians will provide business users with some way to do private/on-premise cloud computing via Azure (i.e., host the Azure operating system and/or Azure services themselves in their own datacenters, instead of in Microsoft’s Quincy, Wash., and/or San Antonio, Texas, ones).

But based on a related e-mail exchange I had recently with Julius Sinkevicius, Director of Product Management for Windows Server, however, I believe Microsoft has no intentions of allowing users to create private, Azure-based clouds. I was asking Sinkevicius for some clarification around Microsoft’s recent announcement with Cisco, via which Cisco will offer Windows Server and Hyper-V to Cisco customers who purchase its recently unveiled Unified Computing System blade servers.

Here are a couple of the relevant Q’s and A’s between  Sinkevicius and me.

MJF: Did Cisco ask Microsoft about licensing Azure? Will Microsoft license all of the components of Azure to any other company?

Sinkevicius: No, Microsoft is not offering Windows Azure for on premise deployment. Windows Azure runs only in Microsoft datacenters. Enterprise customers who wish to deploy a highly scalable and flexible OS in their datacenter should leverage Hyper-V and license Windows Server Datacenter Edition, which has unlimited virtualization rights, and System Center for management.

MJF: What does Microsoft see as the difference between Red Dog (Windows Azure) and the OS stack that Cisco announced?

Sinkevicius: Windows Azure is Microsoft’s runtime designed specifically for the Microsoft datacenter. Windows Azure is designed for new applications and allows ISVs and Enterprises to get geo-scale without geo-cost.  The OS stack that Cisco announced is for customers who wish to deploy on-premise servers, and thus leverages Windows Server Datacenter and System Center.

The source of the on-premise Azure hosting confusion appears to be this: All apps developed for Azure will be able to run on Windows Server, according to the Softies. However — at present — the inverse is not true: Existing Windows Server apps ultimately may be able to run on Azure. For now only some can do so, and only with a fairly substantial amount of tweaking.

Microsoft’s cloud pitch to enterprises who are skittish about putting their data in the Microsoft basket isn’t “We’ll let you host your own data using our cloud platform.” Instead, it’s more like: “You can take some/all of your data out of our datacenters and run it on-premise if/when you want — and you can do the reverse and put some/all of your data in our cloud if you so desire.”

Will Microsoft’s data-portability promise be enough to get nervous enterprise users to give Microsoft’s Azure platform a chance?

March 23rd, 2009

Microsoft readies its Web platform 2.0

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:36 am

Categories: .Net Framework, Channel, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Mix '09, Open source, PDC 2008, Silverlight (wpf/e), Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas), Web 2.0, Windows server

Tags: Web Developer, Web, PHP, Microsoft Corp., Channel Management, Scripting Languages, Microsoft Windows, Marketing, Software/Web Development, Web Development

Last fall, Microsoft rolled out version 1 of its installer for its Web-platform stack of software. At Mix ‘09 last week, the company refreshed the installer in the form of a new beta for Web Platform Installer 2.0 and introduced a new gallery of third-party Web apps.

With the introduction of the “Microsoft Web platform,” company officials were hoping to make it clearer and easier as to exactly what kinds of products and technologies might be useful to Web developers. The first iteration of that platform was aimed at Microsoft developers; the updated version, which Microsoft previewed at the Mix conference, is attempting to be more inclusive and appeal to Web developers in general.

The newly launched beta of the Web Platform Installer 2.0 alleviates the need for developers to go to a bunch of different Web sites to download and install various Web-dev products. The 2.0 release also installs the community version of PHP (Version 5.2.9-1). Why? Lauren Cooney, Group Product Manager of Microsoft’s Web Platform, explained the decision to include PHP in the Microsoft Web Platform in her latest blog post:

“Many popular applications are built using PHP, and Microsoft wants to ensure that its customers, community members, and developers are able to use these solutions on top of the Microsoft Web Platform – and including PHP inside of the Web PI simplifies this for Web developers.”

Other products and technologies included in the beta of the 2.0 Platform Installer:

• Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.1 on Windows XP SP3
• IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003 SP2
• IIS 7.0 on Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008
• SQL Server 2008 Express
• .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
• Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition
• Various IIS Extensions
• ASP.NET and features such as ASP.NET MVC
• Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio

As part of the updated platform, Microsoft also is making available a third-party marketplace of Web apps, which includes a number of open-source offerings. Among the apps in the Windows Web Application Gallery: Acquia Drupal, DotNetNuke, WordPress, dasBlog, Gallery, SilverStripe, BlogEngine.NET, SubText, Umbraco, and ScrewTurn Wiki. Ultimately, Microsoft is hoping the Web Application Gallery becomes an app store for open-source services and support, in addition to being a distribution platform.

Web developers: What do you think of Microsoft’s updated Web stack — and especially about the company’s decision to include PHP as part of the offerings that can be downloaded by the unified installer?

March 18th, 2009

Microsoft refreshes Azure cloud, development kit

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 1:32 pm

Categories: Azure, Channel, Corporate strategy, Mix '09, PDC 2008, Utility/cloud computing

Tags: Official, Microsoft Corp., Azure, Data Centers, Business Structures, Databases, Storage, Hardware, Data Management, Finance

Microsoft has made its first big refresh to its Azure cloud platform since the company first rolled out “Red Dog” operating system and the Azure layer of accompany cloud services officially last October.

On March 18 during opening day of its Mix ‘09 conference, company officials detailed new changes it is making in the development kit and the back-end infrastructure. Among these changes: Support for FastCGI (for both .Net and PHP) and support for full trust, which allows developer to invoke native (and not just managed code in medium trust). Microsoft is expecting the full-trust support to appeal to developers who want to move existing libraries and graphics-based programs to Azure, officials said. A refreshed Azure software development kit (SDK) also is available to testers.

Microsoft also will allow Azure testers on or before April 21 to select the geographic location of the datacenters where their Azure-hosted products and services are hosted.

Microsoft still has held back on talking about Azure pricing, partnership deals and service-level-agreement plans. It will disclose all of those “this summer,” officials said.

Microsoft announced last week that it is reworking the SQL Data Services (SDS) component of Azure to make it more like a hosted relational database.

Microsoft officials reiterated at Mix that the company is still on track to roll out the final version of Azure later this fall.

March 10th, 2009

Microsoft details changes coming to SQL Data Services

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 3:23 pm

Categories: Azure, Corporate strategy, Database, PDC 2008, SQL Server, Utility/cloud computing

Tags: SQL, Microsoft Corp., Programming Languages, Databases, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Enterprise Software, Software, Data Management, Mary Jo Foley

After acknowledging a couple of weeks ago that it was changing direction with SQL Data Services (SDS), Microsoft officials are filling in the gaps about exactly what will be changing when.

Microsoft execs detailed the forthcoming changes to Microsoft’s hosted database service — one of the mid-tier layers of its Azure cloud-services platform — in a couple of new blog posts on March 10.

From the SQL Data Services Team blog posting:

“If we flash back about a year ago to Mix 08, Nigel Ellis got up on stage to introduce the community to SDS which, at the time, was a flexible entity based cloud database that you accessed using standard internet protocols. We made this announcement with the promise that more relational capabilities would be coming - and they did. But the universal feedback we received from our TAP partners and other early adopters was the need for a relational database delivered as a service.”

The end result? From that same posting from SDS Senior Program Manager David Robinson:

“(G)iven the feature set we are planning to support in SDS v1, a majority of database applications will “just work”, allowing developers to target on and off-premises deployments with essentially the same code base.”

The revamped SQL Data Services seemingly won’t be delayed by the move. According to the SQL Server News Blog, the revamped SDS (with the added Tabular Data Stream suupport) will be out in public Community Technology Preview (CTP) test-build form by mid 2009 and available commercially in the second half of this year.

March 10th, 2009

Microsoft takes 'Astoria' service offline with early test build

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 11:26 am

Categories: .Net Framework, Development tools, PDC 2008, Utility/cloud computing

Tags: Data Service, Microsoft ADO.NET, Microsoft Corp., .Net, Databases, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Enterprise Software, Software, Data Management

Microsoft is readying new updates of some of its back-end data services of interest to developers, including an offline version of its “Astoria” ADO.Net Service.

Sometime in the “not too distant future,” according to a recent Microsoft blog posting, the company will release a first Community Technology Preview (CTP) test release of ADO.Net Services 1.5. The forthcoming 1.5 release is a standalone one and not meant to supercede the ADO.Net 1.0 release, the Softies said.

The 1.5 update will target the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and Silverlight 2 platforms, and likely be released before .Net 4.0 ships.  As a result, Microsoft is planning another “future version of this standalone release (v1.5) (that) will be created to support the .NET Framework 4.0 platform,” according to the ADO.Net Data Services Team blog.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is releasing a preview of an “exploration project” called “Astoria Offline.” Microsoft officials first outlined their Astoria Offline plans at the Professional Developers Conference in October 2008 and promised bits would follow shortly. It took more time than plannned, officials conceded.

Microsoft Software Architect Pablo Castro explained Astoria Offline:

“This project sits at the intersection between Data Services, Sync Framework, SQL Express/Compact and the Entity Framework…. As the announcement says, this is not an “official” product or anything like that, but more like an early experiment to understand the problem space.”

On March 6, Microsoft made the Astoria Offline preview bits available for download. The preview relies on the 1.0 version of Astoria; they won’t work with the soon-to-be-released 1.5 update. The bits are “designed to provide an end-to-end solution for authoring of offline applications that use data from data services, either within a corporate network or across the Internet,” according to the download page text.

March 3rd, 2009

Which part of Office 14 will be ad-supported? Web apps

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 12:35 pm

Categories: Advertising, Corporate strategy, Google, Office, Office 2010/Office 14, Office Live, PDC 2008

Tags: Advertisement, Web Application, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Some company watchers are scratching their heads over a Microsoft exec’s claim that part of Office 14 will be ad-supported.

Psst. Hey guys… Microsoft told us last fall: The consumer versions of Office 14 Web apps will be ad-funded.

The latest pronouncement about Microsoft’s Business Division’s ad-funded intentions came on March 3 during the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, where Division President Stephen Elop keynoted. Silicon Alley Insider reported Elop’s comments on the Office team’s plans for “ad-supported revenue streams.”

At the Professional Developers Conference in October 2008, Microsoft officials said that the consumer versions of the Office 14 Web-based apps would be ad-funded and the business-focused variants would be “subscription-based.” From my report in late October:

“Microsoft is saying it will deliver Office Web applications ‘through Office Live.’  There will be both ad-funded and paid-subscription versions of these Web apps. For business users, Office Web applications will be sold as a hosted subscription service and through volume-licensing agreements. For consumers, Office Web Applications will be ad-funded and free.”

Silicon Alley Insider also quoted Elop as saying the ad-funded Office 14 components were an anti-piracy initiative. I’m not so sure those two ideas are as tightly related as the Insiders seem to think.
During presentations over the past couple of weeks, the idea that pirated Microsoft software is a bigger threat to Microsoft than offerings from its competitors has been a recurrent one.

CEO Steve Ballmer told Wall Street analysts in late February that pirated versions of Office were taking far more of a bite out of Office than Google Apps, Open Office or any of the other Office competitors on the market. He showed this chart, generated from Microsoft internal data, as proof:

Microsoft has been testing gingerly the ad-funded waters for the past year-plus. The company fielded a pilot of ad-funded Microsoft Works starting in 2007. But so far, most of the Business Division offerings — whether software, services, or a combo of both, have been paid/subscription-based.

(Meanwhile, in other Office-14-related news, Microsoft is confirming that Office 14 will run just fine on Windows XP.)

Do you expect Microsoft to make any other pieces of Office 14 ad-funded when the product ships in 2010?

December 17th, 2008

Microsoft Big Brains: Anders Hejlsberg

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 11:08 am

Categories: .Net Framework, Development tools, Microsoft Big Brains, Oslo, PDC 2008, Visual Studio 10 ("Hawaii")

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Programming, C#, .Net, Programming Languages, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Mary Jo Foley

Just before retiring from day-to-day responsibilities at Microsoft, Chairman Bill Gates said that he expected Microsoft’s 22 Technical Fellows to get a lot more publicly visible — now that they wouldn’t be living in his shadow. While some of the Microsoft fellows already have been active on the public-speaking circuit, many of them are not widely known outside the company.

I’ve launched this series — “Microsoft Big Brains” — to help remedy that shortcoming. In the coming weeks, I am hoping to profile as many of the company’s tech fellows as to whom I can get access.

Microsoft’s Technical Fellows came to the company via a variety of different routes. Some of them run divisions inside the company; some focus on particularly thorny technical issues that may span a variety of product units. Regardless of where they sit in the organization, the fellows all have been charged with helping Microsoft craft its next-gen products and strategies, much the way that Gates used his regular “Think Weeks” to prioritize what Microsoft needed to do next.

This Week’s ‘Big Brain’: Anders Hejlsberg
Claim to Fame: The inventor of the C# programming language (”and the steward of it for about ten years now”)
How Long You’ve Been With Microsoft: 12 years
More About You: Before joining Microsoft, was one of the original employees of Borland, where he authored Turbo Pascal. (He also was the chief architect of its successor, Delphi.)  At Microsoft, was key in helping create the .Net Framework, Visual J++ and the Windows Foundation Classes.
Your Biggest Accomplishment (So Far) at Microsoft: “It’s been satisfying to be at the right place at the right time to create an important part of our development infrastructure.”
Team(s) You Also Work With: Still working daily with the C# and .Net teams, as well as various groups within the Connected Systems Division (which is “building a whole infrastructure on top of .Net”), SQL Server and Microsoft Research.
Why Stay at Microsoft? “I love working with smart people and being challenged. I also like working on stuff that’s relevant. That’s my adrenaline shot.”

Technical Fellow Anders Hejlsberg is a guy who likes to see his projects through.

Currently, Hejlsberg is very focused at the moment on the next version of C#, known as C# 4.0. He is still the Chief Architect in charge of the product.

Microsoft shared a first tech preview build of C# 4.0 in late October. On the C# 4.0 new features list: Dynamic look-up; better COM interoperability; and more. And because language taxonomies are dying out, Hejlsberg said it’s not strange that C# 4.0 will borrow from and be heavily influenced by  dynamic languages. (C# 3.0 was more influenced by functional programming languages.)

His C# focus aside, Hejlsberg also is thinking ahead about bigger programming trends and technologies beyond his beloved C#. One of these is the concept of “metaprogramming.”

“Metaprograms are programs that manipulate themselves or other programs as data,” Hejlsberg explained. “They automate the act of programming and are closely aligned with DSLs (Domain-Specific Languages). Code generation is the poor man’s term for this, but it really doesn’t do it justice.”

Read the rest of this entry »

November 24th, 2008

Microsoft, Amazon take different paths to cloud caching

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 9:14 am

Categories: .Net Framework, Azure, Channel, Code names, Corporate strategy, PDC 2008, Utility/cloud computing

Tags: Content Delivery, Velocity, Content Delivery Network, Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp., CloudFront, Mary Jo Foley

Amazon and Microsoft, two of the leaders in the evolving cloud-services space, are offering customers a number of wares that — at least on the surface — sound similar. But in the area of caching, the paths of the two providers are diverging.

Amazon, aware that Microsoft was poised to finally take the wraps off its cloud strategy/services, launched a preemptive strike against the Softies earlier this fall. The result: Both companies are offering hosted SQL Server-based database services (Amazon’s SimpleDB and Microsoft’s SQL Services); an underlying storage service (Amazon’s S3 and Microsoft’s Azure Storage layer): a “cloud operating system” (Amazon’s EC2 and Microsoft’s Azure OS); the ability to host Windows apps/services on remote datacenter servers.

Amazon launched last week a test version of its promised content delivery/caching service, known as CloudFront. CloudFront is designed to help speed up Amazon-hosted content served across a network of distributed datacenter servers.

Microsoft, for its part, is building a distributed, in-memory caching solution, codenamed “Velocity.” Microsoft first took the wraps off Velocity this past summer. In late October, Microsoft released the second Community Technology Preview (CTP) 2 test build of Velocity.

How does Velocity differ from CloudFront? I posed that question to Microsoft late last week and received the following response, via a company spokesperson:

“Based on our understanding of this announcement, Amazon has essentially set up a self service content delivery network (CDN), which could compete with the offerings of other CDN providers. This is different from Velocity, which is a tool for application developers to provide scalable data caching solutions within their own servers (i.e., Microsoft doesn’t host the cache for them).”

(Microsoft has been grapling for years with how to provide/make use of CDN services for its own cloud services, like Hotmail. Here’s a ThinkWeek paper dating back to December 2006 elaborating on how Microsoft was building out what it was calling the “Edge Computing Network” in its own environment. Microsoft has been licensing CDN technology from Limelight Networks — a company which is a long-rumored Microsoft takeover target.)

Back to Velocity vs. CloudFront. Based on Microsoft’s positioning statement, the Redmondians aren’t  offering customers a caching service in the cloud. Instead, it is providing customers with a caching technology that they can use in building their own cloud apps. Here’s a picture from a Microsoft slide deck on Velocity (from the Professional Developers Conference) that shows where Velocity fits in Microsoft’s world.

(Click on the image below to see it at full size):

Microsoft is planning to release CTP 3 of its Velocity caching technology at its Mix conference in the spring of 2009 and the final version of the product in mid-2009, the PDC slides note. The first release of Velocity will be available as a “free, out-of-band release for the .Net Framework,” according to the slides.

Developers: Any preference for one solution over the other? Do you want your cloud vendor to provide you with hosted caching? Or would you rather cache your own apps and then host them?

(A total aside: Is Microsoft running out of codenames? There are three Velocity projects I know of at the company at present: The Velocity in-memory caching technology; the Velocity reseller-channel program; and the Velocity initiative focused on getting Windows OEMs to improve customers’ out-of-the-box experience with new Windows PCs.)