MS promises 'trusty computing'

Office software to evolve as a team tool

In a bid to increase the force of .NET programmers in the country and to extend the Windows developer community, Microsoft conducts yearly Software Architecture Forums to bring together developers and architects from various software firms to discuss the future of .NET.

This year's forum, which began here on Tuesday, had Eric Rudder, Senior VP for Servers and Tools speaking on Microsoft's aim of creating 'trustworthy computing' and address the goals of the developer, the integrator and the end user with their future packages and .NET.

"Trustworthy computing involves building in security, ensuring privacy of users, reliability and business integrity on the vendor side," he said.

"In order to achieve these goals, 2005 and 2006 will see a series of releases from Microsoft covering every one of these people's needs. Releases next year would include a revamped version of Visual Studio 2005 for developers, Windows Server x64 edition for the integrator and Longhorn for the end user," he added.

According to him, a client version of the Windows Server software would also be released in 2006, along with a beta version of Longhorn, which will begin shipping by 2007.

"Several researches show that .NET is fast replacing J2EE as the preferred platform worldwide among developers, IT decision markers and architects. A recent survey placed J2EE preferences at 48 per cent while .NET was placed at 56 per cent of the people asked," he added.

Rudder also put up some statistics to prove that unlike popular opinion, the Windows Server software beat UNIX in not only units worldwide but also in revenue terms.

"The question was simple. Which OS would you choose to run your mission critical applications and over 65 per cent responded with Windows server. Unix came second with 58 per cent, followed by ZSeries. Linux comes fourth in line at 13 per cent," said Rudder.

He also mentioned several other numbers to indicate that both Microsoft's platform as well as server solution increased productivity along with ensuring lower TCO.

While reconfirming that Longhorn will lack some of the previously promised features, Rudder said that end user targeted releases will involve Office software suite to function as a team and productivity tool.

On the developer side, Visual Studio will take two different product paths where one version, called Visual Team System, will be targeted towards developers, testers, architects and project managers.

The second version will come out as Visual Express Versions covering aspects including Visual Basic and Visual C++. This line, according to Rudder, is to expand the usage base of Visual Studio as a whole to cover students, enthusiasts and hobbyists.

India has long been a Java country counting more than 3 lakh programmers as part of their developer community in the country.

Though .NET's acceptance among the developer community has been growing for the last two years, largely because Java development is possible on the platform, estimates place actual numbers to be yet smaller than Java proper.

Interestingly, Linux developers, though a very small percentage at the moment are also growing rapidly and its growth is eating into the entrenched Java and .NET areas.

Rudder also urged Indian developers to take up web services seriously, as he believed it would be the key to delivering one way of doing things of the future.