From the Editor
Volume 13, Number 1: January 5, 2009
Happy New Year
If you are reading this, then you've survived the hustle
and bustle of the holi-daze. Now you have the New Year to
look forward to and I promise you that you can expect huge
changes in the software industry.
What does the future hold for all developers? One
definition of Nirvana is a place or state characterized by
freedom from or oblivion to pain, worry, and the external
world. Read the rest of this thread to know what I'm talking
about.
The Writing Is on the Wall - Clouds Are Coming
Before we get started, I'd like to ask my readers how
they would define cloud in one or two sentences. Simply put,
the cloud is a set of connected servers on which developers
can install and run services, as well as store and retrieve
data. Now that we've got the cloud cleared up (pun
intended), how do you define Azure? Once again, in simple
terms, Azure is an operating system for the cloud and is
optimized for utility computing (pay for what you use only).
Developers will create applications that run on Azure using
Visual Studio and their existing .NET programming skills.
Microsoft's Chief Software Architect made this point at
PDC. Ray Ozzie pointed out that it is no longer a world
just about the PC, the Web, or the phone. The point is to
bring all these technologies into one paradigm and make them
work together in a meaningful way. Ray makes the point that
Microsoft Office works that way - it works on the PC, the
Web, and the phone.
The Big Challenge for Developers
Historically, developers have depended on faster and
faster processors. Enterprise servers need to be built
differently, with no single point of failure, scaling
horizontally, adding more servers in the cloud as more
processing needs emerge. You've seen the trend. First, all
software has historically been on premises, meaning it runs
within the firewalls of a given company. That has meant that
businesses have been responsible for everything (runtimes,
SOA integration, databases, server software, virtualization,
hardware, storage, and networking).
Hosting Evolution
As Internet-based computing evolved, many companies found
it difficult to get enough bandwidth and to deal with
hardware, network, storage, and so on. Companies started
hosting their applications at dedicated hosting providers. I
remember going to this huge, freezing room full of servers
in cages, each cage hosting a custom server with custom
applications, connected by a big, fat pipe to the Internet.
Despite some of the advantages of using a hosting service,
we still had to worry about data replication, load
balancing, and scaling, to name a few. Those are tough
problems to solve and can distract you from the real reason
you create business software.
The New Paradigm - the Cloud
The Cloud promises to solve a lot of issues that I just
discussed. Companies can just focus on the application. All
those issues relating to plumbing and infrastructure can be
completely abstracted away by Azure and cloud services in
general. This is the software Nirvana I was referring to.
OK, that might be a little ambitious of a word. Microsoft
realizes that this is a never-ending journey. But the trend
is clear: infrastructure shouldn't be the problem of
application developers. Business analysts and software
engineers should focus on just the business application, not
all the supporting infrastructure.
There Will Be Pain Points
Developers will need to think in terms of model-driven
development, which focuses on creating models, or
abstractions, closer to some particular domain concepts
rather than computing (or algorithmic) concepts. It is meant
to increase productivity by maximizing compatibility between
systems, simplifying the process of design, and promoting
communication between individuals and teams working on the
system. Learn more about this in less than two minutes by
watching
Bill Gates's Tech•Ed Keynote: The Future of Application
Development.
Consequently, there will be new development patterns,
issues surrounding parallelism, and horizontal scale. Many
of the issues are addressed by Oslo, the codename for a
forthcoming modeling platform from Microsoft.
Will everything be in the Cloud? No. Take a retailer's
large product catalog as an example. The catalog itself is
happy in the cloud, available to everyone, all the time, on
multiple devices. But when a customer buys a product from
the catalog, the transaction will more appropriately be
processed on premises, safely away from intrusion or
hackers, keeping the credit card information private.
Getting Started
Here's a great
starting point. There are already some learning tools.
See
Azure Services Training Kit - PDC Preview. Then sharpen
your skills and stay competitive in the job market by
checking out VSLive! San
Francisco from February 24 - 26. Register by January 21
and save up to US$200. Call 800-280-6218.
This is a free event (with limited seating) on January 7,
starting at 1:00 P.M. at the Microsoft campus in Mountain
View. This is your chance to learn ways to create incredibly
beautiful applications on Windows, including drawing and
animation for the ultimate user experience, features that
were previously only available from specialized libraries.
Learn about a key technology and development platform that
includes a blend of intelligence and style that is sure to
please both developers and designers. Then, see the
technology that was used to deliver the
Olympics to the public and how it is an adaptation of
the rich technology used to create beautiful applications on
Windows. You can efficiently and quickly adapt a rich
Windows application and make it accessibility from within a
browser using the same methods as those used by the
Olympics. Finally, take a look at a key data access
technology which allows you to expose complex data across
the Internet.
Questions? If you are still reading this, shoot me an
e-mail and let
me know what interests you most. Let me know what you would
like to hear about at MSDN events. Are we focused too much
on the future, not enough on today?
Thanks for reading,
Bruno
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