30 Minute Iinterview

Lighter Web-based applications

Kushal Shah talks with Steve Guggenheimer, General Manager - Application Platform & Development Marketing Division, Microsoft about their jump to the Web application platform through Expressions and Silverlight and the latest happenings in the application development space.

Steve Guggenheimer

Microsoft’s vision for application development

CIOs and CSOs want to be a core part of the business. They do not want to be the one who only takes up ten percent of the funding every year so as to reduce IT load. The application a person uses differentiates the way his role is defined in the business. We focus on the application platform which customers use to build, run, deploy, and maintain applications, which they build themselves, or buy them or buy them and modify. Within the application platform there are certain capabilities which our customers give feedback on and we work on them. We focus on data capabilities to manage data, having a business process to handle SOA, having development capabilities and business intelligence. We focus on building a platform which works well together with security, management, and identity. We work towards cross-platform capability and focus on our capabilities in data management, business processes, and business intelligence.

Managing security

For security, we focus on secure by design on the platform side. We do a lot of code reviews. We have certain experts coming in who try and make sure products are secure. We then work on secure by deployment wherein we just turn on the basic functionality of the product and then leave it up to the user to turn on the other functionalities so that the surface area is reduced as are the risks associated with it. This process reduces risk so we changed the policy. That is the core philosophy of our deployment team in terms of security. We have even put a security checker on tools so that customers can learn how to develop secure applications in the way that we have learnt to do so. We send customer problems to security teams and they help people develop software in a secure manner.

BizTalk server and its low price strategy

BizTalk is sort of core or anchor to business process management and SOA strategy for Microsoft. It is used to connect business processes with applications. Initially when developers were asked to get features from the business group, it didn’t quite work it should have and we thought of using business processes as a way to describe the needs of the business. We got this connection between development and business. BizTalk has a business process tool which allows you to make an application based on business processes. It gives us tools for visualising the business process and even allows you to make rules and also provides the capability for interaction or integration. BizTalk is a middle peer server which customers use and it’s actually one of the fastest growing applications due to its pricing. It has more units sold than competing products in terms of numbers and as far as low pricing is concerned, we have always tried bringing technology in a commodity fashion, be it Windows Server being cheaper than any other product. We have always taken thing which are hard to do and make them available at competitive price. That’s a long term strategy and not for BizTalk in particular but it has worked well for it.

SQL Server, Visual Basic and BizTalk

In BizTalk, we have R2 version which will be released by the end of the year. We have new features on the lines of EDI (electronic data interchange) and RFID which is becoming popular. One other thing we have is technical support and will have adapter capability. We will be launching it during the RFID summit. Visual Studio 2008 will be more focused on developer productivity and will support Vista and Office 2007. On the SQL Server side we have announced SQL Server 2008 which will focus on increasing capabilities on data warehousing. It will have the capability to handle any type of data stored irrespective of the relations and the way it is stored which will be good for productivity.

Visual Studio Express

For learners you have a site called code4fun.com. We also have a free version called Visual Studio Express which can be downloaded and used for learning purposes. We also provide the Web edition wherein one can learn for free. Further, we have an academic offering called MSDN Subscription which offers cheap software for students. Our products might be too easy to use for building applications and so professors complain about this but they are productive as far as application building is concerned. Professors use other tools for learning.

Software piracy

We work on piracy through education. One has to work with the local government to curb piracy since pirated software hits the local economy and they are the one who will work hardest on piracy. In countries like India, China, and Russia, the government helps more and more because that’s the way the software economy grows. Further, one can just try and be smart on how you make your product. Piracy still happens, that’s the part of the business. We continue to work well with legitimate vendors, which is an important aspect to deal with piracy.

Expressions and Silverlight

Coders work in 1s and 0s and designers make good designs on Photoshop, but later coders have problems coding that design. Using Expressions, designers can work in the same design atmosphere and coders on Visual Basic and both teams can work on the same project together without bothering about each others’ work. It’s a powerful tool to build a bridge between developers and designers. Extending that capability to rejuvenate applications, we wanted a light-weight cross platform dot Net based application. We created Silverlight which is a small plugin that gives the performance and supports Windows Media and video activity which had never been done before on the Web. We have versions of Silverlight for Mac and Firefox browsers. Here we use managed code which is much faster than employing a scripting language. Using these, you can build high-performance, interactive and rich Internet applications. For spreading it, firstly you make a good product tool. I am sure developers will want to use this tool. We make use of high-volume high-traffic Web site to show people the benefits of this product and capture their attention. We usually enter into a market where few companies can build alternatives due to the high market share of others.

Windows Server 2008

The Web performance is excellent. We have re-written IIS. High productivity, speed, performance support for virtualisation and security will be part of this new edition of Windows Server.

Microsoft’s R&D lab

We basically focus on four core areas. Firstly, we have strong investments in virtualisation, be it hardware application, or presentation layer virtualisation, we take care of each one of them. Secondly, we concentrate around business process and models using business process to connect IT developers. We even focus on using models to capture the state and process information to manage it well. Thirdly we invest heavily on services technology and finally connecting users to the back end is one of the concentrated areas.