I spent the last four days at the annual Microsoft Tech-Ed conference, along with 1 300 other eager developers from around the country and the continent.
Having attended last year`s event, I was fully prepared for the marketing hype and the all-too-common platitudes about how great the company is. What I wasn`t prepared for was the subtle winds of change that seem to have blown through the company since last year.
There was more talk this year of open standards than at any other Microsoft function I have ever attended.
Alastair Otter, Journalist, ITWeb
Perhaps it is just good marketing - something the company is a master at - but I doubt it. Clearly the company is starting to embrace a more open way of operation. There was more talk this year of open standards than at any other Microsoft function I have ever attended. Of course, it stops miles short of embracing the open source model, but the willingness to co-operate with other companies and software is clearly there.
Last year`s Tech-ED gave a preview of what developers and users could expect in the coming years. This includes .Net, Web services and new versions of Visual Studio. But the message was "handed" down, and the developers gathered in the convention centre could only imagine how they were going to adapt to this new technology. What was on offer was not up for discussion. Or at least that was the impression given.
2002`s Tech-Ed had a whole new style: it was open to discussion, actually mentioned working with competitors and put developers at the heart of what was on offer. The message was clear: Visual Studio, .Net and the likes are for developers. It is a tool for them to create what they want to create and how they want to create it. But more importantly, it is no longer a Microsoft-only world and developers will have to, and can, work with other systems.
And when the company wasn`t talking about open standards and working with others, it was talking about security, an unlikely topic at a Microsoft function, but clearly the Trustworthy Computing marketing message is becoming pervasive. Of course, I`m not about to trust my stuff to IIS and Outlook just yet, but there is a new consciousness of security within the company and while it is going to be hard for Microsoft to match the new openness with better security, it is going to be interesting to watch.
Exposed
Yes, the new openness makes Microsoft more vulnerable, admits Gordon Frazer, Microsoft SA`s new MD, but it is a new paradigm in which Microsoft`s only strategy is to offer a better platform for developing along open standards than anyone else out there. It also plans to offer these advantages across as many different platforms than ever before.
It must also be said, however, that there was more mention made of competitors and challengers. And interestingly, Linux came up in just about every conversation that I had, and not only because I dragged it in as a topic. Microsoft is aware of the threat of Linux, and despite the often-sweeping denials of this by senior executives in Redmond, the company is paying the operating system very close attention.
I am not about to switch to Microsoft products, but there are interesting changes happening within this giant that will be interesting to watch over the coming months and years.
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