Microsoft News Tracker

After the release of Visual Studio 2005 today, a natural question is what’s next for Microsoft’s Developer Division. The expected response is Orcas, the next version of Visual Studio due in 2007 or so, but Eric Maino provides a different answer on his weblog:

While I can’t answer this question for everyone I can answer it for my self and most of the developer division (there may be some people going on vacation for a while, so I can’t speak for them). The developer division as a whole is working on MQ.

MQ is a milestone that is post-Whidbey and pre-Orcas that will focus on quality. We have learned a lot from the previous 3 versions of Visual Studio that were built around the .NET Framework, the biggest lesson that we learned on this most recent version was that we were not agile enough and we took too long to ship.

This milestone while it will not answer everything it gives the division time to analyze its processes and make improvements. Every team (just like a business) has areas that it would like to improve, but hasn’t been able to in the past when there is code churn and deadlines looming.

I really think that MQ is a great step in the right direction and I believe that as a customer you will see this throughout the Orcas product cycle.

And no, it isn’t a service pack.

Per TheStreet.com and Reuters, Marc Chardon has joined Blackbaud, a Charleston, S.C. company which provides software and services for nonprofit organizations, as president and CEO effective Nov. 28. He was CFO of Microsoft’s Information Worker (i.e. Office) division.

From the AP:

Swedish software start-up Wellton Way AB said Monday it had filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft Corp. at the European Union, claiming the software giant is undercharging for a version of its Windows operating system that can run home entertainment systems.

Wellton Way founder and Chief Executive Claes Wellton said Microsoft sells its Media Center Edition 2005 software with the Windows XP Professional operating system for less than the operating system alone.

Wellton Way makes its own home entertainment add-on for Windows XP.

The computer press has picked up on this weekend’s blog furor about Visual Studio 2005 quality. Microsoft Visual C# Product Unit Manager Scott Wiltamuth puts some oil on the troubled waters with a preview of the plans for Visual Studio servicing:

We’ve seen some questions today in blogs and forums about our servicing plans for VS 2003 and VS 2005, and I thought it would be a good idea to communicate them here. We use “hot fixes” to address time-critical issues, and periodically release service packs that have multiple fixes. By having the combination of these methods, we hope to provide timely fixes for critical issues and also make it easy for customers to deploy fixes broadly.

We have plans for two service pack releases for the first part of 2006:

–VS 2003 SP1 is scheduled for April 2006. We have done much of the work for this release already, and are anxious to get it to you.

–VS 2005 SP1 is scheduled for the first half of 2006. We will be more specific about the date in a few months, once we have more customer data.

As anticipated, today’s big launch went off as scheduled - Microsoft Joins Customers and Partners to Launch SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006:

Microsoft customers and partners gathered today to show their support for the launch of Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 and Visual Studio® 2005 and the upcoming release of BizTalk® Server 2006. Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer kicked off the event by highlighting the tens of thousands of customers and partners that played a major role in the product development process, providing ongoing input to deliver the next evolution in Microsoft’s application platform.
…
The advancements Microsoft is delivering with Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 build on the foundation put in place over the last several years with significant investments in Windows Server™ 2003 and Microsoft .NET, providing developers and IT professionals with a dependable application platform that has underlying support for Web services and service orientation capabilities. The deeper integration of the server and tools with today’s releases enables a host of innovative scenarios and range of new capabilities:

• Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0 enable developers and development teams to build high-performance, security-enhanced and reliable solutions using an enterprise-ready development platform. Visual Studio 2005 features an expanded set of tools including Visual Studio Team System, an extensible life-cycle tools platform that enables collaboration among software development teams to deliver modern service-oriented solutions.

Hit the VS 2005 home page for version details, features, and launch tour events. (.NET Framework 2.0 info is here.) The Visual Studio Express Editions are available for download free for 1 year. Finally, although it did not get any press release ink, Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 3.0 also shipped and is available for download.

• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 provides an integrated data management and analysis platform that helps organizations reliably manage mission-critical information and confidently run complex business applications. With embedded reporting and data analysis tools included with SQL Server 2005, companies can gain greater insight from their business information.

The SQL Server home page has more and the free (forever) SQL Server Express Edition is also available for download.

• BizTalk Server 2006 delivers new features that enable enterprises to better monitor, manage and deploy their mission-critical business processes.

BizTalk Server 2006 is, of course, not ready to ship, but a new CTP was released, a full beta is expected before the end of the year and the product itself in 1H2006.

In addition, Microsoft announced that it will include 16 new integration adapters in BizTalk Server 2006 Enterprise and Standard editions at no additional charge to customers. The move gives customers native interoperability to industry-leading business applications such as PeopleSoft, Siebel, Oracle Database Connector and Oracle Application Suite.

This policy for the BizTalk adapters rated it’s own press release:

Microsoft Corp. today announced that it will include 16 new application and technology adapters in the Enterprise and Standard editions of BizTalk® Server 2006 at no additional charge, including adapters for Oracle Corp., PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems Inc. This announcement marks a significant break from the industry norm of charging additional license fees for application and technology adapters, and offers customers a simple and cost-effective way to reduce the complexity of purchasing, building and implementing application integration and business process automation solutions. Separately, Microsoft announced pricing, licensing and product timelines for BizTalk Server 2006.

More details by following the link.

So what does it all mean besides the release of the latest versions of 2 major Microsoft products and a wannabee? Joe Wilcox says it’s all about integration of the products:

The three products launched today are the first wave of a tide of tightly, integrated products. There is simply no way to overstate how tightly Microsoft has integrated features among its late 2005-2006 software releases. While some Microsoft executives have said that Microsoft bet the company on Longhorn (now called Windows Vista), the real bet is on “Integrated Innovation.”

(See also the press materials [1], [2]) He goes on to discuss the pros and cons of this integration for customers, but I tend to think of the dependency problems for the Microsoft developers - you can’t ship one of the products until all of the prerequisite products are ready and getting them to line up always seems to mean “later” or loss of features and we’ve seen both in this package.

Update:Video of the launch event.