Redmond and Seattle in general do not grip social apps. SFBA is ground zero. I expect to see Microsoft acquire a meaningful Bay Area Social App company (at least retain PARC’s research group who birthed Powerset.com).

Expect announcements @ PDC to the WPF architecture and Visual Studio 10 to republish (with some work) client server apps with a Silverlight GUI in the Azure datacenters.

PDC beta to add .NET service bus support for app to app web services, provisioning reliable connections via Azure Queues between Silverlight LOB apps published on Azure and Client Server Apps not published on Azure but connected via the Azure NET service bus.

Vertical LOB apps get rounded out by Office / Exchange SaaS apps, sold thru the channel. The missing bridge is how to divvy up subscription revenues across LOB apps (EC2 and Google don’t grip how important this is commercial developers).

All in Microsoft is on tear to give startup developers great tools to stop new Line of Business apps being written for EC2 and to stop a 2nd ‘wave’ taking place on AppEngine.

Redmond and Seattle in general do not grip social apps. SFBA is ground zero. I expect to see Microsoft acquire a meaningful Bay Area Social App company (at least retain PARC’s research group who birthed Powerset.com).

Expect announcements @ PDC to the WPF architecture and Visual Studio 10 to republish (with some work) client server apps with a Silverlight GUI in the Azure datacenters.

PDC beta to add .NET service bus support for app to app web services, provisioning reliable connections via Azure Queues between Silverlight LOB apps published on Azure and Client Server Apps not published on Azure but connected via the Azure NET service bus.

Vertical LOB apps get rounded out by Office / Exchange SaaS apps, sold thru the channel. The missing bridge is how to divvy up subscription revenues across LOB apps (EC2 and Google don’t grip how important this is commercial developers).

All in Microsoft is on tear to give startup developers great tools to stop new Line of Business apps being written for EC2 and to stop a 2nd ‘wave’ taking place on AppEngine.

Your subsequent points about market share, the speed with which HTML 5 will arrive, and the usual religion about MS being a backwater are not compelling. Choosing not to directly respond to them is not evidence of onesided journalism. I’d be glad to engage further if you have something to say about what I’ve written other than restating counter arguments to what I haven’t said.

Your subsequent points about market share, the speed with which HTML 5 will arrive, and the usual religion about MS being a backwater are not compelling. Choosing not to directly respond to them is not evidence of onesided journalism. I’d be glad to engage further if you have something to say about what I’ve written other than restating counter arguments to what I haven’t said.

OK, anyway Steve – I tried to have a conversation, but must have got you on a bad day. Journalism is a one way process regardless of medium eh…

Peace.

OK, anyway Steve – I tried to have a conversation, but must have got you on a bad day. Journalism is a one way process regardless of medium eh…

Peace.

Check your facts. Office Web Apps use Silverlight if it’s on the machine, otherwise use Ajax.

The rest of your comments are opinions, just like mine.

Check your facts. Office Web Apps use Silverlight if it’s on the machine, otherwise use Ajax.

The rest of your comments are opinions, just like mine.

I agree Silverlight will get better over time – but so will HTML 5, Adobe Air and toolkits to wrangle HTML/Ajax now (i.e. Google’s GWT etc). There is little point wishing ahead to what something should be when everything else moves along at a pace too.

Steve has a fondness for Ray’s pitch but I personally think he’s over playing how well placed they are today…

I agree Silverlight will get better over time – but so will HTML 5, Adobe Air and toolkits to wrangle HTML/Ajax now (i.e. Google’s GWT etc). There is little point wishing ahead to what something should be when everything else moves along at a pace too.

Steve has a fondness for Ray’s pitch but I personally think he’s over playing how well placed they are today…

I enjoy your writing, so let’s get that out of the way first (uh oh).

You’re a technologist and I’m a developer. I see you use words like Silverlight I think we have a reality dissonance. I want to explain it from my perspective, and learn from yours.

Discussion Points:

- Microsoft Office Web Apps were unvieled. They contain no Silverlight components. They are pure Javascript and HTML. If Microsoft wanted to use Silverlight then why not even a tiny portion required as an optional extra?

- Silverlight can’t even be used as a plain Twitter client without server-side support. Yes, that’s right, the network stack in Silverlight 3.0 is so poor you can’t even sign into twitter with it. You are using the word ‘Silveright’ to mean your vision of what they should be doing rather than the actual ‘Silverlight’ we use.

- Bing is doing ok, as it should be for the amount of dollars spent on adverts. The new ‘Visual Search’ actually uses a Silverlight component (which was worth mentioning). It allows you to see a large pictorial matrix of dog breeds. The world remains suprisingly calm at this innovation.

- Azure is doing ok, but it is no EC/2, Salesforce or Google APE. As a roach motel for .NET developers it’s missing the point as cloud apps need rearchitecting to be useful. If you’re an ISV then Force.com is the real player. Microsoft can’t even get their own GP/Dynamix team to move to Azure…

So Silverlight is not too bad, Bing will settle down to it’s 5% once the TV run stops and Azure will keep panting to try to keep pace with the Cloud.

Lots of people will still buy Office 2010 and expect ‘Sharepoint’(!) to be their companies real-time web.

Maybe take a look at Google Wave with all those IE users downloading Google Frame against their bosses’ orders – now there’s Office 2010 disruption. You may have bet on the wrong horse…

I enjoy your writing, so let’s get that out of the way first (uh oh).

You’re a technologist and I’m a developer. I see you use words like Silverlight I think we have a reality dissonance. I want to explain it from my perspective, and learn from yours.

Discussion Points:

- Microsoft Office Web Apps were unvieled. They contain no Silverlight components. They are pure Javascript and HTML. If Microsoft wanted to use Silverlight then why not even a tiny portion required as an optional extra?

- Silverlight can’t even be used as a plain Twitter client without server-side support. Yes, that’s right, the network stack in Silverlight 3.0 is so poor you can’t even sign into twitter with it. You are using the word ‘Silveright’ to mean your vision of what they should be doing rather than the actual ‘Silverlight’ we use.

- Bing is doing ok, as it should be for the amount of dollars spent on adverts. The new ‘Visual Search’ actually uses a Silverlight component (which was worth mentioning). It allows you to see a large pictorial matrix of dog breeds. The world remains suprisingly calm at this innovation.

- Azure is doing ok, but it is no EC/2, Salesforce or Google APE. As a roach motel for .NET developers it’s missing the point as cloud apps need rearchitecting to be useful. If you’re an ISV then Force.com is the real player. Microsoft can’t even get their own GP/Dynamix team to move to Azure…

So Silverlight is not too bad, Bing will settle down to it’s 5% once the TV run stops and Azure will keep panting to try to keep pace with the Cloud.

Lots of people will still buy Office 2010 and expect ‘Sharepoint’(!) to be their companies real-time web.

Maybe take a look at Google Wave with all those IE users downloading Google Frame against their bosses’ orders – now there’s Office 2010 disruption. You may have bet on the wrong horse…