Frameworks
Letting Go of Windows
The real driver behind Microsoft's business strategy has been, and will be, .NET.
It's time for Microsoft to let go of its Windows obsession. Or, more to the point, maybe it's time for Microsoft to drop the charade and tell everyone that it has already moved on.
Look, 10 years ago, if you had told me that Microsoft was entering a post-Windows world, I'd have told you the company was cooked. The Windows operating system and Win32 API were the fulcrum against which Microsoft earned all its leverage. Application vendors wrote software for Windows because all the users were on Windows. And users bought Windows-based PCs because that's where the apps were.
It's the kind of dog-chases-tail business strategy that just can't lose.
And for nearly two decades, it didn't. Over the years Microsoft has done amazing things with its flagship franchise. Consider the remarkable -- and risky -- 32-bit revolution kicked off by Windows 95, or the epic merge of Windows 9x and Windows NT, which concluded with the Windows XP launch in 2001.
In fact, Microsoft did such a good job with that last one that the company now struggles to convince users and developers to leave Windows XP behind.
I think Windows 7, just released to pre-beta last month, should do the trick. It's extremely stable for an early preview and benefits from a reasoned emphasis on things that matter. As author Sandro Villinger notes in his hands-on review of Windows 7 in this issue, Microsoft has put a lot of thought into refining the user interface and extending opportunities for developers to improve access to their applications.
But the secret sauce in Windows 7 is also the thing that's ushering in a post-Windows world. Windows 7 will ship with .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1. The refreshed .NET code promises to do several things, including speed .NET application load times, improve Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) graphics capabilities, and add data platform features around ADO.NET Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services and SQL Server 2008.
And Microsoft is already talking about .NET 4.0. S. "Soma" Somasegar, Microsoft Developer Division senior vice president, revealed that in addition to new UI and WPF functionality, .NET 4.0 will add advanced support for n-tier development, enabling developers to focus on business logic rather than plumbing.
As developer Rockford Lhotka observed in these pages back in September: "First we had DOS. Then we had Windows, which ran on DOS. Then we had Windows, with DOS emulated inside. Now we have .NET, which runs on Windows. It's only a matter of time before we have .NET, with Windows emulated inside."
The fact is Microsoft stopped leveraging Windows years ago. .NET Framework has become such an effective lever that it's at the core of the value proposition for Windows Azure cloud application development. And while we'd be silly to say that Windows 7 doesn't matter, it's clear that the real driver behind Microsoft's business strategy has been, and will be, .NET.
About the Author
Michael Desmond is an editor and writer for 1105 Media's Enterprise Computing Group.