What Is a Microsoft PDC?

There is no lack of public Microsoft events for a "Gates groupie." There are events for Office users, administrators and developers; IT professionals (called TechEds); Microsoft "ERP" partners and users (the former Great Plains' Stampedes and Convergences); business-strategy conferences for strategic accounts as well as just plain-old Microsoft Windows development partners (through which Microsoft flows most of its revenue); and on and on. These events typically take place annually, predictably timed and usually some place warm in the Northern-Hemisphere winter.

But Microsoft Professional Developer Conferences (PDCs) are different. They do not occur annually or on a set schedule. Instead, PDCs take place when Microsoft thinks it has something worth saying to its tens-of-thousands of hardcore developers.

The 2008 PDC Ubermessage

A PDC was held October 26-30, 2008, in Los Angeles. Microsoft made two major announcements. The announcements related to cloud computing and Microsoft's next-generation client operating software offering. But on first glance there was not a lot of substance and certainly not a lot of "professional developer" meat at the Los Angeles PDC in my opinion: I found the two separate keynote messages of Microsoft chief strategist Ray Ozzie disjointed; his taxonomy on Day 1 was not the same as his taxonomy on Day 2. To the extent that the two taxonomies overlapped, the message was all about the client. But the client is not something most developers concentrate on.

Then I got the ubermessage. Ozzie's speeches were not meant to be very technical in detail or very earth-shattering in content.

In retrospect, my takeaways from the event could be summarized as follows (and are meaningful in this order):

Bill Gates is really retired despite the ads with Jerry Seinfeld.
Microsoft is going to keep up its confusing Software PLUS Service positioning despite Gates' retirement.
Microsoft admits that Vista is as bad as everyone has been saying it is for the last three years, which it can say now that Gates is retired.
Microsoft is going to get "cloud computing" right the first time despite the old rule that it takes Microsoft three times to get anything technical working correctly.

Of course, no one used those exact words. But these are the subtext of the message because it was Ray Ozzie's party. There was no Bill that I saw (I attended online). No Craig Mundie, in the main tent, at least. And no bravado: Steve Ballmer did not call open source a cancer.

First of All, It's the Cloud

I believe this effort will place Microsoft ahead of the market in cloud computing, which is very unfamiliar territory for its professional developer core. Microsoft Server and Tools VP Bob Muglia positioned the new Microsoft Windows Azure cloud offering as the next architectural step for Microsoft after the 1990s Web era and the link to Web services/SOA/REST this decade. He says cloud technology is as important as 1992 announcements Microsoft made around Windows NT. Azure is Microsoft's version of the Amazon EC2 cloud service.

One thing that concerned me is that Ray Ozzie seemed to position Azure in a way that I thought was fundamentally different from Muglia. Ozzie's view was from the perspective of individual vs. enterprise vs. the whole Internet — rather than architecture. Ozzie's description of cloud computing sure made it sound like Web 2.0, circa 1999, of which Ozzie was one of the thought leaders while at Groove.

What Is Microsoft?

One of the reasons for this conflict, I believe, is that Microsoft will not bite the bullet and choose either a technology or services mentality. It keeps using the term "software PLUS services." You should look for suppliers that do one or the other, but be wary of those that claim they do both together.

That is because you don't want a services supplier whose technology enablement options are limited (that is, they insist on servicing you with their own technologies). That situation is not necessarily the case with Microsoft (e.g., its recent embrace of open source software) but I have not heard a strong commitment yet to divorce software from services. Nor have I heard Microsoft decide which business model it will follow. An important trend to watch when looking at any IT suppliers is its business model.

In terms of business model, Google is already an example of where many traditional IT suppliers will go as they migrate. IBM has already decided to go in a related direction, becoming primarily a management services provider (although through its Software Group, IBM for now goes in two directions).

Oracle looks like it will remain an IT provider, along with Cisco, EMC, Intel and Sun. SAP wants to change its model but is having problems. Similarly, Microsoft has to choose. I believe that Microsoft has already decided to become an IT-based business service provider, similar to ADP and Intuit, but that Software PLUS Service mantra makes it hard to tell. This relates to Microsoft's cloud computing announcement at PDC because the cloud will manifest to IT management and staff in two ways:

Very large users will have their own cloud (large virtualized data centers, probably no more than two or three globally, with each acting as backup to the others and positioned to ensure the highest performance).

Midsize and even some larger enterprises will make use of public cloud capabilities — much as small businesses primarily use IT service bureaus or IT-enabled business services today — similar to the way they use other utilities.

Microsoft needs to decide whether it wants to market its cloud technology or use its cloud technology to deliver services. I don't believe any IT provider can do both successfully, although IBM may try.

What Microsoft Has

Despite the mixed message, all the evidence suggests to me that Microsoft is uncharacteristically ahead of the cloud computing functionality curve — in terms of technology and implementation.

The major related underlying technology is virtualization. At PDC, Amitabh Srivastava talked about how Microsoft's virtualization capabilities will let Microsoft manage emerging cloud-based services such as a possible new way of doing administration and development without bringing the data center down, "fabric controller" shared hardware services, and ways of composing complex service models for:

Standard ASP.net environments

Typical asynchronous back end/front end enterprise workloads

Functionality like the new SQL services announced at PDC

Next-generation Live meeting

In this virtualized world, not even a double failure can bring services down because of the use of adaptive replication, caching, etc.

From an implementation point of view, Microsoft talked about its innovative "data center in a container" for the first time publicly.

The biggest issue is that Microsoft users will not be ready to take advantage of these virtualization and cloud computing features because Microsoft is not clear about the software vs. services position. Clearly, its users are primarily of the type that will want the cloud as a service.

Next-Generation Client Operating Software

Also at PDC, Microsoft announced its next-generation client operating software (OS). Although this announcement received more extensive press coverage than the cloud computing announcement, there was nothing unexpected except possibly that Microsoft was talking about it a year before it normally would have.

As expected, the next-generation OS will span multiple form factors while protecting developers from inconsistencies. Pending the usual "this is only a vision" it will include:

A new task bar (that looked like Google's Chrome to me)

Better Windows management for multiple screens

New Library locations on Explorer to support access to all kinds of devices such as home entertainment, surface computing and multi-function devices as well as the phone/PC/mobile

Probably not intentionally intending to be funny, Microsoft promised an easy migration from Vista.