Live from PDC - Bill Speaks

The Next Wave

Bill Speaks

So the PDC has started. I suppose it would not be a PDC without a keynote - so we're starting with Bill. Bill looks tired and a lot older! His shirt looks rumpled, like he just flew in to do this talk. Bill says PDC is about making better software, the next generation of Windows, and everything that MS is doing around that."Catching the next wave" is his theme, MS has high expectations on the future - and a $6.8 billion budget! You can buy a lot of futures with that soft of cash behind you.

Bill talks about security - and is still banging the TWC drum. Two big future releases will include better security - XPSP2 (the firewall is on by default, better memory protection, etc - due in beta by end of 2003. WS2003 SP1 - Beta next spring, with role based security configuration, remote access client inspection, local inspection on connection.

Bill showed a nice video - "Behind the Technology" - it was very funny. I wish these were available!

Bill talks about this decade as the digital decade. Didn't he use that theme for the 90s? This will include some important breakthorughs: Advanced Web Services, Workflow and process, distributed management, and ad hoc communications. He says that there are some Information driven breakthroughs, including rich search/views, unified storage, self-organisation, information agents. All these breakghroughs come to us via Longhorn, the "Biggest OS since Win95." Longhorn, is meant to deliver on the fundamentals, but to use it in an easier fashion. Key components of Longhorn:

Fundamentals - Base OS System Servives

Avalon - presentation - lots of XML

WinFS - Data - unified storage (Gates has been talking it up 10 years).

Indigo - Communications between apps.

Hillel Cooperman - Product Unit Manager Windows User Expereience gave a cool demo on Longhorn's new UI. It looks pretty, but I'm not sure it's anything other than cool. the Searching, however, is very impressive! You have to see it!! What is better - all the controls are available to devs to play with. There are lots of pretty gimmicks in the UI - the clock so BLUE! Hillel showed a sample longhorn/avalon app. Very interesting - shows the power or WinFS schema extensions.

To summarise Bill's vision, he sees three waves: Today (XP, Server 2003, Office 2003, VS.NET), soon: Yukon, Whidbey, and later (with Longhorn Client, Server, Office, VS.Orcas). There is a lot of new technology to come onstream, et 64 bit computing.

To ride this wave, MS is doing several things:

Fundamentals - building it into the base - software updates, management, etc

Web Services - moving on, with Indigo

Managed Code - the way forward

Smart Clients - delivering data with XML and having rich local presentation layer

Community involvement - Bill wants feedback - years of work here shaped by the community

It all looks interesting!