Harish Palaniappan's

This post is for people who are in line with news about software industry.. Pardon me to write technical content.. but this is getting interesting about the future of Windows technologies.

Story So Far...
When Microsoft launched .Net, all the world's programmers had a shock and protested, since .Net was, and is, slowly replacing every other microsoft programming language like 'the lovely' VisualBasic, 'the solid' VisualC++.

What happened to the protest.. did Microsoft do something?
Many technology bloggers suggest that programmers forgot the protest since web boomed and everyone was busy creating web applications. Even today, in my opinion out of every 100 applications we develop, only one or two are windows applications, others are web based.

Why Web applications attracted the developers?
Businesses and corporates are now totally webby about software.

Right from HR management applications, to banking applications, to end-user free service like chats, addressbooks, .. everything is web-based today. Even some anti-virus solutions are web-based these days.

The developer community marketed the web rightly because they like it.

The web gives a huge relief to developers because of the fact that the end-user only needs to have a web-browser no-matter which web application he is using. This eliminated a bigger worry of making an application work on every PC given the huge number of choices in hardware and OS these days.

Microsoft's success with the bigger problem:
Imagine,.. All your customers are glued to a set of technologies that you developed, and this technology is largely becoming outdated and supporting it is counting on your resources which want to develop new and better technologies..
Could there be a better victory than your customers allowing you to removing the old stuff and replace it with new ones.

This happened for Microsoft. Because developers and technologists were busy (and still busy) with web-based technologies like DHTML, XML, blogs, RSS, ASP.NET and the likes... Microsoft had success in establishing .NET without frowns from the developers who determine whether any technology succeeds or not.

With this success behind it, Microsoft is planning more such revamp to its existing technology.

New technology is good, better and it helps evolve more better software. But more than this, its good to software industry for reasons of more work.

The Future..
Everyone of us have heard about Microsoft working on things they like calling Whidbey, Yukon, Longhorn etc., And that Microsoft is planning releases of all these new software in the coming years.

What's on store:

Whidbey - A new .NET (which suggest to be more backward "INCOMPATIBLE" than the already existing .net version which doesn't support any old applications developed in languages like Visual Basic, Visual C++ etc.,)

Yukon - A new SQL Server

WinFX - A replacement for Win32 and NTFS fiesystem itself they say.

Longhorn OS - Already called 'Windows Vista' and ready for launch, suggests to support .net applications more than non-.net applications. A microsoft support guy also told me 4-5 months back that the WinFX system which will be part of longhorn is the reason delaying longhorn's (or Vista's)launch.

ASP.NET 2.0 - A new ASP.NET framework that claims to be upgrade of the existng web programming framework of microsoft.

God... that's everything.. the win32 system is being changed, OS technology is getting changed, Database server, and .NET framework which will be the base of future windows OS's ...are all going to change.

Windows technologies are going to change.

That means, all application that run on Visual basic or C++ technologies, will need a partial migration(if not total migration) to new technology.

This is to take advantage of the new changes, or who knows windows software may not run itself on the new platforms if they aren't migrated... because doubts and rumours are looming large that backward compatibility has been of less priority to Microsoft while developing the new techonlogies.

A new boom in desktop / windows based applications underway?
To me all this looks like.. there are going to be more migration projects to convert outdated technology(Visual basic, VC++ and win32) applications to newer technologies, ... very similar to projects we see today to migrate ASP to ASP.NET, or VB to VB.NET.

The Launch party
Microsoft is planning to release all new technology within 2008, gradually with all their usual hype, claims, and promises...which worked for .NET's launch in 2000.

Its worthwhile noting here that Microsoft worked on .NET's launch for almost 2 years, from 2000 to 2002.. .NET and new OSes like WinXP were marketed non-stop.

Why India would benefit?
> Because migration projects are generally considered for outsourcing.
> Outsourced projects go to countries where cost is low, resources are high, quality is satisfactory and promising.
> India has successfully created a promising pool of software resource headcount continously in the past 5 years.

Migration projects are not new software development, but same old software re-wired with new technologies.

Also, when migration is only to upgrade the technology and the software needs to functionally do the same things like before, people only tend to spend less money on the migration... moving such projects to the outsourcing pool.

If you don't trust me on why I feel India will benefit,... then think about why Microsoft is all of a sudden tempted to invest $1.7billion in its Indian operations without doing this all these years when outsourcing was already hot. Bill gates who recently came to India announced about this investment plan of $2billion.

Indian software industry needn't worry on getting projects, and can concentrate only on building resources for the demand expected.