Microsoft PDC 2008

I attended Microsoft PDC 2008. It was my first time at this event. I must say that I was impressed as seeing Microsoft's focus on the right things. Below is a highlight of areas I found interesting.

Azure Service Platform
Yes, Microsoft is late to arrive to the cloud computing race. Amazon has shown world the way to monetize the cloud computing paradigm. But I think Microsoft is thinking right and doing right in this space. Cloud Computing is not a choice for Microsoft. It is a natural progression in the evolution to a distributed computing model. It has realized that conquering this new frontier is critical for its existence. I believe Microsoft is going to make it easy to extend every aspect of software development, deployment and service to cloud computing and become one of the top 3 players in this space.

Windows 7
With a focus on Performance and usability, I think Microsoft is finally thinking right. I have long believed that the PC has changed from being a computing device to a consumer electronic device. Apple has demonstrated this through the way it makes it easy to do the most common things easily on its Mac units. I believe Microsoft is going to make the PC a consumer device with its Windows 7 OS. One example is the demo of the ease of home networking shown at the PDC 2008

Silverlight
Microsoft boasted about Silverlight 2.0 and said it has 25% penetration of all internet connected PCs. That is pretty impressive and demonstrates the distribution channel that Microsoft has through its dominance in the PC market. I think Silverlight is an important technology in Microsoft's overall cloud computing strategy. Good to see that Microsoft is aggressively working on adoption, developer productivity and creative tools around Silverlight

Surface
Amazing new technology. I had seen it on TV when it was launched. I was more impressed when I played the scavanger hunt game on 5 sets of surface computers located at 5 different locations at the event. It demonstrated the capability of camera based vision system, multi-touch, intelligence and ruggedness very well