Microsoft touts developer blueprint

Microsoft has made a number of announcements at its TechEd developer forum

Microsoft unveiled its Dynamic IT development strategy at the TechEd developer conference in Orlando last week, extending the earlier Dynamic Systems Initiative infrastructure effort to fold in application and development platforms. The software giant said that Dynamic IT would support integrated systems that reduce maintenance costs and are more responsive to business needs.

Dynamic IT is built on service-oriented architecture (SOA) and the vendor’s own take on software-as-a-service, dubbed Software plus Services (S+S). Microsoft said it will be the development framework for the next few years and that next-generation versions of products, including SQL Server and Visual Studio, will be built on its precepts.

The first public beta of .Net Framework 3.5 and a Community Technology Preview of BizTalk Services, also announced at TechEd, are intended to support Dynamic IT.

Part of the Dynamic IT strategy will also focus on integrating business intelligence (BI) tools into Microsoft products. “If the software has Microsoft on the label it will have BI hooks and core capabilities built in,” said Microsoft’s Bruce Lynn. “If you want to know the status of a particular process, you can capture that information while the system is running, for instance.”

A beta of Microsoft’s latest S+S app, Silverlight Streaming, a free hosting service for developers creating rich content using Microsoft Expression Studio tools, was also previewed.