Microsoft Unveils Vision and Road Map to Simplify SOA, Bridge Software Plus Services, and Take Composite Applications Mainstream

Attendees gathered at the fifth annual Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference today, where the company shared its vision and road map to simplify the effort required to design, build, deploy and manage composite applications within and across organizations. Microsoft Corp. announced “Oslo,” the code name for the set of technical investments that help customers realize this vision.

This multiyear, multiproduct effort utilizes the company’s top engineering talent to build on the model-driven and service-enabled principles of Microsoft Dynamic IT (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/jun07/06-04TechED07PR.mspx ) and extend the benefits of service-oriented architecture (SOA) beyond the firewall. The “Oslo” technology innovations further Microsoft software-plus-services efforts by providing extensions to the application platform to help developers bridge between on-premise and off-premise projects. As part of a technical road map, Microsoft made available new tools and guidance to help organizations take advantage of “real-world SOA” today, including new SOA resources from Microsoft and a host of industry partners.

“Many customers are challenged to realize the promise of SOA given today’s complexities,” said Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft Business Division. “The combination of our current software-plus-services approach and the new wave of ‘Oslo’ technologies will enable IT to deliver high-impact business solutions.”

Today, applications cannot easily span the boundaries between technologies, between business and IT, and between an organization, its suppliers and its customers. Microsoft’s continued investments in SOA and business-process management (BPM) technologies will help customers better connect across these boundaries using a service-oriented and model-driven approach. As part of “Oslo,” Microsoft will work to deliver a unified platform integrating services and modeling, moving from a world where models describe the application to a world where models are the application.

“It’s time to help developers and IT professionals extend the capabilities of SOA to address the new ‘blended’ world of software plus services and cross-boundary collaboration,” said Robert Wahbe, corporate vice president of the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft. “‘Oslo’ will enable a new class of applications that are connected and streamlined — from design through deployment — reducing complexity, aligning the enterprise and Internet, and simplifying interoperability and management.”

At the conference today, Microsoft also demonstrated an upcoming community technology preview of Microsoft BizTalk Services (http://labs.biztalk.net/default.aspx), featuring additional support for interoperability, Web 2.0 services, identity standards and workflow in the cloud.

Building on the technology available today, the “Oslo” advancements will be delivered through Microsoft server and tools products in five key areas:

• Server. Microsoft BizTalk Server “6” will continue to provide a core foundation for distributed and highly scalable SOA and BPM solutions, and deliver the capability to develop, manage and deploy composite applications.

• Services. BizTalk Services “1” will offer a commercially supported release of Web-based services enabling hosted composite applications that cross organizational boundaries. This release will include advanced messaging, identity and workflow capabilities.

• Framework. The Microsoft .NET Framework “4” release will further enable model-driven development with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF).

• Tools. New technology planned for Visual Studio “10” will make significant strides in end-to-end application life-cycle management through new tools for model-driven design of distributed applications.

• Repository. There will also be investments in aligning the metadata repositories across the Server and Tools product sets. Microsoft System Center “5,” Visual Studio “10” and BizTalk Server “6” will utilize a repository technology for managing, versioning and deploying models.


Customers are realizing the benefits of Microsoft’s real-world approach to SOA and vision by employing today’s technology, including BizTalk Server and BizTalk Services, along with the upcoming .NET Framework and Visual Studio. On Feb. 27, 2008, Microsoft will continue the wave of innovation by also launching Windows Server 2008, .NET Framework 3.5, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

Reinforcing their commitment to SOA, Microsoft, Accenture and Avanade recently announced the Accenture and Avanade Solutions Showcase, located on Microsoft’s corporate campus. This Solutions Showcase highlights the power of SOA while offering customers customized solutions in areas such as the next-generation workplace, infrastructure optimization and business intelligence. The first solution to be developed in conjunction with the new Solutions Showcase, a human resources (HR) solution that helps organizations quickly and efficiently bring on board new employees, was demonstrated during Robert Wahbe’s keynote address at the Microsoft SOA & BPM Conference.

“The Solutions Showcase illustrates the benefits of bringing together the technology skills and industry expertise of Accenture, Avanade and Microsoft in a single location,” said Paul


Daugherty, chief architect for Accenture. “Our customers are always looking to extract more value from their application development investments and can benefit from this joint innovation as they develop mission critical-solutions on the Microsoft platform.”

Customers and partners can visit the new Microsoft SOA and Business Process Solution Center at http://www.microsoft.com/soa for additional information and resources, including patterns and practices based on the most successful customer implementations.

Microsoft Gains Momentum in Business Intelligence Market as It Prepares to Launch Major BI Offerings

Microsoft Corp. today announced key milestones achieved within the business intelligence (BI) marketplace, including IDC’s recognizing Microsoft as one of the fastest-growing BI vendors in 2006. In IDC’s report, “Worldwide Business Intelligence Tools 2006 Vendor Shares,”* analysts found that Microsoft had a growth rate of 28 percent, the highest among the top 10 industry vendors. In addition, Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 was acknowledged by The OLAP Report as the No. 1 online analytical processing (OLAP) server on the market.

Microsoft’s continued investment in delivering high-performing, low-cost BI solutions for all business users via the Microsoft Office experience and SQL Server 2005 has customers taking notice.

“Like most companies, we experience a constant flow of change. Having the ability to monitor my business, analyze key business data, act on it and see real-time results gives me the competitive edge my business needs to survive,” said Michael Saunders, corporate vice president and chief information officer for Kellwood Co. “Microsoft has given us the ability and confidence to allow our employees at all levels to make informed decisions.”

SQL Server has established itself as an enterprise-class data platform. A recent BZ Research study found that 74.7 percent of enterprises use SQL Server, compared with 54.5 percent for the nearest competitor.

The Rise in Demand for Pervasive Business Intelligence

In its analysis, IDC states that the BI market grew by more than 11 percent in 2006. The BI tools market continues to be driven by the need for improved performance management and, to a lesser extent, compliance. “Performance management can take on the form of various decision-support and reporting functions to improve revenue, profit and operational efficiency; decrease costs; uncover new opportunities; or mitigate risk,” said Dan Vesset, an analyst with IDC. “Microsoft had another strong year in this market.”

To give businesses a step in the right direction, Microsoft will launch Microsoft Office PerformancePoint™ Server 2007 on Sept. 19, and SQL Server 2008 is scheduled to ship in the second quarter of 2008. Customers are invited to attend an event on Sept. 20 to learn more about Office PerformancePoint Server 2007. More information about the event is available at http://www.windowsitpro.com/roadshows/performancepoint.

“We are focused on helping our customers achieve higher levels of business performance by allowing them to take advantage of the rich BI capabilities offered through Microsoft business intelligence,” said Chris Caren, general manager of Office Business Applications at Microsoft. “We are excited to help companies integrate efficiently with one another to ensure all employees are held accountable for their actions across the entire business.”

In preparation for the upcoming releases, Microsoft issued its fourth and final community technology preview (CTP) for Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 as well as the July CTP for SQL Server 2008.

The CTP program has over 10,000 active members. The latest preview of PerformancePoint Server 2007 is available to the public at https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=181&wa=wsignin1.0, and enables customers and partners to preview and provide feedback on the latest pre-release versions of both products. The SQL Server 2008 July CTP can be downloaded at http://connect.microsoft.com/sqlserver. Feedback received from customers and partners during previous CTP programs has led to significant improvements in both products and closely aligned them with the needs of customers.

Bridging the BI Divide

Both releases promise significant enhancements to the BI landscape. PerformancePoint Server 2007 helps organizations align their processes by streamlining into a single application the monitoring, analysis and planning activities needed to improve business performance. By deploying PerformancePoint Server 2007, businesses can achieve better results by allowing individuals across the organization to improve performance. SQL Server 2008 will help organizations deliver a more secure, reliable data platform for storing business-critical information and delivering the right information to all users, while reducing the time and cost of managing data.

PerformancePoint Server is tightly integrated with the familiar and easy-to-use Microsoft Office system, allowing organizations to better align employees across divisions and make them accountable for their actions. In addition, PerformancePoint Server 2007 takes advantage of the enterprise-grade reliability, high performance, security technology and scalability of SQL Server 2005, enabling more people at all levels of the organization to transform disparate enterprise data into shared information they can use to make decisions and take actions that improve business outcomes.

“TCS and Microsoft are working together to invest in developing industry-leading, world-class BI solutions that enable our customers to experience certainty,” said Santosh Mohanty, global director and head of the Business Intelligence and Performance Management practice at Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. “We are seeing significant market momentum and double-digit growth for BI solutions built on the industry-leading Microsoft technology stack. This growth, being fueled by demand from some of the largest corporations in the world, has enabled us to aggressively push our strategic objective of building a $100 million BI practice on the Microsoft technology stack.”


* Source: IDC, Doc #207422, June 2007

Video: Sonu Arora and C. Venkatesh: WCF Line of Business Adapter SDK

Channel 9 has posted their latest video. From the site:


I recently got a chance to sit down with some of the folks behind the WCF LOB Adapter SDK. Meet Sonu Arora, Program Manager, and C. Venkatesh, Principal Group Manager. Here, we talk about, well, the WCF LOB Adapter SDK. What is it, exactly? What's it for? Why did we make it? How did we make it? Can unmanaged developers take advantage of it? Tune in to find out the answers. For those of you who have no idea what WCF LOB Adapter SDK means:


WCF Line of Business Adapter Team says:

Developers face the challenge of building services that interoperate across organizational and platform boundaries, and connect to existing line-of- business (LOB) systems. At the same time, these services and LOB systems evolve independently of each other, making connecting applications and services a constant challenge.

To simplify this problem for partners and customers, Microsoft has created a common framework based on Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) – the WCF Line-of-Business Adapter Software Development Kit ( WCF LOB Adapter SDK). With the WCF LOB Adapter SDK, developers now have a consistent and repeatable way to build LOB Adapters for the .NET platform.

For developers and partners, this means a common adapter that can be used across the entire .NET platform, not just a single endpoint like SharePoint or BizTalk Server.

The WCF LOB Adapter SDK ships with a rich set of development tools to automate and simplify adapter development in a consistent and repeatable manner:

For Adapter Developers

• Adapter Development Code Generation Wizard

• Visual Studio 2005 Integration (IntelliSense, context-sensitive help)

• Runtime Components (LOB System Connection Pooling, Metadata Cache Lookup)



For Adapter Consumers

• Add Adapter Service Reference Visual Studio Plug-In

• Consumer Adapter Service BizTalk Project Add-In



Download the WCF LOB Adapter SDK here.

Listen to the podcast(MP3)
Listen to the podcast(WMA)
Download the Video
Watch the Video