Ray Ozzie: Reflections on Azure

PDC 2008 is really great event. I wish I could be there, in LA to witness what Microsoft is doing.

I’ve been developing with Flash and Flex for few years and now with Silverlight 2 as well. Last year, December I attended Artists in Residence programme at Microsoft Campus. We learnt there about Silverlight 1 and little bit about upcoming Silverlight 2. But as the months passed I started being sceptic where all these RIA things are going, not only with Silverlight but also with Flex and AIR. For a long time we’ve seen shifting from the desktop to the browser based apps. Then, when Adobe Flex took over that trend was even more noticeable. Next Adobe released AIR. I think many people was like “what? So you’ve been telling us the web is the way and you want us to shift back to the desktop?” But this year’s PDC makes it clear, at least for me. There is no boundary. Everything is one huge ecosystem, across devices, across operating systems, based on widely-accepted standards such as REST, SOAP. No need for things like AMF... SOAP and REST work well with AJAX applications. Perfect. We can leverage these for next gen apps. Silverlight is getting strong, with all the great controls released by Microsoft it is real competitor to other technologies. I’m sure we all will see many SL applications popping out all over the world shortly. Silverlight, WPF, Mesh, Live Services, Windows Azure, Windows Vista or 7, there is even space for Flex there as long as developers use well accepted standards. The confusion is gone. I’m back on track now. You guys rock.

BTW: what Microsoft and BBC did on iPlayer is really great stuff.