So, what’s going on in Microsoft? What platform to choose? Is that true that Windows 8 and WinRT platform are dying rapidly without having a chance to enter the market? It’s been two years since Microsoft Corp. had “shifted strategy”. What are the results?
In this article, I will try to look at the procedure of shifting the technology in Microsoft Corp from the logical point of view and show why WinRT will either completely disappear or become the main development direction of Windows. So, here is a short introduction.
Introduction
Our company is a vendor of reporting and data visualization systems for .NET. It means that we strongly depend on success or failure of this technology, as well as platforms using it, for example, WPF, Silverlight, ASP.NET MVC and others.
Dependency on the technologies of a single company is always great risk that is quite difficult to manage, but that should be considered. For example, five years ago we made a bid for Silverlight and launched Silverlight Viewer for Reporting Services. Sales grew dramatically right after the product launch as the product was really demanded.
Quite a lot of corporate developers considered Silverlight as the main RIA technology. It offered power, flexibility and quite low development costs unlike pure HTML + JS systems mastering in which up to the level of “adequate architecture and minimum bugs” takes years.
Flash used in most entertainment projects seemed even less suitable for development of enterprise solutions, since Flex platform and ActionScript language compared poorly to Silverlight and its clear architecture supported by the power of C#. Though, we wrote about it more than once in our blog.
As a result sales of our Silverlight components grew exponentially.
However, risks have a characteristic to occur. In 2011, Microsoft Corp. suddenly realized that they have almost frittered away the market of mobile devices with the future belonging to them. With all passion and, probably, with teenage dichotomous thinking they try to make revolution in a separate technology and hurled all effort into development of Window 8.
So, how did they make it?
Kill’em all to get the message thru!
It’s obvious that to implement a cross-platform system, single one for all devices, one needs much resources and, which is more important, a lot of developers who will create software for this technology. Availability of various convenient and necessary software is the main advantage of this or that mobile platform.
So, Microsoft had to solve two problems: free up inner resources for a new system and win millions of developers who would fill in the empty Windows Store.
Guess, what way they chose?
Surely, the easiest one: resources for a new WinRT platform can be easily got from the disbanded Silverlight team; at the same time it will be a good opportunity to attract empty-handed Silverlight developers to this new platform.
As those who follow news from the Microsoft technologies may remember, two years ago Silverlight team was divided into two parts: one of them (including Silverlight developers) started working on Windows Phone, and the other one continued working on Windows (formally staying a part of Development Division).
Evidently, it was the end of Silverlight that was officially confirmed in November by the official announcement about discontinued maintenance of the technology.
Besides, they say that Steven Sinofsky responsible for Windows 8 completely broke up with Scott Guthrie responsible for Silverlight. But I am not going to dish the dirt here.
WinRT destiny
So, let’s see: Microsoft sacrificed one of the most promising enterprise technologies in order to jump on the step of the last train of mobile operating systems.
As a matter of fact, at the moment there is a big breach in the enterprise RIA segment of Microsoft technologies. Of course, we won’t seriously consider calls to migrate to HTML5 and pure JavaScript, development tools for which will hardly appear in the nearest future.
Thus, there are two options: Microsoft leaves Enterprise RIA and it stays open, or this breach will be filled with other technologies.
Don’t forget that this piece is still tasty for any software vendor since more and more routing user tasks migrate from local machines to clouds.
Microsoft, being infatuated with the desire to bite one more piece from the apple of mobile market understands that missing enterprise segment is missing not only users but also millions of dollars from the servers, data bases, CRM, etc.
So, sacrifice of the enterprise market Microsoft made to launch WinRT should compensate somehow. I am almost sure that the corporation is managed by people who can predict development of technologies for at least 10 years in advance. And they should understand that loosing market of enterprise applications is not reasonable even in exchange of advantages the new platform offers.
That is why most likely when the first infantine diseases of WinRT related to the users’ distraction because of the missing Start button or chaos on the mobile devices market are gone, this technology will be promoted to the enterprise market. And those who make it to enter this empty train now will be able to take the best places.
However, this train can be occasionally derailed by a drunken switch man. Time will show.
