Visual Studio Visionary

Speaking at VSLive in San Francisco last week, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates described the next version of the Visual Studio toolset as a "seamless computing" platform on which solution providers can build applications for myriad devices and interfaces.

Gates also introduced another technical preview of the next version of Visual Studio, as well as Microsoft Speech Server, software for speech-enabling Web-based and telephony applications.

It was that vision of a unified development tool chest that resonated with solution providers. "It's a wonderful thing," said Frank Cullen, principal at Blackstone and Cullen, Atlanta, about the merged toolset. "That %85 is what .Net is all about."

First, however, the Redmond, Wash., vendor must get to developers the final version of Visual Studio 2005, code-named Whidbey, and SQL Server 2005, the database to which it is tied.

As CRN previously reported, Microsoft delayed the final release of Visual Studio and SQL Server 2005, code-named Yukon, until the first half of 2005 from late 2004.

Eric Rudder, senior vice president of Microsoft's server and tools business, said the product delays are to everyone's benefit.

"I hear customers telling us [to] make sure we ship the right product," Rudder said. "I don't hear customers telling me, 'Rush, rush, rush, just ship it, I don't care about its current quality.' "

Whidbey and Yukon are not the only casualties of Microsoft's strategy of "integrated innovation," which tightly links its platforms and applications both in terms of development and how they interact. Developers also will not see promised bits of the Microsoft Business Framework (MBF), the .Net-based foundation of new business applications from both Microsoft and its ISV partners, until 2005. Microsoft previously said it would release an early version of the code,some pieces of which are in the Microsoft Business Portal,late last year.

BARBARA DARROW contributed to this story.