Microsoft Unveils Information Bridge At Tech Ed

Due out next year, Visual Studio Team Edition encompasses long-promised modeling as well as proactive testing capabilities. Taking on such established modeling giants as Rational Software, now owned by IBM, the product will enable developers to test the security of their applications in advance, uncovering such situations as buffer overflows before they become a problem, said Prashant Sridharan, Microsoft's lead product manager for Visual Studio.

Showing a flow chart of a Web services application, Sridharan said, "This is not just a pretty picture." The offering will exercise displayed code to find errors and bottlenecks before deployment, according to Microsoft.

Corporate developers and others have awaited this modeling capability, code-named Whitehorse, for some time--and more anxiously since IBM acquired Rational Software and its RAD tools two years ago.

The high-end Visual Studio Team Edition SKU will replace the Enterprise Edition of the current Visual Studio.Net, Prashant told CRN. It's slated to ship next year.

Some analysts said they were impressed with the plans but noted that Microsoft must make up for lost time in enterprise-class modeling. "For people very focused on SOAs, Whitehorse is a powerful tool, used to create and deploy SOA-based apps," said Peter O'Kelly, an analyst at the Burton Group. "WebLogic Studio or whatever is not what someone coming from a traditional IDE would consider visual programming. But for others, it's fine."

In this space, Microsoft must contend with IBM/Rational and Borland, which bought TogetherSoft for analogous technology. "In that arena, Microsoft is not at functional parity," O'Kelly said.

Sridharan demonstrated the capability Monday morning during Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's opening keynote at Tech Ed 2004, in San Diego. Ballmer reiterated Microsoft's two-year-old mantra that security is priority one. To aid application development, the Redmond, Wash., software giant also will embed its Watson bug-reporting tool into its platforms and toolset, he said. In addition, the company is still working on a converged code base for all of its Navision, Axapta and Great Plains code bases.

Also at the show, Microsoft showcased Information Bridge Framework, once known internally as the Information Worker Bridge. The framework promises tighter links between Outlook, Word, Excel and other Office desktop applications and services that run on dispersed services. CRN first reported on this product in January (see story). Information Bridge works in tandem with the new Web Services Extensions 2.0, aka "Wizzy," that was distributed at the show and promises secure links to Web services.

Attendees agreed with Ballmer's assertion that security is job No. 1. "The security for us is important, as well as the future stuff about preventing spam," said Theresa Putzier, MBS consultant at Olsen Thielen Technologies, a St. Paul, Minn.-based Great Plains solution provider.

Putzier, however, said she was concerned about the unified MBS code base. "One solution is easier to install and deploy. But that can make it difficult to compete because there will be far more [solution provider] competitors selling that solution," she said. "So we will have to know how to change directions."

Another solution provider attendee, Tareq Saddiq, senior network engineer at Bedrock Managed Services and Consulting, Neenah, Wis., was less than bowled over by what Microsoft presented. "Nothing made me say, 'Wow,' " he said.

Yet Joe Lindsay, CTO of eBuilt, a Costa Mesa, Calif.-based solution provider, said Microsoft may be able to provide the same value Rational offers if it plays its cards right with Visual Studio Team Edition. "Visual Studio has been a great tool for individual productivity. It appears to me [Microsoft's] intent is to extend that to the team," he said. "It looks like they're adding collaboration to Visual Studio. If they do it right, it could be very, very powerful."

For continuing coverage see Tech Ed 2004 News Center.

ELIZABETH MONTALBANO contributed to this story.