Presenting at the conference, Michele Leroux Bustamante, chief architect at software design firm , noted a modular inclination by Microsoft but added that little detail has been available about Hawaii.

"There's not really a lot of information about this yet, but what they are saying is they're planning to do a modular redesign of the architecture of [Visual] Studio," Bustamante said. This is probably related to making the platform more pluggable and extensible. A new foundation to replace the aging code base of Visual Studio also is anticipated, according to Bustamante.

Hawaii would follow the upcoming platform, which is expected to be released some time after the upcoming desktop platform. Vista is coming out later this year for businesses and early in 2007 for consumers.

Microsoft officials did not want to discuss the "Hawaii" project, but Jay Roxe, leader product manager in the developer division at Microsoft, acknowledged that the company has had internal discussions about what it would take to create a modular release of Visual Studio. "But that's not something that we're announcing or is clearly on the product road map at this point," Roxe said.

Modularization could it make easier for partners to integrate with and boost the functionality of Visual Studio, Roxe said.