This year"s Tech-Ed in South Africa"s Sun City got off to a celebratory start, with a birthday party to celebrate the annual technology conference"s 5th anniversary.

According to Microsoft South Africa MD, Gordon Frazer, this year sees the total number of delegates over the last five years rising to 5 713, with over 368 sessions having been completed in the same time period.

During the first day"s proceedings, Frazer touched on recent BMI-T research, which concluded that Microsoft Corp. and its partners have contributed a total of R9.6 billion (US$1.58 billion) to SA"s gross domestic product (GDP), approximately 0,8 percent of the total amount.

Globally competitive

Also during Monday"s opening keynote, Mosebadi Mangena, Minister of Science and Technology, praised SA"s level of technological development, with a call to do even more to eliminate the barrier between ICT and those yet untouched by technology.

During his address to the 1 300-strong audience, the minister mentioned that it is encouraging that technology companies, including Microsoft, have a keen interest in the local market, dedicating millions of dollars in R&D spend to the SA economy.

Despite the global downturn, "The industry locally has shown a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 1995 and 2003 of 14,37 percent," he says, "Which has contributed to job creation and fuelled the country"s economic growth." However, the local ICT industry is characterized by selling shrink-wrapped products with very little emphasis on developing indigenous products and services.

The minister called for the local ICT community to change this by further nurturing local innovation to improve global competitiveness. "Innovation has to move to the very core of technology, and not stay at the periphery," he says. As an example, he touched on the fact that SA is one of the few countries bidding to build the world"s biggest software-based space telescope, which is expected to measure a square kilometer. "The project, valued at around $1,5bn, will be a challenging one, but not impossible for SA talent to complete," he comments.

Multilingual

To further illustrate the levels of local technical talent, Frazer demonstrated two new language packs that will soon be available from Windows XP. These were Afrikaans and Zulu, both of which had interesting names for common systems functions. For example, in Afrikaans, the "Start" button is called "Begin" and in Zulu it is called "Qala". While virtually every system function has been renamed, the crowd seemed to enjoy the "Go" button in Internet Explorer, which was renamed "Gaan" in Afrikaans and...wait for it..."Hamba" in Zulu.

One of the major themes of this year"s Tech-Ed was security, with a lot of excitement being generated around the imminent launch of products such as ISA Server 2004, SQL Server 2005 (codenamed "Yukon") and Visual Studio 2005 (codenamed "Whidbey").

SQL Server 2005

According to Mark Souza, group program manager for SQL Server at Microsoft"s Redmond Washington head office, 2005 will be a very exciting year for the server group, with a number of products in the overall roadmap due for either release or update.

SQL Server 2005 took the spotlight during last Monday"s proceedings, with Souza illustrating exactly how Microsoft intends to make life less complex for the developer and end-user.

He mentioned Microsoft"s new Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), which the company hopes will help drive better levels of collaboration across the product development lifecycle, allowing all participants to be involved in the architecture, development and deployment of applications based on operationally-aware Microsoft technology.

While SQL Server 2005 will have a number of new enhancements, Microsoft seems to be making the most noise about the product"s improved security, native XML support, business intelligence (BI) tools and improved extract, transformation and load (ETL) tools.

According to Microsoft"s Grant Dickinson, this is where most of Microsoft"s R&D spend on Yukon went.

Visual Studio 2005

The second day of Tech-Ed 2004 saw a lot of excitement (from Microsoft and delegates alike) about the newest release of Visual Studio, version 2005 (codenamed "Whidbey").

Vic Gundotra, GM for development and platform evangelism at Microsoft Redmond, opened the day"s proceedings with a keynote discussion on "The magic of software", elaborating on the importance of software in today"s business and consumer environments.

"Software is one of the greatest inventions," he says, "because we have brought it to the level where it is able to mimic the human brain, and we even entrust it with our personal safety (in the case of airplane autopilot systems)." While Gundotra acknowledges that the full impact of software has not yet been realized, technological advancements continue to make technology perform better at lower price points.

One way, he says, is the proliferation of the digital storefront (Web site), which has now become the primary means of contact between business and client. "It is an exciting time to be a developer," Gundotra says, "because the tools and platforms are there to make everything possible."

In a series of practical demonstrations, Microsoft showed off the new features in Visual Studio 2005, the most notable being ClickOnce technology, master page design templates, new tools (e.g. login controls, validation tools, file upload tools etc.), and codeless end-user site customizability.

Microsoft also announced a new version of Visual Studio, called Team System, which includes tools that can be used by all participants in a product development lifecycle, from project manager, to developer, to architect and end-user or tester.

This brings a whole new level of collaboration to product development, because progress can be monitored, code tested and the correct channels used to implement a system improving productivity.

Tech-Ed on Tuesday saw a demonstration by a team of student developers from PE Technikon, called team StovePipe, who recently won the local development competition (called Project Firefly) and came fourth in the world at the Imagine Cup in Brazil.

The team demonstrated an application, which it is said to be planning to make commercially available, which will allow music and DVD stores (such as Musica or Look & Listen) to offer DVD and music preview services to clients. The system works on terminals in store, as well as on PDAs and SmartPhones, using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connection technology.

Users are able to preview DVD clips, listen to music from featured albums, and have direct access to other features, such as reviews and album art. The system synchronizes with a central location based on consumer buying habits, and is able to generate reports based on what information was most requested by consumers with various drill-down options. The solution was built on .Net, using Visual Basic C# and a number of Web services.

The enthusiasm throughout the show remained very high, with a number of developers getting excited about Microsoft"s new offerings. And, according to Microsoft SA"s own Danny Naidoo, it is now up to the development community to take the tools that are available, and put SA on the map as being able to compete against the best in the world.