InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill spoke with Somasegar about Microsoft's developer platform and blogging, following Somasegar's keynote presentation at the VSLive Conference in San Francisco last week.
InfoWorld: How critical is ALM (application lifecycle management) to Microsoft? You just discussed the Team System and Team Foundation Server products, which provide that.
Somasegar: ALM is sort of a big thing that we are focused on. The reason why we started with Team System is, if I had to sort of summarize it, it's as follows: Historically we've been focused on the professional developer, the individual developer, and we want to make sure that the individual developer is highly, highly productive. But the kind of problems that we are trying to solve in software [and] applications is becoming more and more complex.
We really see teams of people having to come together. Sometimes, we are all in one location, sometimes we are spread across parts of the world. When these teams come together, they need to work collaboratively so that they can have an automated workflow and they can be highly productive as a team, not just [as] individuals. So in addition to making the individual developer productive, we also wanted to focus on the entire team, the different roles within the team, starting from design all the way to delivery of the product and deployment. How do we think about the entire lifecycle [and] employ the set of tools that work together well in an integrated fashion? That's sort of been a big thing for us and that's the reason we started Team System and Team Foundation Server.
InfoWorld: Other companies are providing ALM tools, such as Rational and Borland. What are you going to be doing that they're not providing? Would you say you have more of a Windows focus than they have?
Somasegar: I think the big value proposition that we bring to the table, much more than anybody else, is integration. Our tools work together well against one single integrated [store]. And I don't think anybody else is providing that today. People are starting to talk about it, but we are the first to market the Visual [Studio] Team System.
So right from day one, when we started designing this, we said what is the different value proposition that we can bring to the customer and have that much more productive experience for the customer, for the team in this case? And we said, integration is the name of the game. And so right from day one all of our tools are integrated, they can have an integrated workflow. And they work against one integrated store.
InfoWorld: And that integrated store, is that Team Foundation Server?
Somasegar: That is Team Foundation Server. It's a collaboration platform that brings all these things together. One of the things to say in this context is we know productivity. We know agility. And that's what we've been focused on always. We wanted to take that and marry it with what I call discipline. The phrase that I like to use is, agility with discipline. You wanted to be agile, you wanted to be productive, and we want you to do it in a disciplined way. Because when teams come together, people have to have a software development process and methodology.
InfoWorld: How is Microsoft accommodating agile development techniques in Visual Studio?
Somasegar: We have two templates that you get out of the box with the Visual Team System and Team Foundation Server. One is the agile development methodology, and the other one is CMMI, or Capability Maturity Model Integration. So these are sort of the industry standard and are two development methodologies and we have templates for both that you can decide to use as it is, or you can decide to customize it. The key is to have a lightweight process, depending on whether you want to use agile development methodology or the CMMI methodology, and have it be as lightweight as possible -- or more importantly, integrated with the tools so that you as the developer don't have to think about the process.
InfoWorld: Does Microsoft see three development camps, with those being .Net, Java, and LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl/PHP/Python)?
Somasegar: As long as we think that we are providing the best value proposition for our platform -- we enable a platform that is trustworthy, that is high-performance, that is capable, that is reliable, that is secure -- we think we are doing the right thing. And we think our .Net meets all of these requirements. If you talk to customers around the world, particularly enterprise customers and talk about what platform are you really taking a bet on, .Net is number one. So we feel that we are heading in the right direction and we are excited about continuing to innovate on our platform and make sure that our platform scales up to meet the demands of the next-generation application.
InfoWorld: So you don't see the LAMP stack as any kind of a challenger?
Somasegar: [There is a] LAMP stack. And people use that. [But] we feel that our platform is a comprehensive, secure, scalable, reliable platform. And so I do think about other platforms, but I want to make sure that we continue innovating and delivering the best value propositions with our platform.
InfoWorld: There are sessions here pertaining to [Atlas] for AJAX-style (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) development with Atlas in ASP .Net 2.0 as well as about what's new in ADO .Net 2.0 (ActiveX Data Objects). Can you provide some detail about what Microsoft is doing with these two technologies, Atlas and ADO .Net 2.0?
Somasegar: OK, I can talk about Atlas. Actually I cannot talk about ADO .Net and the reason is because I think the ADO .Net team is actually planning on what they want to do in the next [version]. One of the things they want to do is they want to have a common data platform so that no matter whether they are looking at relational data or XML data, [there] is one common set of interfaces that people can use. But they are still working through the planning on ADO .Net.
So Atlas, if you think about it right, you have the Web reach client and the rich client. And the smart client or the rich client. Those are sort of the taxonomy that people use when they talk about clients, right? AJAX is a lightweight set of tools to build Web applications, Web client applications, and, in fact, figuring how to make them a little more rich. Now Atlas is a toolset that is lightweight from our perspective that helps you build even richer AJAX-style applications.
And a lot of the benefits that you see in the ASP .Net programming model, the ASP .Net controlled on the server side, we are bringing that to bear on the client side. So if you are used to ASP .Net-style programming, it makes it that much easier for you to write client-side programming and to be able to use the same controls and other functionality [that they have] on the server side, and being able to do it on the client side now.
InfoWorld: When is Atlas going to be available?
Somasegar: Atlas currently is available as a technology preview for you. So you can download a [CTP] today.
InfoWorld: Will that be in Visual Studio?
Somasegar: It will be included in Visual Studio.
InfoWorld: With Orcas?
Somasegar: Yes, it will definitely be included in Visual Studio Orcas, and our plan is to make a Go-Live version of Atlas later this year.
InfoWorld: When does Orcas ship?
Somasegar: We don't know because we haven't finished planning, so we don't know what the [entire] feature set is.
InfoWorld: I'm changing the subject here, but you do a lot of blogging. Is any of that being filtered by Microsoft?
Somasegar: When you say filtered, what do you mean?
InfoWorld: I mean Microsoft looks at it first and says, you can't say this or you can't say that?
Somasegar: Let's put it this way. Sometimes when I write a blog, to make sure that I am saying the right thing from a technical perspective, I go to a program manager or a developer and say, hey, look at it and make sure that I am not giving some wrong information. So to that extent, if you call that filtering, then that's filtering. But other than that, no.
InfoWorld: There's nobody coming in and saying, you can't talk about Orcas or whatever?
Somasegar: No. People say, what are the blogging guidelines? Tell me what I can do and what I can't do. And to me the answer is simple: Use your common sense. You know that we are in the business of developing software and delivering software. To the extent that you think you want to share information in a way that people can understand the context and give you feedback, go do that. It's very hard to say, no, thou shall do this or thou shalt not do this. I say, use your common sense and all the right things will happen. So that's what I follow myself as well.
InfoWorld: What type of responses have you gotten to your blogs?
Somasegar: The interesting thing about blogging, and the reason I fortunately spend some time on blogging every week or every other week, is because you get some unsolicited great feedback from people around the world. It's not necessarily anymore from Seattle or the United States. People send me feedback and sometimes it is, hey, this is great stuff. And sometimes [it's] hey, why aren't they thinking about this? And sometimes, what are you doing? This is lousy. Right?
So you get all kinds of feedback. And [it's] being able to sort of get a pulse from the people around the world, from customers, and knowing what is hot on their minds. What do they think we are doing well? Where do they think we need to pay more attention? To me that's the most exciting part about blogging.
InfoWorld: I find if you write stuff to just inform people, then nobody responds. If you write something to incite people, then you get lots of responses.
Somasegar: I agree.
InfoWorld: Those are my prepared questions. Is there anything else you wanted to discuss that we haven't already discussed?
Somasegar: Last year I think was a foundational year for us. I think this year, [with] what we have in the market and what we are working on, we are really, really excited about new opportunities for developers and partners. So I want to make sure that that message is loud and clear, that [was the whole theme] for the keynote. In general, I'm happy to be where I am and it's a great set of products and business that we are involved in. It's great to work with developers around the world. So life is good.