Nixon said WCF is more secure than previous Microsoft frameworks, such as COM or .Net, and is easier to work with because it simplifies otherwise laborious tasks. 'I can now have my software turn a monitor off without writing all sorts of low-level plumbing code,' Nixon said, adding that his developers can save up to 25 percent in development time using WCF.

Though designed for Vista, applications built with WCF should be able to run on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 now, said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at Zapthink.

WCF supports better editing of configuration files in Visual Studio 2005, he said, while WWF supports state-machine workflows. He said the most interesting new feature is that WWF's file format is now aligned with XAML, an XML-based standard for displaying business process information.

Emerson's Nixon said Microsoft could try to improve on WCF by making it 'even easier' to create applications. 'They've done a lot, but there's still a lot to do,' he said.