TechEd: Gates announces Shared Development Process

AsSa way to speed the development of deployment of Web services for a range of different technology initiatives, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Tuesday announced the Shared Development Process (SDP), a framework for more efficiently gaining industrywide feedback. In his keynote address Tuesday morning before more than 8,000 developers attending Microsoft's Tech Ed conference, Gates said the first SDP project will be the definition of an extended set of Hailstorm Web services, and put out the first call for the industry to participate. The SDP formalizes Microsoft's existing mechanisms, including design previews and reviews that the company already uses to elicit developer feedback on Microsoft-based technologies, according to Gates. It is also said to provide more opportunities on jointly developed projects. Essentially the SDP offers Microsoft and prospective partners a reusable process for cooperation on a new technology project that can be initiated and then adapted quickly as the need arises. "We need a way to accelerate the development of Hailstorm services as well as a standard set of schemas to take advantage of them," said Charles Fitzgerald, director of business strategy for Microsoft's platform strategy group. Currently there are only a dozen or so core services that comprise Hailstorm, but Fitzgerald and other Microsoft officials expect that number to quickly rise into the hundreds as the company moves closer to delivering the finished technology, sometime in this year's fourth quarter. While Fitzgerald declined to comment on it specifically, sources close to Microsoft have been saying over the past couple of weeks that by year's end the company will direct more effort toward shaping Hailstorm services for professional business developers and users. The aim is to create more of a balance with its existing consumer focus. The SDP is designed so that the process structure can be tailored to a particular project, ensuring that participation by development partners is simplified, according to company officials. Examples include the creation of an XML schema for the consistent sharing of information across multiple applications and devices within a given vertical industry, or the development of more advanced next-generation XML Web Services built on top of Hailstorm.