Programming Windows: Software + Services (Premium)

Most didn’t appreciate it at the time, but the 2008 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) was an inflection point for Microsoft, a dividing line between the Microsoft of old and the cloud superpower of today. To that time, each PDC had focused on a specific new platform, like NT in 1992 and Longhorn in 2003. And those platforms were primarily both client-based and on-premises solutions.

But with Microsoft evolving over time to embrace more diverse technologies like workgroups, client/server computing, and then web services, its focus likewise broadened. Many Windows releases included both client and server versions, plus other derivatives aimed at PDAs, phones, and embedded devices. And Microsoft embraced the web, and web services, and improved its Internet Explorer web browser to support web standards.

The software giant also suffered from a debilitating decade of antitrust scrutiny and oversight, giving competitors like Apple, and Google the time and space they needed to find emerging new markets for non-PC personal devices and cloud services, and then control and later dominate them in Microsoft’s absence. And the relentless march of open source continued, pitting decoupled systems that were free---except for support---and lightweight against Microsoft’s more expensive, proprietary, and tightly coupled Windows ecosystem.

In short, by the time PDC 2008 rolled around in October 2008, personal computing had changed. And Microsoft, once again, was forced to react to external forces beyond its control and realign its product offerings to better compete in this new world. And so the PDC that might have been called “the Windows 7 PDC” in others times was something else entirely. It saw the introduction of Windows Azure, Microsoft’s new OS for the cloud. And it saw the expansion of Microsoft Online---which, after several name changes would be called Microsoft 365---and its Live Services platform.

These three platforms were a break from the past in that they were hosted and maintained by Microsoft instead of being made available in traditional on-premises versions. This shift would bring many changes to the industry, among them vastly diminished roles for Microsoft’s partners and many in-house IT staff. But that would become more obvious in time.

The messaging would also evolve over time as did the product mix. But at the outset, Microsoft referred to this shift as “software + services,” meaning that it would now offer its traditional software-based solutions alongside a new and growing set of Microsoft services. In the short term, the software would be more powerful and extensible than the services. But that would change, too, as its cloud infrastructure and services offerings matured.

PDC 2008 was the first PDC to not feature a keynote address from Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, who had followed through on an earlier promise to transition out of a day-to-day role at the software giant so he could focus o...

Gain unlimited access to Premium articles.

With technology shaping our everyday lives, how could we not dig deeper?

Thurrott Premium delivers an honest and thorough perspective about the technologies we use and rely on everyday. Discover deeper content as a Premium member.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC