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Mobility for the Masses
VSLive! San Francisco, March 23, 2004
Before VSLive! and Microsoft Mobile DevCon, FTPOnline caught up with Ori Amiga, group program manager of the developer division of Microsoft Visual Studio for Devices. He provides a preview of what developers can expect in the .NET Compact Framework Whidbey and gives an update on the .NET Compact Framework's adoption in the industry. FTPOnline: What improvements can developers expect in the .NET Compact Framework Whidbey? Ori Amiga: When determining which feature enhancements to include in the .NET Compact Framework Whidbey, we turned to the developer community. We found that developers want more performance, extensibility, and productivity from their mobile development tools. With the .NET Compact Framework Whidbey, we are delivering these enhancements through a faster execution engine, a new JIT architecture, COM interoperability, more Windows Forms controls, and extra base class libraries, to name a few. FTPOnline: It's been one year since the launch of the .NET Compact Framework. What type of adoption are you seeing? Ori Amiga: We've seen a tremendous amount of interest in the .NET Compact Framework. Look at one of the many community sites devoted to mobile application development, such as OpenNETCF.org. Desktop developers are realizing the mobile opportunity, extending their skills, and going mobile. Windows Mobile developers are learning to build rich client applications and the value of a managed code environment. FTPOnline: How are you seeing enterprise developers take to the .NET Compact Framework? Ori Amiga: We are seeing a lot of uptake in industries such as field service application, law enforcement, and transportation. Extending your application down to devices requires no additional skills and minimal work, so enterprises can easily use the .NET Compact Framework to add value to their existing IT investments. The Next Cool Thing Ori Amiga: There's a mind-blowing wave of innovation around the corner in the device space. The mobile industry is now at a wonderful point, where devices are getting sexier and sleeker, while the software is getting more powerful and able to support rich and interactive applications. We're seeing incredible devices that integrate exciting new form factors; powerful hardware configurations in terms of CPUs; memory and 3-D graphics acceleration capabilities; and integrated peripherals such as telephony, cameras, WiFi, location services, security, and more. Windows Mobile developers can do some incredibly cool things today on our software. In the future, they should look forward to our next-generation Windows Mobile platform, which—coupled with our OEM and Mobile Operator partner offerings—delivers an exciting family of devices for rich and powerful applications. Along with our development toolset, breadth of APIs, new Mobile2Market services, and fast-growing ecosystem…what could be more exciting than being a Windows Mobile developer? FTPOnline: What do you enjoy the most about developing for Windows Mobile? Ori Amiga: Where do I start? It's really all-encompassing in some respects, but my favorite aspect of developing for Windows Mobile is about power and simplicity. The amount of progress we have made in terms of making mobile development simple yet powerful for developers is staggering. The combination of killer hardware from our OEM partners, a great platform like Windows Mobile with the .NET Compact Framework, and our Visual Studio toolset makes all the difference in the world. I can sit down with Visual Studio, visually design and build a managed code application, wire in Web services, SQLCE data, and rich forms, and deploy and debug to an emulator or a device... all in less than 10 minutes—wow! And our future looks promising with our next-generation platform, which will offer even more class libraries with rich notifications and state management; access to contacts, calendar, and tasks data; SMS and e-mail; telephony, cameras, location, Direct3D Mobile; and a much-improved toolset with Visual Studio Whidbey. Top that off with vastly improved Mobile2Market services to distribute and sell my application to the world, and life doesn't get much better than this. FTPOnline: What should we expect in Bill Gates' VSLive! keynote? Whenever Bill Gates is keynoting, rest assured it'll be interesting! More specifically, you can expect an integrated Microsoft developer story to emerge. The co-location of Microsoft Mobile Developer Conference (MDC) with FTP's VSLive! brings together two traditionally disparate worlds—Visual Studio PC developers and mobile developers. Microsoft technology is now at a point where developers have one unified application development environment for servers, desktops, and devices, all using the same programming models and skills. This presents an amazing amount of opportunity, not only for the developer but for the whole IT industry. We'll see real-world scenarios emerge that were unimaginable two years ago—I think Bill Gates' keynote will provide a glimpse. Enterprise vs. Mobile Development Ori Amiga: As you know, Microsoft has a long-standing tradition of working with developers—it's been one of the core focus areas since Microsoft was founded. We've continued that work within the Mobile Devices Division and with the development of Windows Mobile software. From a technical standpoint, we're focused on providing a consistent software platform for developers. With this in mind, more than 90 percent of the APIs today are the same for Pocket PC and Smartphone, and we see this increasing in the future. We're also focused on helping developers reduce development costs by making their development environment as productive as possible. With the emergence of the .NET Compact Framework and Visual Studio .NET 2003 as key technologies for Windows Mobile software, we're well on our way to providing the most productive development environment for mobile developers on the market. In literally minutes and with just a few lines of code, developers can build interesting applications that utilize the power of .NET and managed code on Windows Mobile software. The tight alignment with core Microsoft development tools (.NET Compact Framework, SQL Server and SQL CE, Visual Studio Whidbey, XML Web services, ASP.NET Mobile Controls) gives enterprise developers an exceptional experience. The .NET Compact Framework was built with Web services in mind, allowing for easy access to back-end systems. Windows Mobile-based devices are great consumers of XML Web services. Additionally, security features and tight integration with Exchange Server provide a compelling out-of-the-box messaging experience to the enterprise. FTPOnline: How are you seeing adoption increase, and what do you expect to be the tipping point to increase the rate? Ori Amiga: With the availability of Windows Mobile software for Smartphone in the U.S. and the software available in 15 regions worldwide, device adoption is quickly increasing. Though we provide developers with emulators before devices hit the market, devices in the channel really drive application development, and we're seeing great traction here today. Additionally, the inclusion of the .NET Compact Framework in ROM as a core part of the platform in Windows Mobile 2003 software and beyond, plus close alignment with Visual Studio Whidbey, allows us to target the 7 million Windows developers looking for new opportunities. We expect an explosion of mobile developers and new applications, which will further drive the uptake of devices. About Ori Amiga |
