Look Into the Future of VS.NET (Continued)
Anatomy of an Enterprise Developer
PM: There's some debate about what exactly constitutes an enterprise developer. Who do you have in mind when you use the term?
ER: There are a lot of different opinions about this. When you write an application that is mission-critical to the business, that's an enterprise app to me. So it's less about size, it's less about the domain. Certainly, we use scalability metrics on whether a given application is used by X number of concurrent users, as well as on whether an application spans departments. But the main thing is: If you write an application and the business depends on it, that's important, and we stand by that.
There are different philosophies on the various development methodologies. How much time should you spend modeling or documenting? There, it depends on the scope of the project. There are many ways to break it down. We're creating a development environment that makes these decisions seamless, where you can learn as you go, and where you can learn factoring or the necessary architecture when circumstances dictate knowing this.
PM: IBM acquired Rational Software recently. What is the impact of this acquisition on .NET, given Rational's status a VSIP partner and the close working relationship Microsoft has with Rational and its enterprise tools?
ER: If you look closely at the conference sponsorship slides, you'll see that Rational is a sponsor of the VSLive! conference. The motto on those slides: .NET Today, .NET Tomorrow, and .NET Beyond. Rational has been very public in saying that it will continue to support .NET users. We look forward to IBM enhancing its overall .NET savvy through the Rational acquisition. IBM is a good partner, and I think IBM recognizes how important it is to have a set of design tools that can accommodate .NET. We welcome IBM as an important player in the .NET ecosystem.
But it's also important for users to understand that Rational is not the only game in town when it comes to enterprise tools. There are also players such as Mercury and many others that provide key tools. We ourselves provide enterprise tools. Going forward, there will be a healthy set of design tools available for people to choose from.
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