Last week I had the opportunity to spend some time with Sam Addeo and Webb Armentrout of Manhattan Associates.  You may not know Manhattan Associates, but their software is used by companies large and small to manufacture and distribute both real and consumer goods. 

In this interview we discuss ILS.NET, their supply chain management solution built in .NET from front to back.  Manhattan Assoc. is also a believer in Team Foundation Server which they use for both project management and source code control.

Any questions you may have you may post here as both Sam and Webb will be monitoring the comments.

-james

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The US ISV team is holding an Incubation week in the Mountain View MTC.  The event is targeted at startups and students driving awareness around Silverlight, Windows Live and other Next Gen Internet technologies.

It has been interesting to follow their tweets on Facebook.  Kevin Hermann and Warren Wilbee are definitely doing their best to keep the atmosphere light-hearted. 

The primary reason for hosting an event like this at a Microsoft Technology Center is to increase .NET community awareness of the value they can leverage in doing so.  Microsoft currently has Microsoft Technology Centers in most major US cities and throughout the world.

The US ISV team is also sponsoring several evening roundtables with Academics and Angel Investors to assist budding entrepreneurs. 

So in our family we are very sports oriented.  Since I have five children we live our lives according to the sport seasons.  Right now its football.

I've been helping coach my ten year old's team and last year they won the South Puget Sound Super Bowl.  This year looks like it may be a repeat with them winning two close season opening games to the toughest teams they'll see before play-offs later this fall. 

They beat Puyallup 6-0 and their longest drive lasted 5 minutes to close the game in their favor. 

My eleven year old's team is rebuilding this year as several key players from last year decided not to play club football in favor of Jr High football.  They have lost both of opening season games as the coaches struggle to find the right players both offensively and defensively.

Against Puyallup they lost a decisive 25-13 game. 

I can't leave out my eight year old daughter.  She's taken the last year off from gymnastics and cheerleading helps fill that hole.  If you come to a Kent Knight game she's the one with mousy brown hair doing the cartwheels and backflips in front. 

I don't usually put out posts like this one, but I really want a Tesla.  I can't afford one, but I think a silent fast car is the pinnacle of sheek.  I do see that GM has a more affordable concept car in the works, but 0-60 is around 6 secs. vs the Tesla's 4 seconds...

Several weeks back I was able to coax Jack into doing an interview on the CLR targeted at ISVs. 

• Jack talks about the BCL team and how they work within the larger Server and Tools business unit.
• An inside view of the new Add-In Model in 3.5, (Its Jack's baby and he's rightly proud).
• The Process ISV should mentally walk through when moving to managed code.
• Tools and utilities used by the CLR team.

Way back in 1991 a small company created a new Operating System called BeOS. The timeline is similar to Linux and almost as interesting, but it's a story wrought of high hopes and failure. (Ok, not ultimate failure as it has been newly resurrected as Haiku). The point is a lot can be gleaned from looking backward on a project that technically did everything right, but ultimately failed.

Fast forward a bit from 1991 to 1995. Microsoft releases Windows 95 and the Linux wave is becoming a tidal wave at the university level. Apple is smashing against the proverbial business shoreline and in dire need of a new Operating System. There is mad speculation BeOS could become the next Apple Operating System and a Unix-like OS will become mainstream. Apple decides to purchase Job's NextStep and the rest quickly becomes history.

BeOS survived until 2001 when funding ran out and they were eventually purchased by Palm.

Why BeOS was very cool:

• BeOS was a full pre-emptive multi-tasking OS
• It was multi-processor capable when MacOS, Linux, and Windows/DOS were not
• It was written in C++ from the ground up and its APIs were Object Oriented
• It had a journaled file system
• Performance was heralded as amazing

At this point I was going to walk through why I think they failed. There is no sense in beating a dead horse.

I think what I'm most interested in is if Haiku going Open Source can really bring it back?

Or in other words, is simply going Open Source enough mojo to bring back a great Operating System?

So this week I came across a cool new site. DotNetKicks.com

This last week Gavin Joyce open-sourced the code base and I'd like to help drive traffic to the site. Not because he took the code base Open Source.

I like the concept.

The concept is similar to Digg but the content is entirely .NET focused. When you compare the .NET community to others like the Java, Linux and Ruby, the .NET community is much more sedate.

Why?!?

Look at the monster list Jeff Atwood's been building which at my last count contained over 74 entries. Most I was aware of, but when I tried to compile my own list a few weeks back, I could only come up with twenty or so and that was after an hour spent crawling the internet.

AND I'm an evangelist.

Perhaps I need to look inward more before I cultivate my thoughts on the state of the .NET community more….

In the interim, if it's a good post or article on .NET,

Yesterday at the Worldwide Partner Conference Steve Ballmer announced that Microsoft will be entering the software services space and launched MSCRM Live. The reaction seems to run the gamut from downright surprise to outright consternation even though this has been a stated intention since the dotcom era.

Lloyd Ketchum summarized the situation very well:

"Microsoft has a problem - a big one and as software and services inverts to services and software [and that will happen], those in the channel are going to either drown, or make it to shore and do something else.

There is a cat fight the likes of which we have never seen before that is brewing between Microsoft and Google. Where services over software will win out over software and services, because it is cheaper, easier to deploy and easier to support, and because it requires fewer "partners" (it may not happen over night, but it is going to happen)

As networks and software begin to communicate with one another more, there is less room for partners as there is less need for them - there is less to set up and less to break."

I really like how Ketchum inverts the words "software" and "services" which I think is very illuminating. Software is maturing to the point where you plug-and-play technology to cater to a specific service need by a significant customer segment.

AND, you can expect Microsoft to go after an opportunity like this in a big way. I almost want to say this again, but I'm sure you get the point.

How big is the opportunity?

Dick Weisinger claims:

"Gartner is predicting that the worldwide SaaS market will grow from $6.3 billion in 2006 to reach $19.3 billion by the end of 2011.  In 2006 the growth rate was 26 percent and the prediction is for growth to continue at 25 percent a year through the end of 2011." 

A growth rate of 25% a year is staggering. Every large ISV is thinking about their services strategy, not just Microsoft. If they are not, they should be.

In the words of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards:

"I said
Hey, you, get off of my cloud
Hey, you, get off of my cloud
Hey, you, get off of my cloud
Don't hang around 'cause two's a crowd on my cloud, baby"

Not anytime soon…. Not anytime soon, baby.

I run Ubuntu on my main desktop machine at home and I've been watching Mono for quite a while.  I was elated when the Microsoft-Novell agreement was put into place this fall because it meant Mono was getting something like an "official stamp of approval".  Or at a minimum Novell wasn't going to be sued and the project shut down.

Sadly, I think it also meant we're never getting another version of Rotor. 

Why do I run Linxu?  I come from a UNIX background, primarily BSD.  I can't give up an operating system I figuratively grew up on simply because I work for an OS Vendor.   

I digress.  I'll get to the point.

I've been poking around the past weekend looking for Open Source projects using .NET.  I can't find much out there.  It really disappoints me.  Somewhere between the dog just came up and grabbed my ice cream cone kind of disappointment and I just lost my best friend kind of disappointment. 

This last Friday the GPL3 was released.  I could move along this tangent for hours.  I won't, its just an ancillary thought.

There need to be more open source projects using .NET.  I compiled a list of about a dozen projects:

• Mono
• Moonlight
  
• DasBlog
• Grasshopper
• CruiseControl
• Castle
• MonoRail
• Spring.NET
• MetaLinq
• Nunit
• MBUnit
• DotNetNuke
• RSS Bandit
• Zanebug
• Tackle
• Reflector
• Log4NET
• SharpDevelop
• Lucene.NET
• MVP.XMLProject
  
• IronPython
• IronRuby

See, the list is pretty short. Can you help me grow it?  I'm sure I'm missing some.

A shiny spot in this mix has been Moonlight and what the team is calling Desklets.  I was a huge fan of Konfabulator and even paid for a license at one time.  My son came around my desk earlier today and saw a screenshot on Everaldo's blog and exclaimed, "Awesome!". 

I concur. 

In this interview I caught a few minutes of Paul's time to talk about Workflow Foundation or WF for short. Paul moved to Redmond from down under to take a role on the Evangelism team covering WF and WCF. The interview is not long, but that's the point, short and focused.

To some, WF may seem like a "Johnny come lately", but MSFT has committed to use WF as its common workflow engine across its product lines beginning this year. (Fiscal years for MSFT end in June and begin in July and this is the beginning of Fiscal Year 2008.) This means even Biztalk, Office, Windows all use WF or will be using WF very very soon.

We talk about the ISV opportunity with WF and focus on several of the larger workflow vendors and their response to WF. We talk about the target scenarios for WF and the sweet-spots for the current 1.0 version.

If you have any questions, post them here or ping Paul.

Video: Nat Natarajan on FY08 Global ISV Strategy

I was able to grab a few minutes of Nat's time 2 weeks back. In this interview Nat is all business as I ping him about how Microsoft partners with the largest Independent Software Vendors. We talk about the Rhythms for this coming fiscal year and what our focus will be in working with our partners.

The following are the current Rhythms where you will see Microsoft actively engaging partners and customers over the next 12 months:

• Windows Server 2008
• Web UX (Silverlight, ASP.NET 3.5, Xbap, ASP.NET AJAX, ….)
• SQL Server 2008
• Windows Vista (Application Compatibility)
• Dynamics
• Visual Studio Orcas and .NET 3.5
• Office Business Applications (OBA for short)

Enjoy the interview.

I'm throwing this up here since I've been asked several times recently for this very simple recipe. Every Friday night at our home is "movie night" where no one has friends over and we all sit around the television watching a child appropriate movie.

This Vastbinder family has a very sweet tooth and often a quick run to the Wal-Mart candy section is made before the festivities begin. I'm not a big fan of candy except for twizzlers and caramel popcorn, if I eat too much candy I get sugar sores on my tongue. Now they're probably not sugar sores, but that is what I've called them thus far in my life, so here, they are sugar sores.

Okay, Okay, here is the recipe and I'll stop babbling:

Caramel Popcorn:

• 1 Cup of Karo or light corn syrup
• 1 Cup of Brown Sugar (packed for those that rarely cook)
• 1 stick of butter or margaring ( I always use butter J )
• 1 tsp of vanilla extract
• 2 bags of microwave popcorn.

Directions: Melt the butter is a sauce pan. Add the corn syrup and brown sugar once the butter has melted. Stir mixture while bringing to a boil. Once it begins to boil reduce the heat but allow it to boil for about 5 minutes, (be careful not to let it boil over as its very tough to clean up). Add vanilla extract about the last minute of boiling. Pour over popcorn while mixing popcorn with a large spoon or other kitchen utensil. Enjoy!!

I have a very busy travel schedule, but I want to fit in short 10 minute videos about the technologies and their owners. Next week I'll be posting a video of an interview with Nat Natarajan talking about our FY08 Goals and Strategies. In March I moved from the US ISV team to the Global ISV team out of corporate.

Before I had left, I had started doing some video interviews. The idea is for the video to be very short and focus on topics relevant to Independent Software Vendors, ISVs. I think we are one of Microsoft's best kept secrets except with those in whom we have already forged deep alliances.

Let me know who you want to hear from in the diverse product groups and business units. I am open to doing business related interviews as well as technical interviews.

-james

So the last year I've learned what it is like to be bullied. It's not fun, I won't go into particulars, but the base idea is that a group of neighborhood women decided to begin bullying my wife and kids two years back. We've been in and out court quite a few times this last year, but I think there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel.

I've put together a blog detailing what happened and I want to turn it into a resource for others in a similar circumstance. We have our home up for sale and hope to move to a new area soon. After we move and I clean up the blog postings currently on it, I'll post the link to the blog and make it public.

The fact that I feel good enough to begin posting again is a good sign. I even had to take a break from InfoQ to focus for a while so I could get my home ready to sell. When I say ready to sell, I mean prepare it such that another family can simply move into our home. My wife is a real estate agent and so she wants the home to be as close to perfect as possible.

What stimulated me was the interview Floyd did with Erik Meijers on LINQ this past November, (he posted it last week). Of course, lately I did help with two case studies on .NET/J2EE interop, but thankfully Floyd did the news postings for those while I just did editorial work. There is one on SOA at Safeco and another one on Lawson and their use of WPF as a front-end on S3.

Heck, next week I'm going to even do an interview of my new boss on our ISV initiatives for 2008 to post on Channel 9. It seems Gartner and others think IBM is much better about broadcasting the work they do in their Partner ISV Community than we do. I have a different take, I think we do so much the signal to noise ratio has become diluted over the last 7 years.

It feels good to get back into the old groove.

-james

I was able to sit down with the great Brad Abrams two weeks back. It was a very interesting interview where I mauled the word Microsoft and no I didn't fix it in post editing.

Brad provides a quick review of his career and answers some hard ISV focused questions on ASP.NET AJAX. He even shares the name of his favorite band.

The US ISV team decided to go with a short 10 minute format for our vcasts and expect future vcasts to include a downloadable mp3.

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=276182#276182

Enjoy!

-james