Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference: Microsoft ‘‘Oslo’’ Project to Turn Applications into Models

| Nov 9, 2007 | Application Infrastructure | Show Update
| Analyst: Brad Shimmin

Current Perspective: Positive
Vendor Importance: Very High
Market Impact: Moderate

Event Summary

On October 30th at its fifth annual Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference, Microsoft shared its vision and roadmap to simplify the effort required to design, build, deploy, and manage composite applications within and across organizations. In support of this vision, the company announced “Oslo,” the code name for the set of technical investments that help customers realize this vision.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on Microsoft’s outline for a series of strategic technological investments code-named “Oslo,” which the company announced during the fifth annual Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference. Oslo calls for a wide array of product enhancements spanning the company’s development, integration, and management solutions that will focus on model-driven application lifecycle development and management. Though not anticipated to be commercially available until 2009, Oslo represents a vision of application development well suited to service-oriented architecture (SOA) installations that breaks down both organizational and departmental silos.

• Vendor Importance: Very high to Microsoft, which needed to unify and actualize its two broad software development initiatives: Dynamic IT and Software + Services. With Oslo, Microsoft has sketched a technological framework that leverages existing offerings including BizTalk Server (and BizTalk Services), Visual Studio, SQL Server, .NET, and System Center in the service of these two initiatives that will appeal to existing Microsoft customers. Of course, in its efforts to bring together heterogeneous modeling standards and languages, the company is extolling its own proprietary and closed modeling language and repository, which will require third-party support to facilitate complete lifecycle round-trip model revisions. However, in the absence of industry standards for exchanging process artifacts, contracts, policies, and other supporting metadata, this is an acceptable approach.

• Market Impact: Moderate on the service-oriented architecture (SOA) and integration software and services markets in the near term, as the notion of using role and model-driven practices to compose, develop, and optimize business processes has already driven a number of recent tooling announcements from vendors such as IBM, BEA, Progress Software, Oracle, and TIBCO. However, by 2009, if Microsoft is able, through internal development or via its Business Process Alliance (BPA) partners, to bring vertical market solutions as well as governance and optimization capabilities to Oslo, the vendor will be in a position not only to retain its edge within the small to medium-sized business (SMB) market, but also to compete more directly with these rivals in providing a highly unified application environment.

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