Microsoft pulls major platform conference

Analysts speculate on potential product delays

Tom Sanders in California, vnunet.com 25 May 2007

Microsoft has quietly postponed its Professional Developers Conference that was scheduled to take place in early October in Los Angeles.

The company updated its website for the event on Thursday, claiming that the show would overwhelm developers as they prepare for forthcoming Microsoft launches.

Microsoft is currently preparing products including Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 'Katmai', Visual Studio 'Orcas' and the Silverlight rich internet application programming platform.

The software giant is to "reschedule" the Professional Developers Conference, but did not disclose a new date.

Microsoft uses the conferences to present major platform changes that will arrive in one to two years.

Previous shows have unveiled the .Net platform, the failed Hailstorm identity project as well as future versions of Office and Windows.

Greg DeMichillie, lead analyst at Directions on Microsoft, doubts that the company is giving the true reasons for the delay.

"This does not make sense," he told vnunet.com. "They knew that it was poorly timed when they put [the show] together six months ago."

DeMichillie speculated that Microsoft is preparing to unveil a major new technology but failed to meet internal development deadlines.

The company could be preparing a development platform for its Live internet application platform, for instance.

Live currently offers about 15 services including online messenger, maps and email, but they lack integration, common APIs and development tools.

A common development platform would attract developers and help Microsoft compete with Google and Yahoo.

Microsoft may also have delayed the show to avoid distracting developers from rolling out Windows Vista.

Several companies have stated publicly that they will delay rolling out the operating system until the end of this year, when Microsoft is expected to release its Service Pack 1 update that fixes early bugs and contains additional device drivers.

DeMichillie suggested that it is less likely that the postponed conference would have delved into a future version of Windows because Vista was launched only this January.

"It would be unusual for [Microsoft] to pull together any plans in eight months," he said.

Microsoft has stated that the next version of Windows is scheduled for 2009, but has not issued an official timetable.

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