Microsoft exec: We're building bridges with Dynamic IT

"We're trying to work on those bridges that cut across all of our different roles," Guggenheimer said at Microsoft's DevConnections conference in Las Vegas, in a keynote address titled "Dynamic IT and the 2008 Launch Wave." The company has been touting the Dynamic IT initiative, which encompasses everything from applications to infrastructure, since its Tech Ed conference earlier this year.

The company only recently began getting specific about how it intends to execute its plans. Perhaps playing to skeptics, at one point during the keynote the audience saw an offbeat promotional video for Visual Studio 2008, which is set for release this month.

The video carried the tagline "True Development Story" and was themed in part like an expose segment on a nighty news magazine. The clip featured a man dressed as a pompous, pipe-waving pseudo-intellectual, who voiced blustering skepticism over the various promised features in the new product. This was interspersed with comments from Microsoft officials about how the company used its own Visual Studio and Team System tools -- or in the parlance, "dog-fooded" -- to create the new version.

Guggenheimer's presentation also covered the company's strategy for virtualization, which ranges from the desktop to server and application virtualization.

Later, Guggenheimer talked about Microsoft's plans for its data platform, touching at some length on business intelligence.

"A lot of people think about BI as something you have added on top of your platform," he said. Microsoft wants to provide something it calls "pervasive insight" -- BI for everyone. "We're trying to take all that data and make it available throughout the company and to all types of users," he said.

Ram Ramanathan, a product manager for SQL Server, showed off some of the new features in SQL Server 2008. Using spatial data, which is supported in SQL Server 2008, he built a simple application depicting the location of coffee shop franchises along a highway.

The audience also received a runthrough of Silverlight, Microsoft's cross-platform browser plug-in for rich Internet applications and content. Guggenheimer noted that there are hooks for Web applications and scenarios throughout Microsoft's range of technologies.

Guggenheimer wrapped up his talk with a quick overview of Oslo, Microsoft's vision for model-driven development of composite applications. "We all use models today. Just in different tools and different languages," he said. Oslo's goal is to provide a unified framework for modeling applications. Microsoft has provided no firm timeframe for Oslo.

Microsoft claimed 5,000 attendees for the Connections event, which is being held at the Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas.

Guggenheimer encouraged the audience to play with the new technologies and sound off. "We listen, we give feedback and decide where to place the bets," he said.