December 2004 - Posts
I guess this is my last post for 2004. New Years are pretty good milestones for reflection and a little thought. 2004 had a lot of ups and some downs, however I will always remeber it as the year my daughter Fien was born! I suspect 2005 is going to be a pretty interesting and challenging year.
My best wishes to all of you and a happy 2005 filled with health, happiness, life and peace. See you in 2005!
Following Tuesday's New Years resolutions for Microsoft competitors, Joe Wilcox offers up a second list for partners.
Most reported areas should be crucial concerns for Microsoft competitors and/or Microsoft partners in 2005.
After a discussion with Patrick on the future of collaboration software, I was browsing the web and I came across this blog entry by Michael who reviews 2004 from the perspective of collaboration technologies.
On number 2 he lists Microsoft's Roadmap Fiasco. "Customers need to know what is coming down the pike for these servers, and how they will be able to develop and deploy a coherent approach to team collaboration across the enterprise. So do Microsoft’s partners. Microsoft doesn’t have 3-5 year roadmaps for these products … and that’s just pathetic."
From a Microsoft Partner perspective I couldn't agree more with the above. When visiting (potential) customers it's key to provide the right information to build a strong business relation. Currently Microsoft doesn't provide such information nor any roadmaps for their collaboration technologies. Patrick do you have any insights on the Office System 12 and related products roadmap?
In a follow-up entry Michael posts his "top 5" list for things to watch out for in 2005. And surprisingly enough ... on number 5 he expects Microsoft’s Collaboration Roadmap!
Since the lasts couple of weeks were busy, busy, busy I had not much time to blog. While catching up email and the blogs I'm subscribed to, I gathered some interesting links. So, consider this entry as a (shameless) "link-blog" entry!
Visual Studio 2005 Team System:
The Visual Studio 2005 December Community Technology Preview Team System DVD can be downloaded from MSDN Subscriber Downloads. It can be found on Developer Tools > Visual Studio 2005 > Visual Studio 2005 Community Technology Preview DVD Builds > Visual Studio 2005 CTP - December 2004 - DVD (English).
Microsoft Tools for Domain-Specific Languages Technology Preview (December Release) have been made available for download. This download contains a set of tools hosted in Visual Studio 2005 to enable building custom designers for visual domain-specific languages. The tools include a wizard that generates a complete designer solution, a graphical designer for domain models (metamodels) and a set of code generators.
The Visual Studio Team Foundation-Team has started a blog. They will solely focus on the Team Foundation piece of Team System. In a first entry they scheduled a number of topics that they will cover over the next few months.
The Team Foundation Installation Guide for the December 2004 CTP release of Visual Studio Team System is available for download here. This is the most current version of the Team Foundation Installation Guide for the December 2004 CTP release of Visual Studio Team System. It contains any changes that were made to the guide since the public release of the December 2004 CTP release of Visual Studio Team System.
I also subscribed to Mickey Gousset's Team System Rocks! blog. He blogs on Team System and Software Factories.
Programming the .NET Framework:
Maoni posts his third article on using the GC efficiently. Also check Part 1 and <