Latest on Service Oriented Architectures and Business Processes

Oct 29 - Nov 2 | Redmond, WA

I have seen some of the content and highly recommend this conference.  If you are an enterprise developer wanting to learn about the latest and greatest in Business Process and SOA, this is the conference to be at.  What I like about it is its focus.  You don't see a lot of diverse and unrelated topics unlike when you go to TechEd, for example.  Best opportunity to drill down and network with the field experts to learn about our investment in this space and upcomming technology.  Also, if you are a CRM ISV or VAR, the conference will give you a lot of background about why we made the decisions that we made in Titan, especially around workflow and Web services.

How are the Microsoft businesses doing in a few words or less

Microsoft annual Financial Analyst Meeting is a good place to learn more about how the company is doing overall and hear first hand from our executives about our priorities moving forward. Reading some of the analysts reports from this year event, it seems we have given out more details about our business than any previous year. In the spirit of openness and corporate transparency, I think that is a great thing that we have done. Now, where can you read the report?

Last month, Microsoft Directions, which is an independent research organization dedicated to track Microsoft products, services and financial progress, published a report on this year's meeting. It is entitled “Five Businesses Steady into FY'08” and available on the web.

I personally don’t agree with all the assertions that are made in their report but nevertheless 1) it is much shorter (1-2 pages) than any long gibberish reports that you typically find on financial web sites 2) it is a good source of a few interesting information that you probably didn't know about Microsoft 3) it is concise and easy to read even for a non technical person. Check it out…..