Developer interest piqued by Microsoft technologies

Computerworld - LOS ANGELES -- Microsoft Corp. certainly whetted the appetite of those attending its Professional Developers Conference here this week when it demonstrated how upcoming technologies code-named Avalon, Indigo and WinFS can be used.
Many developers expressed keen interest in the new Avalon graphics subsystem, the Indigo communication technologies for building advanced Web services and the WinFS storage subsystem that will all be incorporated into the next major version of Windows, code-named Longhorn. But the absence of a timetable for the release left many wondering when they would be able to consider or make plans to use the technology.
"It's interesting, but I think it's going to be a long way out," said Christopher McCarthy, a Chicago-based senior systems engineer at Bank of America Corp. "This is too far out for us to evaluate."
Microsoft offered conference attendees developer preview bits of Longhorn and pledged to make a beta version available next year. But company executives provided no estimate about when the Longhorn wave of technologies will be completed, even though at past events they showed slides indicating Longhorn technologies could ship in 2005.
"We could use the technology today, and we won't see it for at least a year," said one developer for a manufacturing company in the automotive industry, who asked not to be identified. He said Indigo, in particular, looks like a promising way to help his company formalize how it constructs and delivers Web services.
But he said it's difficult to tell merely from a demonstration how much of the technology Microsoft will be able to deliver in a timely fashion. He expressed surprise at the magnitude and scope of what Microsoft is undertaking with Longhorn, and said any one of the parts -- Avalon, Indigo or WinFS -- would be an ambitious project by itself.
Jim Mangione, a West Point, Pa.-based technical specialist at Merck & Co., said he expects Indigo to help with integration in the company's heterogeneous environment, which includes Windows and .Net, as well as Linux and Java. "I'm just hoping it's in a production-ready state soon," Mangione said.
He said Indigo looks to be Microsoft's new messaging platform and will help with the handling of events in an enterprise rather than in a point-to-point fashion.
Jeremy Lehman, senior vice president and head of technology at Thomson Financial in New York, said his company foresees a major commercial opportunity with Indigo, even though it's just "slideware" for now. He said his company partners with Microsoft and other vendors to provide information and technology