Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Monday plans to discuss the company's strategy to generate interest--and dollars--from an avalanche of Windows-oriented products over the next three years. At the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, Gates and other company executives will detail the company's progress in building the next major edition of Windows, code-named Longhorn, which analysts expect to be released in 2006. The executives are aiming to sell developers on how they can take advantage of Longhorn and other forthcoming software components that make up the company's "platform" for building corporate applications, according to Microsoft.
"These developers are on the bleeding edge...and you can't just spring stuff on these guys. You've got to give them time to work with it," said Adam Sohn, product manager of the platform strategy group at Microsoft. "The PDC (Professional Developers Conference) precedes the next wave of the platform by a couple of years, but that's normal for us because we get critical feedback." Conference attendees will receive a DVD with an early version of Longhorn, as well as forthcoming editions of Microsoft's flagship development tool, Visual Studio.Net, code-named Whidbey, and SQL Server, code-named Yukon.
The software giant is looking to entice developers to adopt the next wave of software updates--notably upgrades to its Visual Studio.Net development tool and its SQL Server database due in late 2004--to drive demand for Windows-based products.
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News source: news.com
