Analyst Opinion – While many of us are consumed by Apple’s WWDC 2008, we have to remind ourselves that there is another big (actually bigger) event going on Microsoft’s TechEd. In many ways, these two conferences define both companies and reveal how different they actually are: TechEd is for IT buyers and Apple’s conference is focused on developers. Microsoft has about 10,000 attending its event Apple reports about 5,000 at their event both numbers are impressively large.  

I am actually writing this article from TechEd in Orlando, Florida, while being wirelessly connected so I can observe what is announced at the WWDC. And because I am at the Microsoft event and not at the Apple event, I will focus more on what Microsoft is presenting today to what is initially an audience of Analysts as the main show doesn’t kick off until tomorrow. (Apple WWDC coverage on TG Daily can be found here.)


Apple and Microsoft shifts

Right off the bat, Apple is focusing on its desktop and cell phone platforms announcing Snow Leopard and the second generation of the iPhone while Microsoft is focused on its server offerings - and mentioned its desktop and cellphone offerings only in passing.  A lot of what Microsoft concentrates on at this event is software oriented architecture, which reflects a major change in how the company builds and deliver solutions.  WWDC is a showcase of a shifting focus for Apple from PCs to cellphones, which reflects how Apple builds and delivers applications as well.  

The biggest ongoing shift at Microsoft is the focus on interoperability.  Microsoft AdCenter, Windows Live ID, Virtual Earth, Popfly, Biztalk, SQL, Windows Server Active Directory, Silverlight, Visual Studio, .Net, and Exchange are all being discussed as major parts of the Microsoft’s cloud-based service oriented architecture strategy.  

Spearheading the interoperability is a guy named Samir Ramji who has a passion for the concept of “open” applied to code disclosure and collaboration.  He represents a powerful new transparency force in Microsoft, which is gaining momentum, while the ownership beliefs remain dominant. But you hardly can miss this change as one of the most significant these days at Microsoft.
 
Both Apple and Microsoft are talking about interoperability, but it is interesting to note that Microsoft isn’t making fun of the companies or technologies they are interoperating with, realizing that buyers simply want their stuff to work.  Apple, while clearly interoperating with Microsoft, is throwing out phrases such as “ActiveStink” (hinting to Microsoft’s Active Sync) while they showcase new services.  This suggests both firms are in different places with respect to professional buyers. Microsoft has learned the hard way that attacking folks they need to work with is a bad idea when talking interoperability. It appears that Apple still needs to learn this lesson.  


Moving to the web, Microsoft accelerates Apple retrenches

Tim O’Brien, the senior director of the platform strategy group at Microsoft, pointed out that the company is moving aggressively to a software-as-a-service (SaaS)model. Apple’s effort to make future iPhone applications only available on the web (through Safari) did not work and the company is clearly now operating on a more traditional-device centric application model.  To Apple’s credit, leadership quickly realized they had screwed up and shifted resources to creating one of the highest quality developer processes - one that puts Apple in the loop to ensure quality.  

This is particularly interesting, because Apple generally gets it right first when it comes to devices and normally has enough control over their environment to drive most major changes before the rest of the industry can execute.   In this instance, they did not and this was used as an example of why Microsoft is not exclusively moving to SaaS, but using a blended approach with a large number of Microsoft developers focused both on client side development and the more trendy service-oriented architecture efforts.  Effectively, Microsoft appears to have learned a fundamental lesson by watching Apple fail and didn’t need to learn this one the hard way.

Read on the next page:  Microsoft in the cloud; Apple in transit