Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates reflected on the company’s 33-year history with developers and shared his predictions for the future in front of more than 5,000 developers at Microsoft’s Tech•Ed North America 2008 Developers conference today. Joined onstage by other Microsoft executives and technology luminaries including S. Somasegar, David Campbell and Brian Harry, Gates demonstrated how Microsoft is making it easier for developers to tackle complex tasks such as creating compelling user experiences, building data-driven applications, managing large enterprise projects and capitalizing on emerging trends including cloud computing, modeling and natural language programming. Microsoft made several announcements at the event, including release timing for Internet Explorer 8 beta 2, a technical collaboration with IBM, availability of Silverlight 2 beta 2, and the launch of the Microsoft project code-named “Velocity,” a distributed in-memory application cache platform.

Technologies and initiatives announced today build on Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5, and demonstrate how the company’s integrated toolset and platform help developers build rich, interactive applications from the Web to the desktop, work in heterogeneous environments and much more. The announcements include the following:

• Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 will be available this August in 20 languages worldwide.
• Availability this week of Silverlight 2 beta 2
• An alliance with IBM
• Multiple partner wins and the latest community technology preview (CTP) of the Microsoft Sync Framework
• The first CTP of the Microsoft project code-named “Velocity,”
• Ongoing momentum for Microsoft code-name “Oslo.”
• A new version of Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 v1.2

More information on all these announcements and links to product downloads are available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/teched/default.mspx.

[Source Microsoft Press Pass]

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