Microsoft Connected Systems at PDC 2008

If you're a Microsoft Connected Systems developer, and you're at the PDC this week, you're swimming in a sea of new technologies that will surely impact your life in the years ahead. There are too many specific things to enumerate in one post but there are several major themes:

• Windows Azure - the new Microsoft cloud services platform, essentially "Windows in the Cloud" (MSDN)
• WCF REST Starter Kit - providing enhanced WCF REST extensions, APIs and project templates (MSDN)
• .NET Framework 4.0 - major improvements to WCF and WF (see WCF and WF dev centers)
• Codename "Dublin" - the Windows Application Server for WCF and WF applications
• Codename "Oslo" - a new modeling platform for building DSL's and model-driven experiences (MSDN)
• BizTalk Server 2009 - the future roadmap for the BizTalk Server you know and love

Over the past year, I've been following these developments closely but haven't been able to talk about them in public due to the typical NDAs. However, now that PDC is here and things are out in the open, the information can finally start flowing. I've been busy working on a lot of content leading up to the PDC, both in the form of whitepapers and screencasts, that you'll see showing up on the sites above.

I'll be following up with more in-depth posts of these various topics over the next several days. Stay tuned!