A Professional Developer Conference (PDC) scheduled for Oct. 2007 has been postponed to an unspecified date, although the lead time required for an event like this means it is unlikely to occur until mid-2008 at the earliest. According to an announcement on the MSDN Web site, the PDC is being cancelled because the timing of the event didn't line up well with the schedules for products such as Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio "Orcas." But the timing of both the event and the announcement suggests that other planned technologies may not be coming together as quickly as Microsoft expected.

PDCs Focus on New Platforms

PDCs are not held on a regular schedule. Instead, they are held when Microsoft has major news about its developer platforms and has made enough technical progress to provide developers with preview releases or an SDK that they can use to begin development. The purpose of a PDC is to provide senior developers and architects with early access to key technologies that aren't due to ship for 12 to 24 months and to galvanize developer support. Past PDCs have focused on Windows Vista, the .NET Framework, the ill-fated HailStorm or .NET My Services initiative, and Win32, among others.

The proposed release dates for Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio "Orcas" were already known when the PDC was announced in Dec. 2006, suggesting that the 2007 PDC was to be focused on other, as-yet-unannounced, technologies. Otherwise, it is extremely unlikely that Microsoft would have scheduled the PDC in the first place.

Given the emphasis Microsoft has placed on developing its online services business through its Live and "Software Plus Services" initiatives, it seems reasonable that those technologies were to be the focus of the 2007 PDC.

Why Cancel?

The cancellation comes shortly before Microsoft would have had to begin accepting paid registrations and developers would have begun making firm travel plans. There are two possible reasons for the cancellation, other than the one given by Microsoft.

First, the planned technology may not be coming together as quickly as Microsoft expected. PDCs are critical events for Microsoft to build developer support for new platforms, and an event that is perceived to have failed because of poor-quality code or a difficult-to-understand strategy can have long-lasting consequences. In fact, a poor reception at a 2001 PDC was partly responsible for the eventual cancellation of HailStorm.

Given the technological and licensing inconsistencies in the Live platform services announced so far, it's easy to imagine the company is facing difficulties in transforming a disparate set of offerings into a complete developer platform.

Second, Microsoft is in the midst of a multiyear campaign to convince corporate IT buyers to deploy Windows Vista and Office 2007. The company's reluctance to discuss any plans for Windows beyond Vista, even going so far as to refuse to give any guidelines for the first service pack, illustrates where Microsoft wants IT planners to focus. Microsoft may have decided that any new platform announcement would run the risk of distracting key IT decision-makers with upcoming platforms at a time when Microsoft wants them focused solely on deploying existing products.

Microsoft's online strategy is explained in "'Software Plus Services' Strategy Explained" on page 33 of the May 2007 Update.

The announcement about the 2007 PDC is at msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/events/bb288534.aspx.