“Avalon”che is coming – part 4 – Strategic Implications

Microsoft’s somewhat open approach with XAML is already creating competing solutions (Teaser #1 from part 2 of this series).  1. A company called XAMLON has created a XAML implementation with a 600KB runtime that can be downloaded to the client.  I suspect this is the company that Microsoft pulled in as  a special guest in their FITC presentation referred to in Dave Shea’s post.  Interestingly, XAMLON also has developed a converter for converting Adobe Illustrator SVG files to XAML probably proving that XAML is not too far from SVG (See part 2 of this series for more on this). Another cool thing from XAMLON – A XAML to Flash Converter.  This allows you to use your familiar Visual Basic/Visual C++ tools to create Flash applications  – a solid way to overcome  DonXML’s objection that Flash does not grok XML.  Of course, Macromedia added MXML and Laszlo systems gave Flash LZX support (another XML format) but you have to use Macromedia’s or Laszlo’s tools instead of Microsoft’s tools. 2. While I was contemplating this final part of this series, couple of interesting events took place: A. Adobe bought Macromedia. Read Jason Kottke’s excellent roundup of the deal.  Very interesting possibilities  for  melded Flash/PDF client side and Acrobat/MX server side solutions amongst others. If I were an M&A advisor for Adobe, I would promptly go to them and ask them to look at XAMLON for a possible acquisition.  We would see XAML support on all major OS platforms even before Longhorn hits the market and fulfill Andrew Stopford’s dreams of  a XAMLON/Flash server side product. Would that be powerful or what ?  The XAML world will be complete if brother Miguel de Icaza comes up with a “Mono”lon project. B. Microsoft and SAP announced the Mendocino Project.
It will add connectors to Microsoft Office whereby tasks emanating in the Office software can reach SAP’s back end software and vice-versa. Hmmm, interesting. Microsoft is arguably the shrewdest business model innovator that the world has seen so far (a  separate post on this  subject later). So what is Microsoft up to with this ? 3. Microsoft Office is now Office system and even hosted its own developer conference.   Since the Windows API lock is now gone as Joel Spolsky says, perhaps Microsoft is moving the lock to the Office layer. The Mendocino Project could be seen as a big step in that direction. Already, Microsoft Excel  is a proven front end analysis tool for light OLAP applications.  With Avalon, fully expect Excel to gain superior data visualization capabilities to stake a serious claim to the OLAP client crown. Cognos, Business Objects, Microstrategy had better watch their client-side strategy or maybe one of them will do a Mendocino-type project with Microsoft ceding the client side to MS Office in the hopes of controlling the backend and the cube-building parts of their suites. 4. Maybe the powers-that-be in Microsoft have seen the graph  in this post comparing Autodesk and MSFT.   Hope this post is not really true and Autodesk, Shapeworks and other CAD vendors are watching out for Avalon.  I am  sure the Visio team is working on a 3D version that leverages Avalon and offers CAD features. Since Visio is already bundled with Office, it could throw a serious spanner into the CAD world. In conclusion, I think, the software world is in for an interesting “Avalon”che. Can’t wait.