Have Microsoft got serious about Enterprise Software?

Reading over on infoq I came across this interesting article about one of the most senior, if not the most senior, person from IBM Software leaving to join Microsoft. Don Ferguson is pretty central to lots of things that IBM have done and is extremely important in the overall picture at IBM. From his old IBM blog

Don chairs the SWG Architecture Board, which oversees the architecture and integration of WebSphere, DB2, Lotus, Tivoli and Rational products. Don was the original Chief Architect for the WebSphere family of products.

Which sort of scopes out the sort of calibre that Microsoft have got themselves here. I've been concerned in the last few years that Microsoft just don't appear to be focused on the enterprise market. It was clearly going to take a pretty heavy hitter to move them forwards and most importantly give them the clarity they need to build a full enterprise ready stack of products.

With Longhorn Server and the revision of most of the enterprise stack that it requires being scheduled (according to rumour) for next year this gives Don only a short time to implement the complete overhaul of how they work. As a champion of SCA at IBM it will be interesting how ideas like that are either used, or replicated, in side of Microsoft. It will be interesting how much of the current Vista and .NET 3.0 pieces make it into the enterprise stack or whether Don will decide that something better is required.

From the post I referenced above I said that Microsoft need to Buy BEA, or get a vision for SOA that allows the enterprise to evolve at a different pace to the operating system. at least now they've hired someone with a good track record in proper enterprise software. Maybe there might be competition from Redmond after all.

Technorati Tags: SOA, Service Architecture