Anilrgowda

Something close to a "panic" is gripping Windows software developers who are faced with making significant and quick adjustments, coupled with "with substantial costs and risks to the project," in order to create new applications under the upcoming Microsoft Windows Vista operating system, according to Mark Driver, vice president and research director at Gartner.


These adjustments entail migrating or rewriting tens of millions of lines of legacy Windows code, some dating back to the introduction of the Windows 95 operating system, into the.Net framework, the software platform for the next generation of application development in the Microsoft Windows world.


"It is a necessary migration or forced march so to speak, in large part because everything in the Microsoft universe is increasingly moving around the .Net infrastructure," stated Driver.


"Everything in Vista is based on .Net, or the vast majority of the features are based on .Net. If I am willing to write leading Vista applications, I have to be on .Net."


Microsoft is placing a lot of pressure on Windows developers with an announcement that older programming tools like its ever popular Visual Basic programming language and development environment for pre.Net applications will be discontinued in 2008.


But for these vendors, stated Driver, it is easier said than done, just in terms of time frame and cost."


A portion of the Window developer base, particularly the larger software developers, has been making the adjustments in terms of code and skill sets, over the last five years, he stated. "But there is an awful lot of legacy code which has not been migrated."


Some of the smaller independent software vendors may fall by the wayside in the current switch to .Net, that is being compared to the mass conversion of the IT industry from the DOS to the Windows operating systems more than decade ago.


Driver recalled how DOS based developers who were not successful in making the transition to Windows ultimately and quickly disappeared.


"We are finding a similar [situation] with .Net. The companies that are hard-pressed, they tend to obviously have much tighter budgets. They don't have the internal resources to make this internal migration. They tend to develop a piece of code and leverage it for a longer period of time."


Nonetheless, legacy code should be less of an issue for large corporate customers that are transferring their applications to Vista over time, stated Warren Shiau, senior associate and lead analyst in IT research at the Strategic Counsel.


"There are lots of ways to get around the issue; so it shouldn't be a problem if users know what's up. I would assume that by the time Vista goes out of the door, anyone in an enterprise scale organization is going to up-to-date on things."