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Welcome to Live Services and the Live Framework

Update: See David Treadwell talk about Live Services over at Channel 9.
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Hi Everyone…

David Treadwell here, VP of Live Services, I’m excited to share with you some information about the Live Services announcements that we’re making this week.

First, there’s some really amazing innovations happening at Microsoft. You’ve also probably heard how Microsoft is transforming by embracing Services and Services-Enhanced software across the board. By now, you’ve most likely heard about the Azure Services Platform, our new solution for the web tier of computing.

The Azure Services Platform has some incredible capabilities. It provides developers two layers: Windows Azure--foundational services like scalable computation and storage--and higher-level developer services like database, communication and runtime services. Think of Windows Azure as core services for storage, computation and management.

Live Services, .Net Services, SQL Services, CRM Services and SharePoint Services make up the building block services layer that sits above Windows Azure. Each building block service provides compelling and unique services that can be used to build rich solutions. All the building block services are “composable,” meaning that you can pick and chose which of them you want to use in your solution. Live Services plays an essential role and we’re enhancing it with new capabilities that enable web data and services to be directly accessible on PCs and phones. These new services:

  • Use industry standard, interoperable protocols to synchronize data and applications across a users’ devices
  • Makes it easy to share data and applications between users
  • Enables web-based solutions to be available directly on a user’s PC and phone - online or offline
  • Gives deeper access to web users via the Windows Live social graph, enabling you to quickly make solutions “social”

These new capabilities are amazing, but the real news is how we’re making all these services easily accessible via an open, standards-based interface. We call this Live Framework, and it will make it easy for all developers to access and use our services whether from the “cloud” or locally on the device.

Today, Live Framework is available as a Community Technology Preview (CTP). This means we’re giving you, the developer community, early access so you can experiment, learn and give us lots of feedback on how we can make it great. Our services aren’t yet ready for production, but your usage and feedback will help us get there.

This week the team and I are busy at the Professional Developers Conference 2008 showing attendees more about Live Services and Live Framework. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing more with you too, but today you can learn more and sign up for the CTP by visiting www.azure.com. Check back here frequently as the team is really excited to give you even deeper details on Live Services and Live Framework.

I almost forgot – we also announced Live Mesh is now in open beta. We’ve got some more details on our blog here.

I hope you find the Azure Services Platform, Live Services and the Live Framework as exciting as the team and I do. We’re thrilled to be giving you access to it and are eager to get your feedback.

Dave

Published Tuesday, October 28, 2008 11:00 AM by david.treadwell

About david.treadwell

David Treadwell is corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Live Platform Services, a group that’s defining and implementing the next generation of platform services that all Microsoft service-enabled applications and sites will use. These services include unified identity and directory, data synchronization, transport and presence, among others.

A recognized platform innovator, Treadwell most recently helped to start the company’s Windows Live Core effort, an incubation project that’s now a key component of the company’s services platform that will allow the creation of compelling applications by making deep use of network-based information.

Previously, Treadwell ran the .NET Developer Platform team responsible for Microsoft’s managed developer platform, which included the .NET Framework, ASP.NET and other technologies. Prior to his work on .NET, Treadwell was a developer for file server and networking technologies in Windows NT, co-author of the WinSock specification and the NT WinSock implementation, and the development manager for Internet Information Server.

Treadwell earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University in 1989 and joined Microsoft later that year.

Treadwell has two sons, David and Aiden, and is married to Lynn. Treadwell's hobbies include photography, triathlons, playing basketball with his sons and exploring the use of digital media technologies in the home.