What's the use of Windows Azure and Silverlight 4?

The PDC (Professional Developers Conference) is the main event where Microsoft announces new exiting stuff for software developers. Though it is primarely targeted at professional developers, it is also interesting for software users, because it gives a glance at the possibilities that developers have in the near future when they develop programs for these users.

This year's PDC announced two exiting news for developers. The first is the commercial availability of the Windows Azure platform for February 2010. Windows Azure is Microsoft's platform for internet applications. The applications and the data are located on servers in Microsoft's data centers around the world. Amazon and Google also have their platforms and they are already commercially available. So you could say Microsoft is a bit behind, but actually all these three platforms will be quite similar and will offer more or less the same functionality.

What does that mean for users? Future software will be connected to the internet most of the time. You will use it directly inside the browser or install it from there with just one or two mouse clicks. It will be in contact with servers when you are online and save your data there so that you can use it from any computer you like. No more complex installations that slow down your computer and use up your hard disc space. Your applications and your data will be in the "cloud". The cloud is a different word for all the computers in the internet that serve applications and store your data.

So what's the deal with Silverlight? You've probably heard of it already and for those who have not, it's basically Microsoft's answer to Macromedia's/Adobe's Flash (what plays your videos on youtube). With the release of version 4 , Silverlight's feature set is now comparable to Flash. The latest additions allow access to microphones and webcam, mouse wheel, clipboard and right mouse key. It is now also possible to run the application out of the browser as a trusted application. This allows for local file access, embedding of a web browser control and connecting to web pages and web services outside the application's domain.

What can you expect of future programs? According to Microsoft, Amazon and Google, most of the applications you use all day will be internet connected. This year's PDC showed Microsoft's to this. It is also planned to have an online Microsoft Office version, where people can share documents and work on them at the same time. Sounds good? What we should also think about is, if we want our data to be stored on some server in the cloud where we have less control over it. Soon this will be normal, it almost is right now (see Facebook, Flickr, etc.). There is a way to have control over your data even when it is located on some server: encryption. Right now encrypting your data is possible, but not all internet applications support it. So you have to decide by yourself which data you store on your local computer and which data can be stored in the cloud.