may the force be with you

The success of Microsoft's new design applications will remain up in the air for a while, said Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox. "Everything is a work in progress," he said. "You can get excited about it, but it is too early to tell how well it will be adopted."

Microsoft revealed its latest development tool, Microsoft Expression, last week at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference 2005. According to analysts, the long-awaited, workflow-management applications are Microsoft's attempt to redefine the development-and-design market.

This is not necessarily an effort by Microsoft to compete against Adobe, Quark or Macromedia , said Joe Wilcox, an analyst with Jupiter Research. He noted that while there will be some competition with Adobe, Microsoft's new graphics and workflow tools are more focused on developers than on designers.

"In some ways, Microsoft may be looking to eliminate the role of the designer in the future," he said. "Microsoft wants to turn developers into designers."

Solitary Designer

The days when a designer worked alone have been traded in for an interactive world in which designers often work hand-in-hand with developers. "Microsoft is trying to address what it believes is a legitimate and longstanding problem in the design market," said Wilcox.

With the Acrylic Graphic Design, Sparkle Interactive Design, and Quartz Web Designer -- all components of the Expressions software package -- Microsoft is attempting to resolve what it sees as too much distance between the development and design mechanisms.

"What Microsoft is trying to do is bring those two together so they can work hand-in-hand with the result being better collaboration and efficiency with less duplication and extra work," said Wilcox.

Uphill Battle

The success of Microsoft's new design applications will remain up in the air for a while, said Wilcox. "Everything is a work in progress," he said. "You can get excited about it, but it is too early to tell how well it will be adopted."

Add to that Adobe's position as a powerhouse in the design market and the new strategy from Microsoft will not be an overnight success, Wilcox said.

Microsoft went through several different versions before coming up with components that were compelling with or without the ability to capitalize upon embedded technologies in the Vista operating system.

"You can look and say that the new product line is a threat to Adobe, but there are so many things that have to happen before it rises to the level of a potential threat," Wilcox said. He added that the largest hurdle to overcome is that people become comfortable with software and are reluctant to switch to something new.

"Microsoft is second to none in terms of developing tools that fill a gap," he said. An example of the company's ability to redefine a market is the original Outlook software introduced in the mid-1990s. At the time, there was a hodgepodge of contact management and e-mail software, said Wilcox, but no one had combined the two.

Microsoft perceived a problem and an opportunity. "And you can't truly say that Outlook is an e-mail program. They actually redefined the market."

source:http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=10300002CDPE