Microsoft Opens .Net, Hops on Devops Bandwagon

The most obvious reasoning for Microsoft's establishment of a .Net foundation and further opening up the technology is the continued presence and prominence of open source software -- and openness in general -- in key, fast-moving enterprise IT trends including cloud computing, Big Data and devops. Today, Microsoft continues to reshape its approach to open source.

Microsoft recently established a .Net foundation and open sourced substantial parts of the popular programming language, continuing to spread its newfound love for open source software. However, it's another movement -- devops -- that may be more of a driving factor in Microsoft's .Net move.

In establishing the independent .Net Foundation and making more key pieces of .Net open source, Microsoft was promoting collaboration and community, it said. Many open source technologies exist for .Net, including the recently released .Net compiler platform codenamed "Roslyn."

Microsoft also highlighted the value and innovation that comes from broader community collaboration, even on its own developer tools and technologies, such as .Net.

The fact that Microsoft recognizes the power of open source software is not remarkable -- the company has been working actively to change its thinking and strategy on open source software for years now.

What is interesting is the establishment of the foundation and the further opening up of .Net, which highlights how Microsoft technologies, including Windows, Azure and .Net, all have become part of the devops movement -- a trend referring to faster software releases based on collaboration and efficiency among developers and IT operations teams.

This is quite a contrast to the devops landscape that existed three or four years ago. Back then, when Windows admins would dare to speak up or ask questions about how they might get more agile and join the devops movement, they were told to switch to Linux.

Today, most devops tools and providers have integrations, plug-ins, and support for Windows management. Indeed, I have written previously about how the support for Windows in devops tools -- such as the Chef and Puppet configuration and provisioning automation software applications -- reflects the extension of devops to more mainstream enterprises, where Windows and .Net are common.

We also have seen .Net rise in the polyglot programming trend: A much greater variety of languages, databases, infrastructure and other technologies are used in developing, deploying and managing applications in today's market.

While most PaaS platforms have become polyglot and support a variety of languages, the enterprise world is still largely a matter of Java and .Net. Thus, .Net has become an important part of PaaS, particularly private PaaS aimed at enterprises.

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Microsoft Opens .Net, Hops on Devops Bandwagon