What Does Microsoft's Expression Mean?

Joe Wilcox News Analysis. One analyst suggests that Expression Studio 2.0 got the short shrift during last week's MIX08 keynotes. He's probably right.

Microsoft spent a whole lot of time evangelizing Silverlight, clearly as an attack on Flash. But development/design software Expression got a big version two-oh beta release that pretty much anyone can download, but not much talk about it—at least during the MIX keynote.

The beta is big news itself. For starters, Microsoft just made Expression Studio free to anyone during what could be a long version 2.0-2.5 beta process. Already, at $320 street price upgrade and $500 full version, Expression costs less than Adobe's Creative Suite 3, which street price ranges from about $399 for Design Standard upgrade to more than $1,700 for Design Premium. Sure, Microsoft will eventually charge for the final product. Meanwhile, it's a free—and impressive—alternative to CS3 or to Expression 1.0, for that matter.

Chris Swenson, NPD's director Software Industry Analysis, said there was too much for Microsoft to squeeze into the main MIX08 keynote. He sees the Expression Studio 2.0 beta and three of its benefits as being hugely important but too overlooked:

• Silverlight 2.0 integration
• PHP support
• .NET 3.5 support

The beta Expression Studio release, combined with Visual Studio 2008, gives designers and developers tools for immediately trying out Silverlight 2.0. They can do so using either development tool.

Swenson said that PHP support in Expression Web 2.0 "is a huge, huge deal. How much PHP support? Enough to cover about 80 percent to 90 percent of the usage scenarios in my estimation."

Swenson described the PHP support as an "incredibly large first step. There are so many Web designers and developers that use PHP that Expression Web 1.0 wasn't included in their consideration set." PHP support gives more developers and designers reason for "kicking the tires of Expression Web."

Microsoft provided full beta software for them to do just that.

"The support for .NET 3.5 is a big deal, too, because of the improved support for AJAX, Swenson said. "There are so many RIAs [Rich Internet Applications] built with AJAX today, and it's going to be that way for many years to come. The improved support for AJAX will lead many developers to adopt Microsoft's tooling to develop their AJAX RIAs, irrespective of Silverlight."

.NET is, after all, the centerpiece of Microsoft's Web services strategy.

Swenson also emphasized the importance of what comes next. He observed that "it's been 10 months since Expression Studio 1.0 shipped, and already we're talking about Blend 2.5."

He emphasized: "Microsoft said that they are committed to innovating on a 12-month release cycle so they can rapidly close the feature gap with Adobe, and so far, they are delivering on that promise. Adobe, with their 18 month or so release cycle for its CS products, can't innovate as rapidly."

The lead up to the one-dot-oh release took longer. Microsoft purchased the core Expression product from Creature House in second half 2003. First beta, codename "Acrylic," released in summer 2005. A few months later, Microsoft officially announced its Expression family of products. In summer 2006, Microsoft purchased iView Media, which became Expression Media (other suite products are Blend, Design and Web). Expression Studio released to manufacturing a year ago at MIX07.

Swenson said that Microsoft's rapid-fire Expression development may do to Adobe what it did to Quark. After Quark's late 1990s failed Adobe takeover, Adobe made a push back into the design market with the 1999 release of InDesign.

"Quark was taking forever with their releases, especially when it came to supporting Mac OS X [in 2001], and Adobe adopted a rapid development schedule to quickly close the gap between InDesign and QuarkXPress," Swenson said. "By all accounts, Adobe succeeded, pushing out one release after another."

In making Adobe-Microsoft comparisons, the NPD analyst acknowledged the difference in release cycles—about 18 months for InDesign versus several years for QuarkXPress.

"I think you're seeing Microsoft emulate a tried-and-true strategy in the professional graphics software market: Adopt short release cycles, innovate rapidly [and] close the feature gap as quickly as possible," Swenson said. "It's what you have to do if you want to succeed." It's a "very smart strategic move in my opinion."

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