Mike Hall discusses enabling connectivity for devices. By 2020, the number of connected devices is projected to greatly outnumber the world's population. Different environments like LAN, WiFi, and WAN pose different connectivity challenges. Developing WAN solutions today is costly, complex, and time-consuming for OEMs and developers. Emerging trends include multi-core processing, ubiquitous screens, natural user interfaces, and cloud-enabled digital content. Enabling good user experiences requires addressing issues like connectivity states, local vs cloud-powered apps, and how to take advantage of hardware and connectivity.

1. Enabling Connectivity
Mike Hall
Principal Software Architect
Windows Embedded Business
Microsoft Corporation
mikehall@microsoft.com

2. “Create experiences that combine the magic
of software with the power of internet
services across a world of devices”
Microsoft corporate vision, 2008

3. “Create experiences that combine the magic
of software with the power of internet
services across a world of devices”
Microsoft corporate vision, 2008

4. Enabling Connectivity
• Agenda
– Connectivity
– Hardware
– User Experience
– Cloud Enabled
• World Readiness

5. The consensus is that by 2020 the number of connected devices will
outnumber the worlds population
GROWTH IN THE PERVASIVENESS OF COMPUTING
The Era Of The The Era Of The The Era Of The The Era Of The The Era Of The
Mainframe Minicomputer The Pc Desktop Internet Mobile Internet
60’s 70’s 80’s 90’s 2000 2010+

6. Consensus suggests that the number of “connection capable” devices
will soon outnumber the number of humans and that these devices will
increasingly be M2M and/or remote, mobile or movable devices
Number of connected devices (in Billions)
The Era Of The The Era Of The The Era Of The The Era Of The The Era Of The
Mainframe
10 Minicomputer The Pc Desktop Internet Mobile Internet 2020
10s of Billions
of units
9
8
7
2020
6
7.7+B People
5
4
3
The Mobile
Internet
Units:
2 The Desktop 1.5B+ Sockets
Internet
Mainframe Minicomputer PC Units:
Units: Units: Units: 1B+ Sockets
1
1MM+ Sockets 10M+ Sockets 100M+ Sockets
60’s 70’s 80’s 90’s 2000 2010+

7. Different environments pose
different connection challenges
LAN
– The question of connectivity has largely been solved at the transport, control
and monitoring layers
– Useful for fixed environments but doesn’t meet the core requirements of
emergent / hi growth device types
WiFi
– Effective for fixed and some confined mobility apps
– Significant challenges around pervasive access, coverage and security remain
for many emergent device types
WAN
– Offers optimal connectivity characteristics for a wide range of remote,
mobile or movable device scenarios
– Significant technical, operational and commercial challenges remain to be
resolved

8. The process that our customers must go through
today to develop WAN solutions is costly complex and
long
SOLUTION DEVELOPMENT PROCESS OEM/DEVELOPER CHALLENGES
COMPLEXITY
PLAN & BUILD •Thousands of OEM’s, DO’s, App Developers and
Mobile Operators
•No Clear standard for devices operating systems
•Different network standards and modules
PRODUCTS
COST
CUSTOMERS SERVICE •Lack of flexible device management/billing
OPERATE & DEPLOY
capabilities
OPTIMIZE •Expensive bandwidth
•Expensive wireless modules
TIME TO MARKET
•Nascent cloud services
•Lengthy development timelines
Solving these challenges requires the involvement of more than one party in the process
BUT realizing the full potential of connected devices requires that they be solved

9. Enabling Connectivity
• Connectivity without experience isn’t useful
• Agenda
– Connectivity
– Hardware
– User Experience
– Cloud Enabled
• World Readiness

10. Hardware Trends

11. Software Trends

12. User Experience Trends
The Evolution of
User Interface Design
Consumers buy devices based on your
product’s user experience, not specs. The next-
generation cell phones and media players
changed the playing field.

13. Emerging Technology Trends
ALL
MANY-CORE CONTENT
PROCESSING
SCREENS NATURAL DIGITAL
EVERYWHERE UI

14. Hardware/Software Abstraction
• Frameworks hide complexity (H/W & S/W)
• Make use of hardware capabilities (CPU/GPU)
• Model/View development
– Model can be local or remote/cloud content
– Cloud API or Cached/Sync’d content
• Keep User Experience responsive (Threading)
• Develop using Asynchronous methods

15. Threading/Concurrency -> Parallelism
On Single Core Machine
– Don’t block the UI
• Thread Affinity
– Async Operations
– Synchronization Issues
On Multi-core Machine
– As above...
– ... plus Improve Actual Performance
– ... plus create new user experiences

16. Threads vs. Task Programming
• Multi-Core hardware becoming standard
• Key to “real” performance is to scale across cores
• Threads
– Hard to write scalable applications
– Complex to write/debug
• Task based programming
– Scales from single core to multi-core
– “On Device” Parallel programming model
– Supports Work stealing (hidden from developer)
– Rapid application development
16

18. Enabling Connectivity
• Connectivity without experience isn’t useful
• Agenda
– Connectivity
– Hardware
– User Experience
– Cloud Enabled
• World Readiness

19. Unifying the Design / Dev Process
Designer Developer
Look, behavior, Function, deployment,
brand, and data, security,
emotional connection operational integrity
Paper
JPG / TIFF C++
PSD C#
PPT VB.NET
MOV / WMV

20. The User Experience Design Process
1 2 3
Designer builds the Developer builds Run “experience”
device/application business logic – on the
user experience clean separation of embedded device
UI from Logic
Designer Tool Embedded Device
XAML

21. User Experience
• Connected/Disconnected State
• Local Applications
• Taking advantage of silicon/connectivity
– Async methods, threads/synchronization
• Designer/Developer
– Separation of user experience from underlying
code

22. Enabling Connectivity
• Connectivity without experience isn’t useful
• Agenda
– Connectivity
– Hardware
– User Experience
– Cloud Enabled
• World Readiness

23. Windows Phone
Silverlight iPhone
Windows webOS
Browser
Web Site
Web API
Services powering Experiences

24. World Readiness
• We’re connected, now what…
• Cloud services, user experience, translation
• Putting it all together

25. Summary

26. Q&A

27. © 2010 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries.
The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should
not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS,
IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.