Microsoft to Ship Silverlight Analytics Framework

In an 11 March blog post from the Silverlight team, Microsoft said with effective Rich Internet Applications as the ultimate goal, developers need a proven way to measure that effectiveness. Enter the Silverlight Analytics Framework.

According to the Silverlight team blog: “To measure this effectiveness, developers and designer need to instrument the application and collect data about the ways users interact with them. Often instrumentation is being done after the fact, done partially or dropped. Current ways to instrument applications are cumbersome, are focusing on instrumentation of Web pages and sometimes not appropriate to next generation interactive connected applications.”

During a session at its designer and developer conference, MIX 2010, Microsoft media experience evangelist, Michael Scherotter will demonstrate how developers and designers can instrument their applications using the new framework.

Microsoft said the Silverlight Analytics Framework is scheduled to today on Microsoft’s CodePlex open source project hosting site as a free open-source framework.  The framework will be available for both in-browser and out-of-browser Silverlight applications. It also is well integrated with the design experience in Microsoft’s Expression Blend tool and it supports many analytic services to report into.

Microsoft’s Silverlight Analytics Framework provides functionality similar to that which Adobe brought in-house with its $1.8 billion (£1.2 billion) acquisition of Omniture last October.

An Adobe statement at the closing of the deal on 23 October 2009, said: “Adobe’s acquisition of Omniture advances its mission of revolutionising the way the world engages with ideas and information. By combining Adobe’s content creation tools and ubiquitous clients with Omniture’s web analytics, measurement and optimisation technologies, Adobe will be well positioned to deliver solutions that can transform the future of engaging experiences and e-commerce across all digital content, platforms and devices.”