Scott Guthrie isn't much bothered whether they're called "Rich Internet Applications" or "Rich Interactive Applications" - Microsoft, where Guthrie is Corporate Vice President of the .NET Developer Platform and therefore head of the Redmond team behind Silverlight 2, uses both. In a recent interview he says "We use each kind of interchangeably. Mostly we just call them RIAs now." 

In the interview, with Wharton Business School, Guthrie explains how Microsoft decided internally when to go with Silverlight versus other web technologies.

"In general, we leave it up to individual teams what technology they choose - whether they want to use AJAX, a desktop client or Silverlight," notes Guthrie, who adds: 

In the interview, Guthrie was asked when we might Silverlight on the iPhone, to which he replied that  "it's something that we're going to be looking at," adding: "Technically, we feel pretty good with Silverlight. Because we have a good platform abstraction layer, we can port it to almost any device."

In February 2006 Guthrie gave an exclusive interview on SYS-CON.TV, recorded at the Microsoft HQ in Redmond, WA, in which he outlined Microsoft's then still emergent vision for Rich Internet Applications. He was a founding member of the .NET Framework team and today runs the development teams that deliver the CLR, ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF, IIS7, and the Visual Studio tools for Web, WPF and Silverlight development.

He was promoted from General Manager to Corporate Vice President in February 2008.


View Scott Guthrie's exclusive interview live from Redmond with SYS-CON.TV's Jeremy Geelan

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Two of the biggest launches in Rich Internet Application history took place in 2007/2008 when Adobe launched AIR 1.0 in February '08 and Microsoft launched Silverlight (September '07). At the 6th International AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo in October SYS-CON Events is delighted to be presenting major industry keynotes from the two industry executives with overall responsibility for both of those massive richer-web initiatives: Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch and Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform.

Lynch, who will be keynoting on October 21, 2008, is one of the original coiners of the term "Rich Internet Application" back in 2002 and has intimate knowledge of Flash and AIR, the two platforms that - together with Acrobat and PDF - now make up the four platforms which together make Adobe the software powerhouse it is. Previously Adobe's Chief Software Architect, he was promoted to CTO in February '08.

Guthrie, who will be keynoting October 22, 2008, was a founding member of the .NET Framework team and today runs the development teams that deliver the CLR, ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF, IIS7, and the Visual Studio tools for Web, WPF and Silverlight development. Previously the General Manager of Microsoft's Developer Divsion, he was promoted to Corporate Vice President in February '08.

The Adobe and Microsoft executives head a Speaker Faculty of top industry front-end engineers, UX experts, Web 2.0 pioneers and industry luminaries, including:

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