Microsoft in the past week has been pushing its Office apps suite and Visual Studio as keys to its apps development arsenal, even hailing PC clients at a time when browser-based systems have been stealing the thunder.Pitching Office as a development platform, company officials are heralding the abilities of the popular desktop suite, leveraging XML. The proposed Indigo Web services technology also has been at center stage. Offering capabilities for reducing coding and linking to multiple systems, Indigo sounds like a technology that will draw a crowd whenever it arrives. General availability is set for next year. The bottom line with Indigo, though, is you still need Windows to make it work. This is unlike Sun Microsystems’s strategy involving Java, in which the company has let it be deployed on multiple platforms. Office also runs primarily on Windows. (OK, there is a Macintosh version, too.)It seems to me that Microsoft is just continuing its Windows World strategy to maintain desktop dominance while accommodating interoperability with other platforms. With the market reach Microsoft has, it does seem like a reasonable plan, even if open source advocates and companies like Sun are offering alternatives to Windows hegemony. Still, I wonder how long the a Windows-centric strategy can last as a longterm vision and whether open source alternatives can give Microsoft a run for its money. Vindication: Recently, I wrote an entry noting that the preponderance of acronyms with multiple definitions has rendered them ineffective in providing a concise way to label techologies. Well, last week I witnessed an example of this involving who else but Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, during a Webcast.During a question and answer period, an audience member referred to BPM, which prompted Gates to ask, “I assume you mean Business Process Modeling?” But the questioner replied that he meant Business Process Management. So if even the co-founder of Microsoft himself needs clarification, how can the rest of us be expected to navigate these acronyms? Technology Industry