Microsoft is going to announce an analytics framework from the Silverlight runtime on Monday at its MIX conference in Las Vegas, according to a blog post by Microsoft evangelist Michael Scherotter. Here are some of the details that he let out of the bag:

• Support out-of-browser scenarios
• Support offline scenarios
• Support multiple analytics services simultaneously without impacting performance
• Support designers in Microsoft Expression Blend to instrument applications without coding
• Support A/B Testing
• Support SketchFlow Prototypes
• Support logging of video experiences with the Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework

Let's take a look at the important bits. Silverlight has worked out of the browser and offline ever since version 3.0. That would probably require an endpoint (for data) to be installed inside of the firewall. Microsoft ships code instrumentation tools from PreEmptive Software in Visual studio 2010. There is an opportunity for Microsoft partners such as PreEmptive to provide a multipurpose solution for Web analytics as well as developer analytics. Merging the two data sets together could prove interesting for developers: think code coverage, method level performance, etc.

If Microsoft wants customers to run multiple analytics services it must have developed a common data model. That is something that is lacking in analytics today. Microsoft has the opportunity to solve an industry problem should it decide to make its data model a CodePlex project.