Microsoft Sets Tolls for .Net Developers

matsh writes: "Today Microsoft revealed the cost of signing up as a developer to .Net. Entry level is $1,000. Standard level $10,000. Custom support will cost even more."

Comments

Re: comparison w/ developer connections

[bLanark]

This isn't for the SDK/tools, which you can get via the MSDN, if not for free online.

This is to be hosted/linked/use the core .net services such as passport. If you're developing an in-house app that doesn't touch the microsoft .net website (damn, the terminology is all wrong) then you don't need to pay your 10K USD.

This is .NET My Services, not all of .NET

[gburgyan]

This is not MS trying to inflict a toll on development -- this is MS trying to make money by selling a service. The .NET My Services is a service that interfaces with MSN Messanger to allow instant communication with your users and also authentication. Seriously people, every time MS charges for something it becomes news on slash...

The last company I was working for was going to authenticate financial transactions. Let me tell you that they were not going to do it for free. How is this any different? Or maybe the phone company charging for setting up your phone lines and billing your company monthly?

MS is charging for a service and you can choose to use it or not.

Perhaps the open source community can get together and create a distributed authentication system to compete with it.

Re:I thought Microsoft had learned this lesson bef

[NeoMage]

Dear o dear, this news item is really going to confuse all you people who like to speak before you have done your homework.

For starters, this is the ".NET My Services" service, it is NOT the .NET platform itself, nor is it an SDK. People are free to write .NET applications for NOTHING and all the SDK is online at msdn.microsoft.com (fuck the link, you can cut and paste).

This is no different from the city library developing a .NET service for reserving books or something and charging you to use it.

This Has Nothing To Do With The SDK

[Carnage4Life]

One of the reason that so many people are now using Windows 9x/ME/2000 is that Microsoft bascially gave away their SDK back in the days of Win 3.x, while IBM was looking to their OS/2 SDK as part of their revenue model, and charging accordingly.

The article is about pricing for accessing .NET My Services which used to be called Hailstorm not the .NET Framework SDK.

Evidence of demand, benefits for customer

[pubjames]

What I don't understand about Microsoft's .NET strategy is

a) Where is the evidence of demand for it?
b) What are the benefits for the customer?

I regularly buy flights on the net, also books. I tend to use the same companies each time. They have my details, I just need to select the product I require and click the accept button. I know that my info. only resides with them, and I trust them not to spread it around.

Where does .NET fit into this?

I am imagining going to a web site, say Amazon. The site asks me "Can Amazon access your hobby list to make recommendations?" Er, sorry, no it can't. "Can Amazon access your calendar so we can find when your birthday is?". Er, nope. "Can Amazon access your address book so we can tell your friends about our great products?" Absolutely not. "Can Amazon access your job profile so we can suggest some business books?". No, and stop asking the dumb questions. The answer is no.

There are lots of, for instance, on-line calendar services available, which can be accessed from any web enabled device or WAP phone. Do people use them that much? What would Microsoft provide that I can't already get? And would it be worth paying for?

Please, someone tell me, I'm dying to know. What is the benefit to me, Joe Consumer, of .NET???

Moving to a services business will be painful

[mav[LAG]]

Microsoft's business right now is selling millions of CDs with the same code on it to as many customers as they can. There are multi-billion dollar niceties like marketing and getting existing customers to buy newer versions of the code but ultimately Microsoft's core business is to get as many of those discs out the door and installed onto customers' hardware - by whatever channel they can.

.NET and its components represent a shift away from this. A huge shift. Instead of selling code, the company wants to sell services. And when you sell services, a lot of things change about your business model which can be very painful while you're trying to make the move.

• Services are different from boxed product. Well doh. But more than one IT company has been bitten by that in the past. Charging for a service means customers generally demand that service from you. If they don't get it, they go elsewhere. And on the Web, there are plenty of places to go - most of them for free.
  
• Offering services means your infrastructure has to change - radically. Instead of a finely tuned assembly line turning out the latest products, a services-based business must offer the best infrastructure in the game to customers. Don't believe me? Then check out the unique selling points of any systems integrator you can think of. Our Global Network Brings Economies of Scale! We Will Manage Your Infrastructure! Does Microsoft have the reputation for security and reliability that goes with running an infrastructure? Not at the moment. Not even nearly.
  
• There are limits to the economies of scale in a services business that aren't there in a software business. As one of the linked articles says, Microsoft has many millions of Windows users out there, but hardly any monthly billing relationships with any of them. It has to find some way of getting to that ideal, but it will find that selling millions of CDs is a very different proposition to selling millions of relationships - because that's what it is. Sure you can wrap it all up in words like Convenience and Access Anytime Anywhere but a service contract is a relationship. It takes post-sale time and effort - something which Microsoft will have to learn because the company doesn't know a hell of a lot about it now.
  
• Services represent a trust relationship - packaged software often represents a grudge relationship The lock-in of Windows can be very easily side-stepped in a services model. Don't like the service? Don't sign up for it. Don't like the levels of service you got last month? Don't pay for them. Or go somewhere else.
  

Make no mistake - moving from a boxed product model to a services-based model is hard, whether you are a small dealer or Microsoft Corp. And often the two have clashing priorities. At the moment Microsoft spends hundreds of millions making sure its channel works hard at getting product out to the end user. If they ultimately want to move to services-based revenue and electronic upgrades, the channel could well find itself out in the cold eventually.

This story is misleading FUD

[Zico]

What Microsoft is charging for is for developers to hook into the .NET MyServices (formerly Hailstorm). That's because to use them, you'll be using Microsoft's own resources, i.e., Microsoft's bandwidth and servers. I think most people by now realize that the business model of giving this away for free is just about dead.

If you're developing apps that don't use .NET MyServices, there's no charge. You can download the .NET Framework SDK for free and write your programs in Notepad if you want. This includes standalone apps, server apps, and even web services -- just not .NET MyServices.

Unless Slashdot is just interested in shoving FUD down the throat of all its readers -- and I would hope you'd consider it an insult to your intelligence that they would do this -- they really should correct the story submission.