The Vanishing HailStorm

ElitusPrime writes ".NET My Services, Microsoft Corp's high-profile set of XML web services postponed eight months ago, seems to have dropped off the company's 2003 roadmap. .NET My Services, once codenamed Hailstorm, was to comprise 14 services including an electronic online address book and voice mail inbox and was once trumpeted as the vanguard of a .NET web services revolution by the company."

Comments

Not to suprising.

[autopr0n]

There was never really a killer app involved. Companies with a dedicated IT department understand the utility in newer technology, but to the average person, saying something like "This is a revolutionary new technology. It will let you check your email and voicemail! And let you keep an address book!" is hardly compelling. People can already do all of those things with regular HTTP and/or other technology.

In addition, I wonder how many people actually want to have a single online identity for everything? It might be safer then using the same username/password over and over again, but I don't really know if people want to have their every move tracked and databased... although it does seem like a lot of people don't care.

I knew the following before taking any CS courses

[ekrout]

Decentralization of critical data is key to security, robustness, scalability, ..., etc.

Translation: Putting all of one's eggs into one basket is not a smart thing to do.

I can't believe that people are even using Microsoft's Passport. I guess by making it a necessity in order to use certain MSN Web services like Hotmail, this was the only way they figured they could attract customers.

Why would I want to store all vital information of mine (SS#, credit card #, name, address, phone, email, etc.) on one sketchy server up in Redmond, WA?

This is definately a good thing.

[tgrotvedt]

If .NET/Hailstorm was to become too successful, it would be another dose proprietry/closed network solutions, the evil that is centralizing the Internet. See, people buy a PC with XP or whatever Microsoft OS has been bundled, the OS "assumes" that the user wants to be a part of .NET, makes them think that .NET is the only way to use the 'Net, and the real Internet becomes weaker and weaker because of it.

.NET's Hailstorm suite cannot be the next revolution, because no other players (or non-MS fans exersizing some choice) are invited, just MS and their corporate allies.

Cool. That means I should be able to get . . .

[kfg]

.NET "My Bob" any day now.

KFG

MS versus the world

[tokki]

I remember in 1995, when the Internet was just starting to bud in the commercial world, MS wanted to kill it.

I went to some Microsoft roadshow in Indianapolis, and they were touting the capabilities of the Microsoft Network, and how everything that was possible on the Internet, was possible on MSN, only better.

It was amusing to some guy in an MS golf shirt demonstrate things such as web browsing, IRC, and FTP and how they would better be served in an MS-only environment.

A year or so later, they abandoned the kill the Internet strategy, and started up their "embrace and extend" policy.

In short, MS got it's ass kicked. They quickly swept that defeat under the rug, and you rarely ever hear about it, which is I'm sure what will happen with this defeat.

Re:MS versus the world

[sql*kitten]

In short, MS got it's ass kicked. They quickly swept that defeat under the rug, and you rarely ever hear about it, which is I'm sure what will happen with this defeat.


You make it sound like that's a bad thing. There are very few organizations (especially of Microsoft's size) and CEOs in the world willing to say "OK, I was wrong, let's completely change direction". Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison are notorious for throwing money at doomed ventures (like NC) - their egos just won't let them admit to making a mistake. As for Richard Stallman, has he ever admitted to being wrong about anything?

Bill Gates put his ego to one side, and Microsoft's engineers (who'd just done a Death March to get Windows 95 out the door) got back to work, effectively redoing a lot of what they'd already done. Whatever you may think of Bill in particular and Microsoft in general, they deserve respect for their agility.

Slow down!

[IamTheRealMike]

Don't go so fast.

I spoke with some of the top guys at Passport who were obviously heavily involved with Hailstorm at Digital ID World 2002 in Denver. They assured me Hailstorm was very much alive, but it had turned into a far bigger project than they had thought. In particular, I remember one guy saying something to the effect of "Well, my conscious is clean, I told Bill 2 years was unreasonable, but did he listen? Of course not". Words pretty close to that.

It may have been a red herring, but I seriously doubt it. I for one don't think Hailstorm has gone - just forgotten, at least for now.

Re:I knew the following before taking any CS cours

[dimator]

Do you really think that many people use a different username and password for every login they have?

No, but at least now, if I find one username/password combination, i don't necessarily know where else i can try that combination. But if I find out your hotmail password, then I immediately know that I can also jack your ebay account, your MSN account, etc.

Problem was no customers

[Codex The Sloth]

Microsoft announced that they were scrapping / postponing this due to a lack of interest from customers. Basically, people thought (correctly) that it was a stupid idea. A few years back, Microsoft tried selling Office as an online ASP Service over the web. It was a stupid idea and no one used it. Clearly they saw this was going to be the same thing.

None of this is exactly a Red Herring -- Microsoft follows a pattern of announcing some far reaching plan, then seeing who responds / complains and then adjusting / cancelling before they actually make any concrete plans (or most likely write a line of code).