Ballmer Teases Software-Plus-Services in '07

Robert writes with a link to a CBR article hinting that Microsoft's vision of software-plus-services may begin to form this year. The idea is that an online version of Windows, plus a 'cloud' of related services and collaboration software, will allow a user to access their content from anywhere and (theoretically) be more productive. "In broad strokes, that vision is to build a set of services for servers, clients and mobile devices in the Internet cloud, with a new model of computation and user interface. Ballmer seemed to suggest the first of these services would launch, in some form, later this year. Underpinning these services would be a "cloud platform," which is the Windows Live Core architecture the company is working on. 'We are in the process today of building out a service platform in the cloud,' Ballmer said. 'We're building out a service-based infrastructure, not server by server but a new management model, a new device model, new storage, networking, computational model from the get-go.'"

Comments

Re:You mean like - .Mac?

[nanosquid]

Apple's .Mac is mostly a collection of open standards.

Brilliant, dude: so you can invest a few man-years to develop software that Apple can choose to break with their next update and that then provides unsupported access to a $100 service that other companies largely provide for free. This amazing degree of openness on the part of Apple is hard to beat!

They're obviously about ready to take that mobile.

They already did: if you buy a Mac and an iPhone, then you can access your .Mac data from your iPhone. Will the wonders never cease!

Wrong again

[SuperKendall]

They already did: if you buy a Mac and an iPhone, then you can access your .Mac data from your iPhone. Will the wonders never cease!

The really funny thing is, that the one valid complaint you could level against .Mac you got wrong!

Currently you can't really access .Mac beyond the web based features - no accessing stored files, or in fact synchronizing account passwords onto the iPhone as you can with other Macs through .Mac. That, to me, is puzzling but probably another aspect they will address later this year.