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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.'"
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey dance.
We're starting to see the beginings of this concept with Sharepoint 2007. Somehow, at least at my job, this idea of easy, integrated unstructured content sharing has become a big deal. Our users don't seem to care, but the big-wigs writing the checks do. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how they pull this off.
Think cloud of mosquitos, all annoying you and trying to suck you dry...
OK, I'll hold my breath, because Microsoft always ships on schedule.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Now that internet access is ubiquitous, fast, and reliable, the age of the thin client may really be upon us. Though thin clients have been touted in the past and failed, the state of the internet has never been ready to handle thin clients in the past. This has changed.
Home users and small business simply should not have to worry about maintaining firewalls, patches, backups, revision control, document sharing services, and all the other mess that comes with typical PC use. They have only done it so far because there was no other option. Now things are changing, and I welcome it. The only people who will lose out on this are the low-level tech support types and small business IT technicians. With today's unemployment rates, this isn't a huge problem.
Yay, progress!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Sure, the growth of virtualization might make some aspects more palatable, but others (like, you know, "control") are simply not going to be ameliorated by repackaging.
It's almost like MSFT has been on a re-run kick lately... Software-as-Service, Tablets (okay, "tables" now), etc...
It would be damned interesting to see MSFT come up with a new idea that folks actually like, instead of chasing others' successes (e.g. with xbox and Zune and IE, to varying degrees of success), or trying to rehash their failed ones.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Apple hasn't done a lot with it beyond those things to date, but hints that is about to change... I'd say they have a head-start on Microsoft, yet again.
They sure do have a head start on Microsoft, including the "it will only work well with our own OS" part.
I think the real leaders in this area are the companies that have figured out how to offer these services in an OS-neutral way and how to integrate mobile and desktop usage. Neither Microsoft nor Apple have done that.
I once worked for an incredibly successful consulting firm: 2 to 1500 employees in five years, $1M to $500M in revenue, true employment (not "as long as we have a customer for you"), many other examples of goodness and light. It was bought for cash by a huge telecom, who thought that we could deliver on such a vague promise as "remotely managed software services."
In fairness, the idea was already being floated about, that we could just set up NOCs/ROCs all over the place and somehow, magically, deliver as many services as a demand existed for. The telecom just drooled over it; circa 1997, they were all watching the biscuit wheels falling off of the long-distance gravy train.
Of course, the behemoth telecom sealed the coffin by demanding that we try to make their broken attempts at non-remote service offerings work. I left when they decreed that Windows NT would be the only OS running on any of their machines. They sold off little pieces of the original firm. Last I heard, a few ex-managers got together and bought what was left of it in order to use the brand name.
I'm not saying that M$ can't eventually pull this off. If any existing entity could make it work, they could. I base this on their mind-numbing ability to handle huge problems that, you know, "no one could have expected." That is, if they really try to do this, it will fail, over and over again. Only M$, IMO, has the resources to survive these failures. And only M$ could command such a vast array of excellent talent and manage to turn out such mediocre products.
It looks to me more like they're trying to imitate what they think Google is.
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
Seriously, what's up with all the clouds Ballmer?
I suppose it's an apt term. Something that seems big and impressive from a long way away but if you get up close you see it's nothing more than vapour, completely intangible.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
This seems to be entirely for the benefit of Microsoft - their wanting to secure a regular income, with the benefits to the customer a distant second.
After all, why go to all the trouble of pushing Vista or its (likely even less popular) successors on an uninterested public, when you can just bill them monthly?
What do we as customers get out of it? The ability to access our data remotely? I can largely already do that - the things I'm most likely to want access to, such as mail, are well catered for by multiple webmail operations, and it's notable that MS has managed to so badly screw up Hotmail if this is where they're aiming.
As for other apps, I suspect that network bandwidth is going to put a stop to many of those plans.
Not to mention the issue of trust - would *you* trust MS with all your data. Again, judging by the success of their Passport scheme, it looks like a resounding NO!
I find it rather ironic that MS came to prominence precisely because they gave us control over our own computers, rather than being beholden to a single central controller, and now they want to be that controller.
What?
Are you kidding? That has got to be one of the worst analogies I've seen here in a long time -- and this is slashdot, for crying out loud.
Socialism is, at its foundation, public ownership and control of both the State and the means of production. Socialism tends to also mean redistribution of wealth, destruction of the elite, and raising the minimum standard of living (including working conditions, etc). What in Dog's name does any of that have to do with S+S?
A more apt analogy would be that MS is acting as a private company with control over public infrastructure. To make a politicoeconomic analogy (just as ridiculous, but closer to the truth) like yours, this is more like fascism (collaboration of industry & state, with autocratic leadership). Or rampant capitalism, where access to capital (and hence, the resources to build infrastructure) defines who rules and who controls production.
At any rate, there is no way you can compare a *voluntary* commercial system with a *compulsory* politicoeconomic one.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Software isn't like Cable TV, Phone, or similar home services. After all, I don't put my personal data into any of those, and I certainly don't use them to store my own files. If Joe Sixpack misses the 'rent' on his thin client, he's screwed... hard. Even if his files were stored locally, he'd have a very hard time opening media files which can only be opened by the thin client (yes, I can see MSFT --or someone else-- doing that very easily to produce a literal lock-in).
A thin client would certainly free up the average user from routine tasks... but what if the user prefers to use, say IrfanView for managing and viewing his/her image files, instead of whatever the vendor has provided (prolly the MS default image viewer)? I sincerely doubt that the vendor is going to let said user simply install whatever he/she wants, since it would become a logistical nightmare to support on the back end.
There's still too much room for abuse... on all sides. It removes consumer choice from the equation entirely, unless consumers can organize en masse and simply shift to a friendlier provider. Boycotts of that size, especially with personal data and files at stake, will be infinitely harder to organize and execute. Even regular ones today are tough enough to pull off.
Technically, I think it's damned fine. VM's for corporate users saves a ton of cash in hardware. OTOH, those corporations aren't as willing to trust their secrets and business on VM servers that they don't own. Users have very similar reasons.
Don't get me wrong, I can see it happening on some levels... but I just don't see any mass shift towards it (what... you think Joe Sixpack wants his vendor to keep his tax records --or conversely, his pr0n collection-- and not have them within immediate and total control?)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
...they could call this bold new idea ".NET"
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Microsoft is hard at work on the DBSOD, the Distributed Blue Screen of Death. Now you can freeze any machine, anywhere in the world!
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
you're bound to imagine services "in the cloud"
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how is this off topic? if MSFT is involved you will have to pay to access your own data, and if you miss a payment or are late with it you lose all your data. The same goes for network neutrality. it's just the ISPs who want to nickel and dime you to death.
The Dot-Bomb of this decade is brewing and it will be these "software as services" repeating the mistakes of AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy again. Apparently we don't learn from history, thus making us doomed to repeat it.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Actually, Apple's .Mac utilities certainly work on other operating systems. You can store your documents on your iDisk and then access your documents from any machine with the iDisk utilities installed. This includes your Windows machine at work, if you're not blessed to use a Mac both places.
JA
http://www.johnalex.org/
Just scroll bit down to GNOME Online Desktop. Open Source desktop guys are talking about this idea for a long time. They want to build interface with contacts list as central place. People (online presences) are to become major pivot point. Telepathy, Galago, Decibel, KIMProxy gave application access to uniform online connectivity and presence information. ,,aggregator for popular online sites and social notworking websites'' -- check Mugshot.
Additionally, projects like Stateless Linux break ties between user's documents and his computer. User's desktop moves with him when changing laptops etc.
They even built
:wq
And nowadays, >90% of desktop users run a closed source OS on their desktop, that automatically downloads and installs updates with unknown contents, whenever the user goes online. And extend it by clicking 'download plugin' whenever something appears to be missing or not working. And keep their mail online on their ISP's servers. And share their family pics online using a photo sharing site that popped up 2 months ago. That is in practice different from software-as-a-service, ehm... how?
If your assumption were true, people would flock en masse to Linux and other Free/OS systems, because it is easy enough (if you care).
Personally, I use Linux because (among other reasons) I have more trust in an open source system maintained by many groups of developers, that work on it for fun and a variety of other reasons, than I would trust a closed source system maintained by a single company, that does it just for the money. But hey, that's just me.
The current state of affairs tells me, that the average Jane trusts a closed source, commercial OS enough to do her daily work, and process sensitive data with it. Software-as-a-service is then just a streamlining of current software distribution methods. So people are ready for that, even if they don't realise it.
Why software-as-a-service is not the norm yet? Bandwidth limitations? Because no company did a solid execution of the idea so far? Copyright issues with 3rd party software? Because people are used to buying install CD's or computers with preloaded OS? As opposed to a bare minimal software install, and downloading the rest after hooking up the broadband connection? Hey wait, aren't folks already doing that anyway, sort of?
Who knows... My guess: it just hasn't been done yet (large scale, and well executed), but not because it wouldn't be possible.
From the Microsoft "me too" department ... Ballmer's answer to Google Apps. Evidently they are hedging their bets against the possibility of Google Apps taking hold and eating away at MS Office market share.
Orgs that want to control their own destiny aren't going to go for either one. They're going to use software-plus-services technologies, but they'll run them from their own data centers.
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How about instead of consumers surrendering all their data to centrally controlled third parties, those third parties send us their code to run locally on our data. Oh wait, I just described an open source distro repository, lol.
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In short, Microsoft can no longer be like Microsoft since they are losing their lock on the market. However they don't have a plan to become anything new, at least not at a scale that can support them at their current burn rates. All they can do is poorly mimic other company's strategies and business models. That doesn't strike me as a winning strategy. To me this is more signs that MS is collapsing, and over the next five years it will become apparent to everyone that it is doing so.
Isn't a cloud water vapor?
So he's saying they're working on vapor?
Now that's honesty.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
There's one, and only one, reason why Microsoft is hyping this: it's the next big push to acclimate the world to software as a subscription service. They're salivating over the prospect of being able to collect from you every month, just like Comcast does, and to the same degree of excess and (even more) obscene profit. They want to reeducate you to think of software as "content".
If you think Microsoft has made a lot of money selling one-time software licenses, just wait until they've got people accustomed to paying them every month. You ain't seen nuthin' yet.
This is one of those turnkey moments in history, folks. Either we plant our feet solidly and draw a line, or lose the whole farm as Microsoft convinces all the neighbors to sell out.
I'm not trying to bash Microsoft, but they don't exactly have the best reputation in the realm of security.
I would be VERY hesitant to use a MS service that allows access to "all of my content" using a nebulous array of servers. I certainly wouldn't want to be an early adopter of this technology until they can prove a secure track record--especially given the problems with their current product lines.
Even if a miraculous thing happens and the "Live Core" thing ends up being pretty secure, my biggest problem with this technology is its reliance on networking. If a second miracle happens and the quality, quantity, and ubiquity of broadband networking over the air and standard transmisson media gets to a point where it is reliable and affordable then we might be looking at a viable useable service.
As it stands today, MS's security holes and the limited reliability/availablity of current broadband services keep Steve's Live Core dream in the lab.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Intuit offers QuickBooks as a web application. It's a great idea (although it relies on ActiveX + IE) and worth paying the monthly fee. We could access it from anywhere and the accountant could get into the data without coming to our office. For us, it was much better than the normal locally installed software.
Lots of apps (SalesForce.com, TaxCut, etc.) will benefit from this model.
Bigtime Consulting - "We're the best because we cost the most"
1) Make announcement of a revolutionary new Operating System ... Internet Cloud ...
2)
3) Profit!
Yes and IBM had almost 100% of the quality hardware business back in the early 1980s. When they do STUPID things like dictatorial licensing agrreements backed up by "product activation" and reviving the old anti freedom Sun "Network Computing" monstrosity a monopoly can FALL HARD and the IBM is the proof of it. Sun Microsystems also proved it too by becomming essentially an open source company after the "network computing" scheme failed putting even its crown jewels like Java and Solaris under GPLvTHREE of all licenses for a large business and SOFTWARE PATENT HOLDER to place their software under. Too much more STUPIDITY like trying to revive "network computing" Micro$oft's current regime may just be BOOTED and WINDOWS and OFFICE and may just wind up under GPLv3 or a similar license.