Can Marc Do it Again?

Someone gave us the link to Marc Andreessen's latest company effort. He's got a good team, lotsa money, and credibility - and he wants to rule the space of "hosted applications".

Comments

I agree totally

[denubis]

I personally find the concept of downloading apps (per use) quite disturbing, for a couple of reasons:

a) Why couldn't they charge per use - get people ensnared and then: "Oh whoops! We're sorry, costs are high, we're going to have to institute daily fees."

b) Why couldn't they charge TO use - don't get me wrong, owning software is great, but... giving other people money for it? ::chuckles:: (only if they're really good)

c) Bandwith/Net Congestion. Take this example: Day before an essay is due and like usual I haven't started. I go to this page, pop open the app (I assume this is the kind of app they're talking about) and the app takes 20 minutes to load, causing me to loose half my hair.

d) Internet conncetion. My modem isn't all that reliable (good ol' earthlink) and it drops my connection. Would you have to save every 20 seconds so that you don't loose work when you drop off the net?

e) "Haxors" Your arch-rival at school needs no more than to sniff your password and edit a few key phrases. When you print - in a rush, you don't notice them, and you're failed.

Anyways, having to d/l software every time you use it is not my idea of fun. I like software on disks - much easier to replace when the computer barfs.

IMNSHO, hosting apps for users is a waste of bandwidth and time (not to mention the piracy hassles) and hosting 'net apps has been done FOR A WHILE. It should be intresting to see what Marc comes up with.


One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

Hosted applications a challenge to GNU GPL terms

[Zach Baker]

The rise of hosted applications, which may be used without distribution, is problematic for licenses such as GPL which only restrict distribution. This has already been a concern for CGI scripts and other web server based programs. But if hosted applications take off, the GNU GPL is really going to lose relevancy.

An implicit assumption in the GPL seems to be that users of a program have access to the binary. That's not the case with CGI programs and similar hosted applications. I'm not sure how access to source can be preserved in these cases without resorting to terms like those in the APSL. Any ideas?

(This is a long-standing issue. It's not related to marca's new company but I brought it up in reference to the field of hosted applications in general.)

Re:Depends on what Microsoft does

[the_tsi]

When will people realize that MS doesn't matter? Anything they do at this point is too little, too late. The future of information technology doesn't have ANY place for them and their current product models. The DOD trial and "Linux competition" aside, in three years it won't matter WHAT Microsoft is doing unless they abandon all their products now, or at least re-work them for the next wave.

Larry Ellison is right: it will be all about weak/cheap clients and beefcake centralized services. There will be one fiber running to everyone's house (provided by companies that look like telcos combined with cable companies) and over that you will access data in any form you want. A "Telephone" in your kitchen, "Television" in the family room, email from your palm-based device (eventually a more appropriate interface: voice or otherwise), and any other sort of data acquisition/modification from other specialized devices.

You'll still have your video game device (the merger of console and pc), and something to write documents on (of course, by that point there'll be little need to make a hardcopy, but the provisions will be there), both consisting of simpler, more usable software stored in firmware, with modular elements loaded from the "Internet." (Which is where the successor to Java steps in... hardware/platform independent software that (by then) will perform well.)

The only possible product have even a niche need is WinCE, which probably won't survive given real competition -- it wasn't developed with the future mindset in consideration. They'll wither away as they try to include more and more features in it, when the world will be moving towards two things: 1. more appropriate interfaces for computing and 2. usable software that doesn't need to be "learned" the way today's does.

Today's computing is klunky, ugly, and expensive in terms of time needed to do things, space, electricity, and actual hardware/software costs.

The future of "computing" isn't bigger, better, and flashier... it's completely transparent.

-Chris

Flash-in-the-pan syndrome

[Wooly-Mammoth]

In the history of the software industry, there are the inventors and there are the businessmen. The inventors are people like :

Dan Bricklin & Bob Frankston (Visicalc)
Woz (Apple)
Bill Gates (BASIC)
Bill Joy (vi, BSD, NFS)
Douglas Engelbart (mouse, GUI, groupware, live video conferencing, hypertext help)
Bob Metcalf (ethernet)
Richie, Kernighan, Thompson (C, unix)
Seymour Cray (Cray supercomputers)
David Patterson (RISC, RAID)
Tim Berners-Lee (the world wide web)
etc.

Most of them didn't succeed commercially.

And there are the businessmen, the people who are really good at understanding a totally new fertile field and transforming technology into success:

Scott McNealy (sun)
Bill Gates (Microsoft)
Jim Clark (SGI, netscape)
Seymour Cray (Cray supercomputers)
Larry Ellison (Oracle)
Mitch Kapor (Lotus)
Steve Jobs (apple)

These are two very different fields, and very few people are good at both.

Frankly, marca hasn't invented anything, and he was never a business leader. He took an existing product (the web browser) and made it popular thru free downloading. Yes, this was an earthshaking phenomenon in the industry, but he did not invent the browser, nor did he lead Netscape on to a powerful business position. In fact, he was hardly ever in charge of netscape - that was Barksdale.

And if we are to believe news reports, he never coded anything after Netscape took off. Whatever your opinion of Bill Gates is, he still codes, and he has even participated in coding competitions as CEO. It probably explains why he's good at understanding both the technical and business end of things.

I would be surprised if anything radical comes from Andreesen. Heck, I would be surprised if anything radical comes from this new company - web hosting & e-commerce isn't likely to shock anyone at this point.

w/m.

Re:Flash-in-the-pan syndrome

[Roundeye]

I completely concur. Reading this article I got a distinct feeling that this cast of "stars" wasn't much asset-wise, particularly if the headliner is marca. Most of these guys were merely in the right place at the right time -- the real stars of the Netscape show left a long time ago. And they're going forward to tackle a vaguely defined area which is currently the arena of the "big boys", trying to be guerillas again -- only, they're not guerillas any more.

Sure, every VC company wants a piece of this, just to hedge their bets; but this won't be a winner for them margin-wise. The winners for VC's are still the guerilla company's: there's a lot of room to grow from ground zero.

Re:Flash-in-the-pan syndrome

[cpt kangarooski]

Woah there Tex! I think that your list of geeks and suits is a little out of whack.

Bill Gates has never been known as a programmer, really. He didn't invent BASIC, he didn't even have all that much to do with the half-assed version of it that MS made for the Altair. Paul Allen was doing most of the work, Bill was losing at poker with his Harvard buddies. Bill is a suit, who happens to be suprisingly good at fooling people into thinking he's a geek. Steve Jobs has done the same thing at times, so it's not unique, but it is rare.

obBZZZZT, try again

[Chris Johnson]

Ob means obligatory, and BZZZZZT try again means that Gates never invented BASIC. You want to take Gates out of that top list and put "John Kemeny of Dartmouth" in his place. That's who invented BASIC, and maybe some day more people will give him credit for it than Gates.

Re:Hosted applications a challenge to GNU GPL term

[jflynn]

A good point. I suppose it's too simple, but what would be wrong with requiring each *user* of the software to have rights to the source? The GPL assumed that you would have to distribute to each user, so I think this would preserve the intention.

However this would make new GPL'd software less attractive to Marc and Sun if many users compile the sources locally (after patching them so they'll work locally.) This would allow avoiding fees on the thin-client service for those with sufficient local resources to run binaries.

If the apps are real honkers like Word and StarOffice, I doubt the loss will be too significant, so maybe we *should* make the GPL more strict. Otherwise, I can easily see all the apps providers getting into a war of proprietary features, which is not good.

It's oursourcing, not downloadable apps

[rcromwell2]

This isn't consumer apps running on a portal, this is a business to business startup, and fulfills a similar function as UUNET, Exodus, or AboveNet.


In the ole days, people got their own T1 lines to their office and hosted their web sites on their own machines, had their own network admins, their own cable/hardware guys, etc.

First step: eliminate the hassle of running a T1 and maintaining your own "high availability" stuff.

Companies: Exodus, AboveNet. Gigabits of bandwidth, earthquake proof, power failure proof, fault tolerant. Pay $1800/mo and stick a few rackmounted machines there, and they do the rest.
No brainer for most businesses.

Hosting servers at a professional hosting service is much better than running a T1 from your ISP. The ISP's quality of service simply can't compete.

Next step: services. Example: email. Email is a commodity. Why pay a staff $200k a year plus capital costs to host sendmail, exchange, or lotus notes on your network when you can just "outsource" it to USA.net, Mail.com, CriticalPath, for a small fee and not have to deal with the headache? There is no way your average mail admin will achieve the scalability and level of service that you will get at say, CriticalPath.

Next steps: Why go through the hassle of having to purchase your own copy of Oracle, or an Application server, and pay an Oracle DBA or CIO lots of money to maintain them, their uptime, and the quality of service?

If you have a bright idea for the Next-Big-Thing, and want to start coding immediately next week, and you can't afford to hire lots of people, why not just rent space on someone else's professionally maintained DB/Application Server/Network, etc.


By outsourcing these services, you don't need to waste time, and money, developing your own inhouse installation, and struggling to maintain the QoS that a professionally run organization has. Or for that matter, the fault-tolerance of leasing a DB/Server on an E10000!

Andressen's idea is simply to setup the DB/App server, and simply sell the right to run your servlets, CGIs, applets, etc on their servers.

I can tell you that it's a very valuable proposition to some companies. It's too distracting to have developers wasting time performing maintaince on hardware, software, network, etc.

Now, you can easily hire an inhouse admin to do it, but you still won't have the quality of running on a Sun Enterprise 10000 hosted at Exodus, with 24hr on-call staff, high security, subterranian power generators, etc Also, it takes time to hire someone and have them set it all up. With outsourcing, you make one phone call, write a check, and your developers can start coding the next day.

-Ray

Crap, crap, crap, and more crap

[cjsnell]

UGGHH!!! I'm so sick of seeing VCs and Wall Street fawning over these companies that have absolutely WORTHLESS products. Has anyone here ever used Netscape Application Server? If you have, you know what a stinking turd it is. Want to scale your super-duper ".com" (and gawd, I'm so sick of that word) application using Netscape servers? Well, here's what you do: You buy several million dollars worth of high-end Sun hardware to run it and hire a flock of Java consultants to build your application for you. It will take them at least 6 months, probably a year, to develop the final product. When you're finally rolling, you'll have a bloated, unmanageable, Java-based three-tier app that barely functions, even when run on Sun's latest and greatest hardware. To support all this hardware, you'll need a room full of Solaris admins and systems support staff, and when its all said and done, your product is still as slow as a spilled bucket of tar on a North Dakota winter day. Trust me, I've worked for several companies that have gone this route and it ain't pretty.

The fact that this article touts that VCellar has hired someone who was formerly in charge of Kiva development scares me. I'll give them this, though--if you are foolish enough to go the three-tiered Java route, you'll need a company like Vcellar to help you run all the big iron you'll need to support your app.

The future of online computing, IMHO, is:

Perl
Mason
Apache
FreeBSD
mod_perl
Oracle
Dell hardware
VA Linux hardware

Unfortunately, many of the above will probably never be as popular is the "Vcellar" type solutions, because large companies love to spend huge amounts of investors' money. It's the nature of the beast.