Microsoft WebsiteSpark tries to hit open source, mostly misses
Arguably Microsoft's biggest threat is its irrelevance to Web developers. Though the company dominates personal computing and is a major force in enterprise computing, it remains a distant also-ran to LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) development for the growing Web ecosystem. On Thursday Microsoft announced its WebsiteSpark program to build inroads with the Web crowd, but the program is unlikely to make a serious dent on LAMP's dominance.
The reason? There are some big strings attached.
Microsoft has gone after Web developers before, but products like Expressions haven't made much headway with Web developers, as The Seattle Times reports.
WebsiteSpark, following on the heels of successful student (DreamSpark) and start-up (BizSpark) technology seeding programs, will likely make more of a dent. Free, high-quality tools to Web developers, as TechCrunch suggests, are going to be a big win.
But it's not going to be enough.
The problem isn't one of cost. At least, not primarily. WebsiteSpark has that nailed. The program gives thousands of dollars of technology away for just $100 at the end of three years, and then two options ($999 per year for everything or a scaled down $199 per year option) that aren't much more expensive.
But this overlooks the larger issue: Microsoft constrains who can join the program (start-ups with fewer than 10 employees) and meters their growth after the three years. Open-source alternatives do neither.
No upfront cost...but what about the future?
The first constraint isn't a big deal. Many aspiring Googles have fewer than 10 employees, and will continue to be small through their first few years.
The second, however, is the killer. At the end of the three years, Microsoft doesn't require WebsiteSpark participants to buy anything, but if the start-up is successful, it faces big bills as it scales out its Microsoft technology. This wouldn't be a big problem if there were no free alternatives that offer equal or better performance. But there are.
Microsoft tries to spin the open-source LAMP alternative as disjointed, and further argues it is a more expensive development path, and even that Microsoft offers better Web performance than LAMP-based development.
But this isn't the way the Facebooks of the world see it. They view the open-source LAMP stack as the proven, scalable winner in Web development. Microsoft can't match that with a price tag.
LAMP gives Web developers control over their destiny, both in terms of source code (they can finely tune LAMP to fit their needs) and in terms of cost (they need not pay anyone to scale out). They may choose to pay someone like Red Hat or MySQL for a support subscription, but at scale, companies like Google simply don't. They have the expertise in-house to support themselves.
But that's at scale. The problem remains, however, for Microsoft, that many of those sub-10-employee shops are dreaming of being Google, not being a mom-and-pop shop forever. So, if they're seeing thousands of servers in their future, tying themselves to the Microsoft stack, with all the license fees associated with it, is going to look like a poor decision.
Most companies will fail. Most of the rest will remain small. Rationally, most of these small start-ups, then, should be content to get Microsoft's technology for a song, assuming they don't care about the flexibility that comes from LAMP.
The other side is that with open source--which many of these Web developers will have picked up while at school or just on their own--there are no barriers to how the developer wants to use the software. Ultimately, Microsoft's WebsiteSpark requires Web developers to color within the lines that Microsoft dictates. That may be well and good for a big population of developers, but it's not the path that Digg, Google, Facebook, etc., have taken.
Microsoft is huge in enterprise computing, in part because it lowers the cost and complexity of development for enterprises of any size. But the Web is built on open source. Microsoft is playing catch-up in this market, and it's simply not going to be enough to wave great tools in front of developers for a low fee.
Microsoft isn't alone in making such a pitch. Oracle, for its part, is touting the development of OraTweet, a Twitter clone built with Oracle Application Express Web development platform. But the reality is that enterprise ISVs like Oracle and Microsoft are largely invisible in Web development.
This is one reason Oracle is interested in picking up MySQL, the leading Web database. MySQL is almost entirely complementary, not competitive, to Oracle's enterprise-focused database.
Microsoft, however, has no such plans to buy its way into the open-source development community, which means it must rely on programs like WebsiteSpark to catch up. It's a start-up, but it's not enough.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
The bottom line here is that, frankly, if you don't realize you're buying into the Microsoft way of development when you sign up for this, you're pretty dense. It's very clear what is being sold.
Personally, I'm utterly ecstatic about this. I do development daily in .net technologies and am trying to get some contracting jobs going. I have 1 client and don't own the tools that would really help me develop quickly. Sure, there are the express editions of Visual Studio and they work alright, but this is a far better way to go.
Scott Guthrie's blog post explains this program in great detail. Check it out here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/09/24/announcing-the-websitespark-program.aspx
Simply put, you can't beat free stuff. Yes, there's that 100$ fee at the end of the 3 years, but that's a small price to pay for a boatload of software and licensing that would easily cost about $10,000 on it's own.
Charging for a good service is also good... I see no problem with that. For example for me starting with Open Source is hard... I have 10 years experience with MSFT technologies so I'm already trained. Of course I use Ubuntu and have a couple of experiments with Wordpress... but I still find it difficult to work with some open source software.
It's just a shame that people don't understand how badly SQL Server slaughters mySQL.
And Reporting Services? I choose to use the best web apps in the world-- Windows beats Lamp in 100 different ways... So sorry that you're too slanted to see how things work in the real world.
"$349 per server for _FOUR_ processors and _SIXTEEN_ gb ram?-- does ANY linux distro even support that lol?)"
Are you serious?
In this case asp.net beats out the most popular open source web development language php.
http://misfitgeek.com/blog/aspnet/php-versus-asp-net-ndash-windows-versus-linux-ndash-who-rsquo-s-the-fastest/
Since they'll be using the windows server family of tools for commercial hosting services they'll need to register under the SPLA agreement.
The SPLA agreement offers monthly licensing for service providers of these products. Windows Server Web edition is about $10/month per CPU. SQL Server 2008 Web edition is about $15/month. These companies on a single server can host hundreds of websites per server. If you consider two dual CPU servers one running web and one running SQL they're monthly software costs (not including dev tools) after the three years will only be $70/month. Those two servers will be able to host hundreds of websites and databases.
Let's say they had two dedicated servers and paid roughly $300/month per server. Their monthly expenses are now about $670/month (again after the program).
Most of these shops will charge a premium for hosting and that will be roughly $50-$100 a month because they'll bundle in hosting and some sort of website maintenance or marketing services in addition to just hosting.
Even if they only have 25 customers each paying $100/month on these two dedicated servers they'll profit about $22,000 a year in addition to the design and development money they are already making.
At the end of th day they're going to be building a web hosting service and incorporating that as part of the development and design business and end up increasing their revenue.
The most common reason any company has as to why they didn't choose Windows server for their website is, just like you pointed out, licensing costs. But once you start to look into it, it's not so expensive.. $70 more a month for a company that's bringing in $25,000 a month? not bad ROI in my opinion.
Only moronic purchasing practices stemming from poor fiscal discipline in IT departments allowed those products to prosper in the first place. A much needed realignment of spending priorities induced by the economic crisis may be bringing the enterprise IT gravy train to a well-deserved end.
@Aaron - OpenSolaris supports well over 256 processors, and is just as free as Linux. Part of the flexibility of open source is that you can run your software wherever you choose, and are not limited to a single choice of platform by a mutually reinforcing web of dependencies. PostgreSQL slaughters Oracle, which itself slaughters SQL Server in performance.
Most Web 2.0 Linux shops run quad-core servers with 32GB of RAM or higher, in the hundreds. Facebook has 3000 servers just for memcached. If they had to pay $350 per server (probably more, since those starter licenses are seemingly limited to a puny 16GB), they would have to pay a cool million bucks in Microsoft tax. No wonder they don't bite.
Even .NET fans like Jeff Atwood of Stack Overflow were bit by Microsoft licensing and had second thoughts. To quote him: "Open source software only comes in one edition: awesome"
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001283.html
Source please. Sounds implausible if not down right ridiculous.
sudo apt-get install wordpress
sudo apt-get install mediawiki
It installs in just a few minutes, runs on a $20 / month virtual private server, and can handle plenty of load and run for months trouble-free.
I don't want to crank up VS.Net and write a bunch of code to create a website. I want to focus on the content and the display of my website. The true power of LAMP is the diverse and robust community writing extra software on top. It might run on Windows, but there is no reason to bother.
They are stuck in a 90s paradigm of boxed, expensive, and slow software.
Those days are over.
Welcome to the Web platform.
Microsoft product, I have found, allow a developer to build products rapidly, however the development is more like that of a young child building a tower with lego blocks. MS tech is simple and accessible, but lacks the diversity to build a product that is really flexible. Essentially, it is ideal for an 8 year old child who need to put together a school project, or a high school drop out that thinks he can become a millionaire online by selling random paraphernalia.
Microsoft will always lag behind as they are a multinational organization that are trying to predict what the next big thing will be. The next 'Google' is a small group of people that live in the real world and can solve problems based on their own experiences, and if they are smart they will develop those solution on multi-tiered technologies that are flexible enough (And non proprietary) to meet those goals, without having to give away their hard earned cash to an organization just because they have a strong marketing campaign.
Oh, and by the way Aaron Kempf, super computers (Those are really big and powerful computers) predominantly use Linux, so your argument illustrates your narrow mindedness.
See:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Operating_systems_used_on_top_500_supercomputers.svg/400px-Operating_systems_used_on_top_500_supercomputers.svg.png
Yeah real stupid. Better to stick with a clunky browser that locks up all the time.
- by wickenby September 29, 2009 11:15 AM PDT
- This reminds me of Scott McNeally about 10 years ago talking of MS throwing 'barbed twinkies' in front of developers'.
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(16 Comments)I guess they're still at it.