Microsoft's Manhattan Project

This week Microsoft gave evidence that it will continue to be a major force for at least the next decade. The company outlined its products and strategies that more fully embrace the "cloud," such as the Azure set of cloud services; Web-based, lighter-weight versions of Microsoft Office applications; and the latest iteration of the Live Mesh middleware. Google may have won the search war, but Microsoft isn't about to cede the global cloud to the search engine giant.

Ray Ozzie explains Azure to CNET News correspondent Ina Fried.

As in past epochs in its 33-year history, Microsoft ties its success to the developer community, having an army of loyal, or at least well or modestly compensated, software warriors. The Microsoft mantra is: "Build a platform and an ecosystem of developers, partners, fans, and people willing to spend their money will follow." A compelling platform and the potential to reach a large audience of buyers, which Microsoft can deliver, attract the developers, who build the applications and services that attract consumers and business users.

Microsoft also now understands that its platform must span every kind of device--PC, notebook, smartphone, car, home, etc.--and offline scenarios. Microsoft missed the Web search revolution, but it's not going to miss out on the much bigger revolution--the move to the cloud over the next two decades.

Google is building a competing ecosystem from the ground up with similar characteristics and a desire to attract millions of developers. Amazon is pushing its elastic computer cloud, and Rackspace, EMC, IBM, and many other companies are trying to get a piece of the action. Most the cloud companies are focused on hosting services, but the biggest piece will be platforms-as-a-service with developers creating and running their applications for on a cloud operating system.

An early example of this trend is Salesforce.com's proprietary Force.com platform. Sun Microsystems, the company that coined the phrase "The network is the computer," has all the pieces to construct a planetary cloud but seems to be missing from the discussion. As my friend Steve Gillmor notes, Sun is on the ropes.

Openness is a major issue as the global cloud materializes. Businesses don't want to be locked into a particular cloud, and also want various clouds and services to interoperate via standards. Speaking at the Professional Developers Conference last week, Microsoft's chief software architect Ray Ozzie said that the foundation level in the operating system cloud would run in Microsoft's data center, but SQL services, .NET, and Live services can be mixed and matched by developers inside and outside of the company's datacenters. The Azure cloud is also cross-platform, but the various clouds will extract a toll and by nature it won't be dead simple to move applications using foundation services from one cloud to another.

Microsoft's cloud computing efforts have gotten off to a slow start compared with competitors, and it's on the scale of a Manhattan Project for Windows. Azure is in pre-beta and who knows how it will turn out or whether consumers and companies will adopt it with enough volume to keep Microsoft's business model and market share intact. But there is no turning back and Microsoft has finally legitimized Office in the cloud.

Ray Ozzie has a track record of slowly but surely getting things done and Microsoft is famously persistent and cash rich. But building a platform, or Internet operating system, at planetary scale supporting billions of users and trillions of transactions per day, and having fleet Google as a primary competitor will be a major test of Microsoft's brain trust and resolve. Don't be surprised to find a recharged Bill Gates parachuting into the fray as Azure evolves and the cloud war for developers escalates.

See also:

Scoble: Never underestimate Microsoft's ability to turn a corner

Wilcox: How Can You Be So Sure about Azure?

[djc8080]

Mr. Ozzie is coordinating a massive shift to cloud computing.
- Applications like Dynamics (i.e. CRM, ERP), Office (i.e. Word, Excel, Powerpoint), and Live (i.e. email, messenger, spaces, search)
- Middleware services like dotNet, SQL server, Exchange server, Sharepoint
- Azure platform that integrates the parts over the cloud

Recently, Microsoft also announced:
-Windows 7 - an improved version of the problematic Vista
-Explorer 8 - bigger and better
-Hints of gesture-based Microsoft Mobile to fend off the iPhone

The Company intends to shift from heavy dependence on bundling, licensing, and selling software to earning subscription fees (SaaS) and ad-supported free usees like Hotmail.

While Microsoft has the strength of their huge army, code base, customers, and cash - they also suffer the legacy that prevents nimble change. Authorization, authentication, accounting, and control issues that dominate the needs of enterprises conflict with the free flowing, fast changing conversations and interactions on the consumer web. Whereas the footprint of Windows, Office, Mobile, and Explorer gets larger - competitors like Google Chrome and Apple iPhone have succeeded with light weight clients on Linux derivations that load more quickly, consume less power, offer advanced features, change the standards for user interaction, and lower prices to consumers.

iPhone will soon dominate smartphones. Explorer may soon lose majority share with browsers to Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. Notebooks may be emerging as a category of light-weight devices. Has Microsoft ceded the world of client devices to others - while trying to fully defend their dominance of backroom services? Will listening and responding to enterprise clients slow their move into the consumer web?

Competition is good for innovation.

Is Azure a game-changer or simply too-little, too-late?

-Dash
http://adEcon101.blogspot.com/

[Penguinisto]

I'll take "too little, too late" for $500, Alex!

Here's the deal - the massive growth of OSX, coupled with the domination of Linux on the back-end of the Internet, demands that you use open standards online - not your own proprietary closed-source/embrace-extend-extinguish paradigm.

On the enterprise front, MSFT is getting mired. SharePoint is an overpriced overly-complex example of this... for what you could accomplish in a couple of days with any decent CMS (MediaWiki, Drupal, etc), you get to pay a ton of money in license fees, throw multiple servers at it, create a HUGE database service (and pay licensing fees for that too - it only works with MS SQL), and pay a "SharePoint Specialist/Consultant" to create a "farm" that will serve up to 2000 users before you have to throw even more money at the whole thing again to accommodate the increases. Meanwhile even the most crudely built of phpNuke installs happily serve hundreds of thousands at a time... for $0.00

Having just recently overseen a SharePoint installation (that is, after seeing a previous one my predecessor had royally horked-up, and watching an already-paid-for contractor put a new one in for $150/hr)? I'm seriously not impressed. I think that when I get a touch of slack time, I'll fire up Drupal on a VM, make it look/smell/taste like the SP install, integrate it with the existing user base (I just love Samba...) and watch the higher-ups recoil in horror as I tell them what it cost to create a leaner, faster, and far more robust corporate CMS: $0.00 in licensing fees, and very little time.

I think Ozzie's dreams will end up in similar ways - folks will be lukewarm towards it at best, and developers won't touch it unless they are forced to.

[CrashPad63]

Penguin you got your head so far up Apples arse you can see what Jobs had for lunch. Your opinions on anything MS absolute tripe. So go back to handling Jobs and let the big boys deal with the rest.

[heygrimey]

@Penguinisto,

Typical reaction when you screw up a deployment...blame the product. SharePoint is dirt simple to deploy. Your guy should RTFM, or get some skills. 2000 users? I've supported that on a single server pilot of SharePoint. If you are serious, you are going to need multiple servers for high availability. 5 servers will get you a 100k users on SharePoint....installed in a day.

Drupal? Really? You clearly are full of it on your posts. You know enough surface details to try to appear knowledgable...but anyone that actually works in the business can see right through your closed minded drivel. SharePoint is not a CMS product...CMS is just on of the myriad of features. How about Document Management for one? How does Drupal compare?

But really, what is the point in acknowledging you? You post here non stop to incite arguments out of some insecurity on your part. An argument is only useful if you are open to other people points of view. You are not. You hate Microsoft. We get it.

[jtjt145]

After so much huffing and puffing from Micro$oft these days I wonder: are they doing something that's new? NO. Are they likely going to do something that will technically outshine their competitors? In my opinion: NO. Open Source beats them in nearly every aspect. Are they going to offer goods that will be irresistible to the corporate market? NO. They have got the wrong business model, and lack the brains to recognize it.
Maybe the huffing and puffing is supposed to make us forget Vista, their latest failure. Bye-bye Micro$oft.

[Arayta]

If you ask me, Vista is their only failure. In all other aspects, Microsoft's software is nice.

Also, I love open source and all, but something like an operating system should not be open source and have literally thousands of different versions. There needs to be a standard.

And they have been doing new things. There are unique new things in Windows 7 as well as innovations to existing features. Have you seen the PDC videos?

I'm not sure why people are so quick to criticize Microsoft, yet are extremely lenient towards other companies. They're not some big bad evil empire; they're just another computer company trying to sell their stuff. Stop being so critical of them and admit that they are going in the right direction with Windows 7.

[rapier1]

Meh, vista isn't so much a failure as much as public perception of it is. From a technology perspective its a solid competitor. On the income front it could do better but they aren't losing money on it. The area in which its really failed is public relations.

[Lerianis]

How many times do we have to say it before people get it: Vista is NOT a failure. For anyone running Vista on a REASONABLE system (one that came out in the past 5 years with a Pentium 4/Celeron processor, a Radeon X300 video card or highter (those sell for 5 bucks today, the first listed one!), and 2GB of memory), Vista runs even FASTER than XP in almost all applications.
It's networking speeds are faster, it's network transfer speeds are faster, etc. etc. etc.

The only complaints people have voiced with Vista are driver complaints (that should be put on the DEVICE MAKERS HEADS, not Microsoft's), a few application compatibility complaints (of which 99% of those are for applications that were special made for a business and the idiots who made the application didn't take into account computer software like IE changing), and a few game compatibility complaints (of which, most of those are easily fixable with a registry hack/setting or a game update).

[dixonpete]

Microsoft's products and services should be avoided on principle. Instead of fostering competition their presence in any market and establishing luck-in via proprietary file formats weakens the entire marketplace.

[dfarber]

Microsoft appear to be slowly changing and becoming more open and less predatory...but it's early in the game...

[Arayta]

Whoa whoa whoa, hold the phone--- are they saying that the OS and programs will be stored on a MS server ans will be a service?! Oh hell no! I'd like to actually own my computer, not rent it!

I hope he's saying that the traditional OS and this server based OS will coexist! I don't want my files in their hands and my OS to be controlled by them!

[Lerianis]

Well, I wouldn't want ANYONE to be controlling my OS, whether it be Apple, Linux, or Microsoft! Yeah, these things had more better coexist: the server will store 99% of the packages, which will be downloaded to your computer on an 'as needed' basis, and your OS itself will be very lightweight, like MinWin.

[amarkj]

Arayta - the client OS and the cloud OS will coexist. You have choices as a business.

[alt117]

Remember to separate the consumer from the enterprise.

Enterprises did not skip Vista and run to Linux or OS X, they are mostly now waiting for Windows 7.

Most of the anti Microsoft noise comes from consumers and the mostly Mac using tech press.

The majority of business are predominantly Microsoft users, and will stay that way if MS can show them a lower cost way to continue doing what they are doing.

[technogeist2k6]

Well, I wonder what happens when company X decides to relinquish resources back to the cloud, and the data isn't wiped fully. Sort of like clearing the pagefile on conventional Windows OSes, nice to do, but actually time consuming. Would MSFT really tie up resources just freed, while the data was wiped, and the cloud is at peak demand to deliver more resources elsewhere? Cutting corners is what happens, and that's going to end badly.

[dpminusa]

I am a developer and need technology to be employed. I also need to stay current to have value. This aside, the movement of these giants is directed by marketing strategies designed to acquire and retain market share. Technology is the tool to do this not the goal of the changes they make. To believe anything else is niave..

They acquire the talent to plan and deploy these strategies. If we are honest with ourselves as developers, we like the technology regardless. We will always both enjoy it and criticize it. That is our nature as analysts.

I use several Microsoft products, Web development tools, Programming Languages, UNIX, Linux, etc. like a lot of other developers. There are days when I like them and days when I wish they we different/better.

What I don't like is losing my freedom to choose products or services. I see a lot of the changes in the Computer Industry designed to do this. with the larger companies. Some of the new imperatives are clearly designed to limit my choices.

Fortunatley there always seems to be a new group on the horizon with a great new idea that balances the scales.

In short, let's not get too carried away with all this stuff. Let's try to enjoy the challenge and let the titans run their course as they always have. We just need to keep a watchful eye on the bigger picture. If what you are using is not right for the project, recommend something else. If your executive group is unbending, move on and find a company that is a little more enlightened.

You may be given ownership of a failed project you fought against anyway.