Microsoft's 'Cloud OS' takes shape

DENVER--Microsoft is in the early stages of a plan that will see virtually its entire lineup of underlying Internet services opened up to developers, the software maker made clear this week.

In addition to making available its existing services, such as mail and instant messaging, Microsoft also will create core infrastructure services, such as storage and alerts, that developers can build on top of. It's a set of capabilities that have been referred to as a "Cloud OS," though it's not a term Microsoft likes to use publicly.

"Cloud-centric is probably a better way to say it because Cloud OS makes it sound like it is only running on the cloud," said Brian Hall, general manager of Windows Live. "A lot of the data, a lot of the apps, a lot of the interesting things are on the edge. They are on the PCs. They are on the Xboxes. They are on the phones."

But, quibbles over nomenclature aside, Microsoft made clear this week that it aims to play the same role on the Internet that it plays today on the desktop--that of providing its own applications as well as the underlying plumbing and tools that developers use to build their products.

In a speech to partners at its Worldwide Partner Conference here, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer promised that the company would be talking to developers later this year about the first version of its developer platform, some pieces of which are currently available in beta form. Hall echoed the message that Microsoft plans to open up much of the technology that powers Windows Live as well as the underlying infrastructure.

"What's ours is yours," Hall told the crowd.

The ambitious promise comes more than a year and a half after Bill Gates first announced the company's plans for Windows Live at a November 2005 event in San Francisco. Since then Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie and a team have been working on turning Microsoft's Internet business from a series of separate services offered directly by Microsoft into a set of more unified services that can be offered either by Microsoft directly or through partners.

At this year's Mix '07 show, Ozzie, who has been crafting the Live strategy, did talk about allowing programmers access to some of its higher-level services, such as Windows Live Spaces. But he was largely silent on the topic of the underlying developer platform.

"I've nothing to announce in that realm at this time," Ozzie told CNET News.com in an interview then. "Yet, it's pretty clear that we're working on some stuff."

Late last month, Microsoft introduced two new Windows Live Services, one for sharing photos and the other for all types of files. While those services are being offered directly by Microsoft today, they represent the kinds of things that Microsoft is now promising will be also made available to developers.

Among the other application and infrastructure components, Microsoft plans to open are its systems for alerts, contact management, communications (mail and messenger) and authentication.

"Windows Live is here as a platform for our partners," Hall said. That's not exactly the case--yet. Microsoft has made a couple of pieces, such as its Virtual Earth service, available commercially. Other components are available either for broad or limited testing, while still others have yet to be offered to developers. Instant messaging, for example, will be made broadly available to developers in test form in October.

'A real computer science challenge'
One of the key challenges Microsoft faces is trying to write tools that allow developers to code in such a way that it doesn't necessarily matter if it is a phone or a PC that is accessing the service, or whether a file is stored locally or in the cloud.

"There's a real computer science challenge for abstracting all of that well, abstracting how do you find and manage devices, how do you access devices and do it in a way that is transparent to the developer," Hall said.

Hall likens it to Windows in its early days.

"A lot of what Windows was doing early on was memory management, storage, all of the things today we take for granted," Hall said. "The vast majority of developers (today), they are not thinking, 'how am I going to store this particular piece of data in memory?' It just happens. The same thing is going to happen in the mesh model."

Microsoft is also trying to make sure that its business terms are attractive enough to woo the next MySpace or YouTube to bet on its technology. It has spent months talking to existing partners, but also to venture capital firms and start-ups.

For now, Microsoft is offering up many of its services free for up to 1 million users, while saying it wants to strike some kind of deal if a service exceeds that threshold.

"If this becomes a big, big commercial success we want to have a value exchange, but we'll give you plenty of ramp room," Hall said.

As it works to build out the underlying core services, Microsoft is also offering up applications to partners, such as Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger and the Spaces blogging tool.

Until now, most of the deals have been one-off deals that the company has had to individually negotiate. Among Microsoft's early deals are a few colleges and universities, such as the University of Pennsylvania, as well as some telecommunications firms. On Wednesday, Microsoft announced a deal with Qwest, which will offer its Internet subscribers the option of using a Qwest-branded version of Microsoft's Windows Live services.

"It was a much more custom engagement model," Hall said. "Now we are moving to a scalable come one, come all approach."

[Commander_Spock]

>>> 'Cloud OS'<<<!!! Why...

... don't they just name the thing "WARP" (since that is the Code-Base anyway) and done with it since sooner or later - photons and all get sucked into the Black Holes! Looks like computing at the speed of "light" all over again!

[Commander_Spock]

Hello Houston - Microsoft On Cloud Nine!

While Commander_Spock do not wish to be seen as "knock" these dudes on the Redmond Campus should one venture on an higher orbit then will there not be a "cloudless" environment to be considered (that of SPACE, the final frontier) and here the dudes from the Redmond Campus (often being accused of not being very innovative) are saying that ("Cloud-centric is probably a better way to say it because Cloud OS makes it sound like it is only running on the cloud," said Brian Hall, general manager of Windows Live. "A lot of the data, a lot of the apps, a lot of the interesting things are on the edge. They are on the PCs. They are on the Xboxes. They are on the phones.") while it is quite certain that some smarter folks may very well be focusing on topics like quantum theories, quantum mechanics, quantum physics, quantum computing... Question: Do ya all think that the Redmond Campus is the best place on Planet Three from whence sea-change innovations with regards to the future of computing will come!!!

[wildchild_plasma_gyro]

Head up in the clouds

Only kidding there.
Microsoft never ceases to amaze me with their determination to follow through with the advanced options that will make the world we live in tommorow other groups would be wise to follow this lead of believing in dreams(IBM,Sony, maybe Sun (although theres a lot in sun)).
Also a lot of groups would be wise to think collabrativly about this and think about what they can contribte individually to peoples collabrative abilities within the cloud capabilities.
If there's somthing Microsoft need right now its to get a fell of what dreamers and doers are around so that they can make the best package and your group can use and develop with it(win win).

What comes after clouds.
Well clouds are about getting the thunder going and the wok moving while we get a feel for our true potential. They're about allowing us to collaberate technilogically like never before so that groups can gain cooperative cencreat as to provide to best potential to others.
As this world does begin to serment say over the next 27 - 43 years the next stage with the computing power alonside it to achieve such will emerge.

Crystal.

So lets look at this process in form.

Net - power - web - power - cloud - power - crystal.

ok check this out
1961 - 1988 - 2011 - 2028

what does this mean.
Progress takes time.

[jimcbr]

When pigs fly

Well, given the fact that no-one wants to write software for Windows on the PC anymore, why anyone in their right mind would want to use their web tools when there are pleny of better/free/open source stuff out there is beyond me.

[JJWhitney]

Complete lack of direction

MS lacks complete direction in its OS development and that comes from the top.

[MaLvaDo39]

Not Heaven

I believe Microsoft is saying this project is dead from inception.

But I'm not sure why they think it's in heaven among the clouds.

I'm sure it's farther down below where their Windows OS resides...

[justice007]

Sounds fluffy

Sounds very fluffy and marketing-ish so far. From the technical side, it seems to be a scaled up statement of "windows everywhere" talk we heard several years ago. It also implies one can plug only MS-OS based devices into this "cloud" - and with their propensity to not inter-operate with others (and the "E-E-E' practices and resulting reputation), it can be an MS-only cloud. Vapor?

[ralfthedog]

It sounds like Microsoft has discovered Object oriented programing....

It sounds like Microsoft has discovered Object oriented programing and data abstraction. Soon Microsoft will learn to stay away from the goto command.

[Llib Setag]

Hey! You! Get off of my cloud!

(The Rolling Stones)

This is how The Matrix started...

[henk goewie]

Jedi OS

I picture myself and my dear ones, cloacked and caped , in a galaxy
far, far away. Sitting around a coffee-table like apparatus
displaying yet other galaxies and their inhabitants. I got lame
hands from fiddling with the huge touch-screen. I am trying to
book some flight-tickets on the IInet (Intergalactic Internet...) for
our holiday. The coffee table says: Cloud OS cannot print your
tickets at this time... If you want to notify Microsoft about this
problem, just clap your hands...

[LuvThatCO2]

Cue the microsoft bashers!

Uh, a story about MS. Time for the bashers to come out of the woodwork!

Something tells me if this was about an 'Apple Cloud OS' or 'Google Cloud OS', everyone would be singing about how innovative it is.

[Ian Joyner]

Vapourware...

is the term that appropriately comes to mind. It's a very old tactic ?
other competing companies generate a lot of interest in their
shipping products, so you announce what you are going to do next,
based on partial and unproven implementations to steal the
marketplaces gaze and hopefully critical sales. IBM did it with the
Stretch vapourware computer to knock out the CDC 6000.
Microsoft has learnt these anti-competitive practices well from IBM.
See Richard DeLamarter's "Big Blue: IBM's Use and Abuse of Power".

[reachx]

yeah, it's called JAVA!!! only oh 15 yrs later

yeah, it's called JAVA!!! only oh 15 yrs later

[Penguinisto]

"What's yours is ours", respond Malware Writers

So they're gonna let developers dig way deep down?

This is going to be... interesting.

/P

[Commander_Spock]

Don't Worry, Be Happy Folks...

... as Space Ship - Enterprise Warp's V 5 engines (eComStation 2.0) about to come online soon you are all guaranteed an exciting journey through "clouds"; space, time (and your economic woes which where thrust upon you by certain folks). Enjoy your weekend like you did before the ".com Bubble" exploded. TGIF and it's Party Time!

[Ramicnet]

Why to wait the cloud, try G.ho.st

I think potencial alternatives to microsoft cloud os are already in the market with a big vision to deal with people who are moving all their data and application to the web (Web mail, Web photo albums, Web documents?etc) and to be available from anywhere.

Check out G.ho.st (The Global Hosted Operating SysTem) at http://g.ho.st. G.ho.st is working to provide a free fully functional Virtual Computer, on the Web, so that every person in the world can do any computing at any time, any place, on any budget.

Just try it...

[Commander_Spock]

Why....

... didn't the S.E.T.I folks think about this idea before!!!

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

[wauler]

what is the next big thing in theory...

Actually we are doing it in china and I am sure it gonna make huge sense shortly. I mean the future lies in web-based RSS and user-driven mashup, so the youtubes especially facebook vertically are in the right direction but not enough no wonder sometimes they will lost doing something offend their users. We must reject the concept doing the traditional Internet business let alone Operating systems like WebOs or Webservice Opening API. We must build the web as a platform which has dedicated subject and audience thus we can have control to the customer so that we can grasp the internetlised content and application, there is a chinese saying:皮之不存毛将焉附. something like and Operator2.0, you know they have vendor of network equipment and handset maker help setup the infrastrcture and provide application then customers help themself generate content: voice, data and even more...But ours will quadplay within internet, software, hardware and media industry, like yahoo to media, salesforce to software, apple to hardware, so this is really gonna be future stuff and we are trying to make it in china. And cheers cause definetely we have entered into an era of unified competition totally (同质化全竞争)thanks to the fantastic spurt of ICT and TMT world tend to be flat. I am pretty much sure it will shape the brand new future of this whole TMT&ICT industry.
How:
vision, mission, strategy
vision, focus, execuation
innovation: speed and simplicity
engineering: user experience and security

4more turn to waulerwauler#gmail.com

[knightsqr]

Very UNinteresting

Sounds like MS is just trying to recreate MS Outlook for the Web (w/ network file shares). Not very original. I thought it would be something more interesting like Professor David Gelernter's concept of Mirror Worlds, which was a massively distributed processing vision (see Gelernter's C-Linda and Sun Microsystem's JXTA). Microsoft needs to stop trying to find ways to lock users into its 1990's vision of the world.

[i,Jimbot]

Uh, would that be because....

Would that perhaps be because Microsoft has a history of long
delays, vaporware, poor products, etc., whereas Google and Apple
have histories of innovation and cool products? (hint: YES)