Last night I attended the Crunchies award ceremony, where Facebook took top honors as the best overall start-up (See the full list of Crunchies award winners). The awards are based on a popularity contest via votes cast through the Crunchies Web site and with input from the Crunchies Committee, consisting of co-hosts GigaOm, Silicon Alley Insider, TechCrunch, VentureBeat and advisors.
The most surprising winner for the evening was in the Microsoft's Live Mesh, which won in the category best technology innovation/achievement. The competition included Facebook Connect (the runner-up), Google Friend Connect, Google Chrome, Swype and Yahoo BOSS.
Given that Microsoft is often vilified by the Web 2.0, start-up community, and the stellar competition in the category, it's hard to imagine that Microsoft won without a little help from the Crunchies Committee. On the other hand, the Microsoft community is large and mighty and perceptions are slowing shifting to be more positive about the openness of the giant software company. In any case, it's a deserved award, which was accepted by Ray Ozzie, the chief software architect at Microsoft, and David Treadwell, who runs the Live Services Platform.
David Treadwell and Ray Ozzie discuss the mesh with GigaOm's Om Malik.
(Credit: Andrew Mager)Live Mesh is essential glue for synchronizing files with all the devices a user might touch, and as a kind of information bus for identity, notifications, and other Web services. Microsoft, with its huge footprint, is uniquely positioned to provide a universal, operating system- and device-agnostic syncing foundation.
Ozzie and his team are working on a complete transformation of the back end and the front end, moving from PC-centric to multi-screen, he told me during a brief conversation at the Crunchies. Microsoft's Azure cloud service is another key part of the transformation, but is lagging behind Live Mesh. "2009 is still a learning year for Azure, just as 2008 was the Mesh," Ozzie said.
The challenge for Azure is moving the massive scale Microsoft platforms like XBox Live, to the Azure cloud-services architecture. "In 2009 Azure will be more mature, you'll see some large-scale usage," Ozzie said. But it won't be until 2010 that Azure is ready for prime time.
Ozzie is mindful of the profound changes culturally and technologically among its developers that Microsoft must undergo to realize the Live Platform and Azure cloud services vision. "When we are in an environment with technological and environmental change, you have to focus on these new huge constraints, but also new opportunities for destruction or rebirth," he said during a Crunchies interview with Om Malik.
For a photo replay of the Crunchies, check out Andrew Mager's post.
LOS ANGELES--Microsoft on Monday announced a version of Windows that runs over the Internet from inside Microsoft's own data centers.
Dubbed Windows Azure, it's less a replacement for the operating system that runs on one's own PC than it is an alternative for developers, intended to let them write programs that live inside Microsoft's data centers as opposed to on the servers of a given business.
"It's a transformation of our software and a transformation of our strategy," said Ray Ozzie, a computing industry pioneer who now serves as Microsoft's chief software architect. (For a play-by-play account of Ozzie's speech, see "PDC 2008: Windows Azure live blog.")
Ray Ozzie delivers his keynote address at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference.
(Credit: Robert Vamosi/CNET News)Microsoft first outlined a shift to "Live Services" at an event in San Francisco in 2005. The company has released a few things piecemeal, such as Live Mesh, but Monday's announcement marked the first real discussion of how Microsoft's disparate Internet strategies fit together.
The announcements come at the start of Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference here. On Tuesday, Microsoft plans to go into more detail on Windows 7, the successor to Windows Vista, due out by about January 2010.
With the launch of Azure, Microsoft will find itself in competition with other providers of Internet storage and computing services including Amazon, Salesforce.com, and Rackspace.
Ozzie said he was tipping his cap to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for innovating the hosted computing model. Amazon "established a base-level design pattern, architecture models, and business models that we'll all learn from," he said.
Microsoft is making Windows Azure in preview form to developers, with a limited subset of the features that it plans to have in the product before its final release.
There weren't many details on how Microsoft will charge for Azure, saying it will be free during the preview period. Final pricing, Ozzie said, "will be competitive with the marketplace."
The company itself plans to offer businesses the option of running over the Internet the kinds of software that have traditionally run on a company's own servers. Microsoft already sells its Exchange corporate e-mail software in this way, but that is just the beginning, said Microsoft vice president Dave Thompson.
"All our enterprise software will be delivered as an online service as an option," Thompson said.
CNET News' Elinor Mills contributed to this report.
Server and Tools senior VP Bob Muglia talks about the benefits to businesses of Windows Azure.
(Credit: Robert Vamosi/CNET News)
Microsoft's cloud computing team discusses how a common set of tools can be used for developing applications for traditional Windows as well as for Windows Azure.
(Credit: Robert Vamosi/CNET News)
Microsoft's Dave Thompson tells attendees at the Professional Developer Conference that all of the company's enterprise software will be offered as an online service over time.
(Credit: Robert Vamosi/CNET News)
One of the biggest challenges in business software, whether it lives inside a company or is part of a hosted service, is making sure that only properly authorized employees have access to the data and applications. Microsoft discusses how its Federated Identity platform will work with the new hosted services.
(Credit: Robert Vamosi/CNET News)
While Microsoft eventually hopes its Live Mesh effort will be a way for people to share data across all of their devices, the service that launches next week will be limited in several ways, CNET News.com has learned.
Next week, Microsoft will launch a pre-beta "technology preview" open to about 10,000 testers in the U.S., according to a source familiar with the company's plans.
File synchronization is an important component of Mesh, but not its only feature, the source said. Developers will be able to write their own applications for Live Mesh, with the idea that applications written for Mesh can then be accessed by a number of different devices.
Another key aspiration for Live Mesh is that it work with more than just Microsoft products. Out of the gate it will work with "multiple browsers," the source said. Initially it will be limited to XP and Vista PCs as well as Windows Mobile phones, however Microsoft wants to add Mac support as well more types of phones and even other devices, such as MP3 players.
Live Mesh is also not just a space for linking one's own devices and information. Users will be able to invite friends to share parts of their Mesh.
Ray Ozzie first talked about Mesh in a speech at last month's Mix '08 event in Las Vegas.
"Just imagine the possibilities of unified application management across the device mesh, centralized, Web-based deployment of device-based applications," he said. "Imagine an app platform that's cognizant of all of your devices. Now, as it so happens, we've had a team at Microsoft working on this specific scenario for some time, starting with the PC and focused on the question of how we might make life so much easier for individuals if we just brought together all your PCs into a seamless mesh, for users, for developers, using the Web as a hub."
The company will have more to say at Web 2.0 Expo next week, as well as at an April 24 event, both taking place in San Francisco. A Microsoft representative said the company did not have any comment ahead of its events next week.
LAS VEGAS--Microsoft is looking to position its Silverlight Web technology as the coolest kid in school--one that is both popular and gets along with everyone.
The Hard Rock Cafe arrived at Mix 08 to show how it is using Silverlight to show its 70,000 pieces of rock and roll history online.
(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)At the Mix '08 show here, the company talked about its Mac, Linux, and mobile-phone compatibility and brought out customers like Hard Rock Cafe, NBC, and AOL to talk about how they are using the technology. It also showed Silverlight running on the newest compatible device--Nokia's smartphones.
Microsoft's Scott Guthrie also alluded to support for Apple's iPhone, saying Microsoft wants Silverlight running on "anything that has an SDK (software development kit)."
In the Hard Rock Cafe example, the restaurant and hotel chain used the technology to showcase its massive, 70,000-piece collection of rock artifacts. "This is 2 billion pixels," said a representative of the company who built the site for the Hard Rock.
AOL showed off a new version of AOL Mail, while NBC touted its plans to use Silverlight to bring more than 2,200 hours of video both live and on-demand.
The Hard Rock Cafe catalogued over 2 billion pixels' worth of images as it took its rock gear collection online with Silverlight.
(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)It's all part of Microsoft's aggressive pitch to Web developers, a clear acknowledgment that Microsoft faces a tough battle to win the hearts and minds of those who build Web sites and applications.
"I know today you have many amazing technology choices," Ray Ozzie said in his introductory comments. "But I'd like you to bet on us because I think together we can create extraordinary experiences.
... Read MoreEditor's note: CNET News.com's Ina Fried blogged Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie's address live from Mix '08.
LAS VEGAS--Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie decided he didn't want to share the stage with an elephant.
In the first minute of his speech at Mix '08, the company's Web-focused confab here, he talked about all of the things Microsoft has done in the online arena over the past year.
Ray Ozzie opens Microsoft's Mix '08 saying that Web notions like tagging will become as common as the file and edit menus on the desktop.
(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)"And then there's Yahoo," Ozzie said, adding that there isn't much he can say about Microsoft's pending bid.
"I can say it's already added some interesting twists to what promises to be a really, really exciting year," Ozzie said.
He also justified spending Yahoo-size dollars by talking about the potential of the online advertising market.
Ozzie said he hoped in his speech to connect some of the dots between Microsoft's online services, which he acknowledged can seem from the outside to be somewhat haphazard.
"It might seem to you to be just a little bit random," he said.
Update at 9:50 a.m. PST: Ozzie talked about how various experiences that today are handled differently on various devices will soon be more seamlessly connected. In music and movies, for example, connected entertainment means only having to organize and license content once and being able to use it on multiple devices.
Update at 9:55 a.m.: For productivity, he said Office Live will become a "hub" where people will be able to link tags and share documents. Ozzie said Microsoft will have more to say about this area at a separate event. He didn't say when or where this event will take place.
Update at 9:57 a.m.: Ozzie said that the attendees at Mix will be the first to be able to try out a new service for managing multiple PCs, though again he didn't say just when this service will be available.
Ozzie also announced a new database-in-the-cloud service, known as SQL Server Data Services.
In wrapping up his comments, Ozzie acknowledged that Microsoft is competing for developers' attention. "I know today you have many amazing technology choices," he said. "But I'd like you to bet on us because I think together we can create extraordinary experiences."
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