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."
