Tackling everything from security issues to open source, we put the tough questions to Paul Houghton, Managing Director of Microsoft Australia and New Zealand.
Q: A lot of what we've seen regarding Microsoft's .NET My Services seems to be aimed at the consumer. How will .Net services benefit the business user?
Business customers will benefit through simplified integration with partner, supplier, and customer systems enabled through the .NET Framework.
.NET My Services will enable applications, devices, and services to work together on the user's behalf and under the user's control by allowing Web services to access data centrally stored in a central digital location. As it provides unprecedented levels of personal control, .NET My Services will create a wide range of new opportunities for businesses of all kinds, and will trigger a new wave of excitement about the Internet.
In addition, .NET My Services gives developers a powerful platform for building services that offer real value to all customers. These services include the ability for users to easily log on to Web sites, receive timely and relevant notifications they've opted to receive, and, with their consent, securely share their calendar, contacts, and other information with anybody, anywhere, on any device.
The .NET My Services are an important part of the Microsoft .NET initiative providing a platform that enables developers to create user-centric applications that deliver new levels of value and convenience to users. Other .NET elements include the Microsoft .NET Framework and the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET suite of developer tools; Microsoft .NET Enterprise Servers, which provide a robust infrastructure for XML Web services; as well as smart devices for delivering Microsoft .NET services; and the overall NET-based experiences.
Bob Muglia, VP of the .NET Services group, said the key indicator of the success of .NET My Services will be developer adoption. If so, isn't Microsoft shooting itself in the foot by charging developers a minimum of US$1000 a year and $250 per application?
When someone buys a computer today, they pay Microsoft for a license to use the Windows operating system because it works well and runs a large number of applications. The business model for .NET My Services will be similar. Users will need .NET My Services subscriptions to take advantage of the various .NET My Services-aware applications that will provide new levels of convenience to them. Once they pay a fee to subscribe to .NET My Services their lives will be made easier and their daily Web activities more effective. There will be a small cost to developers; however, we believe that this cost is far less than the developer having to develop and deliver these services themselves.
We have drawn upon our Web experiences to ensure that .NET My Services provides the highest-possible levels of reliability. .NET My Services is designed as an n-tier application to facilitate scale-out and handle the heavy traffic that it will experience. The architecture is fault-tolerant with built-in redundancy. This investment in infrastructure is something that the developers will be able to leverage.
How much do you think consumers will pay for .Net My Services?
Some services will be free to customers such as .NET Passport and .NET Alerts. Others will have a fee attached, such as .NET InBox or .NET MyDocuments, since there will be a storage fee associated with this service. We believe consumers will pay if they think the service is worth it. Microsoft has always been and will continue to be conscious of the need to be price competitive.
It is the same for businesses. It is important to remember that the industry will make money by building user-centric applications on top of the .NET My Services platform. Current applications can be enhanced and new applications will be created, making .NET My Services a tremendous business opportunity for the industry.
What do you think will become the "killer app" that will get business users to begin using Web services in a big way?
There is no one application, rather it will be the linkage between applications that will make it a "killer" service-such as integration between mail, calendars, news, payments, suppliers, banks and other entities in a seamless and secure way.
Much of the point of building a platform is providing the opportunity for other companies to build value and create business models on that platform. Microsoft .NET is designed to provide those significant industry opportunities.
There will be two broad opportunities for the development community to build businesses that take advantage of .NET My Services:
- They can create applications, devices, or services that use .NET My Services.
- They can expose their own .NET My Services-compatible services.
By taking advantage of Microsoft's significant investment in .NET My Services, developers will be able to create user-centric solutions while focusing on their core value proposition instead of the plumbing. In order to notify you of the availability of a part which had been on backorder, for example, a company would need to worry only about creating the SOAP and XML necessary to talk to your Microsoft .NET Alerts service, which has a standard interface to SOAP and XML regardless of what application you're using on the front end. They don't have to worry about building a system to authenticate you, track user presence, or route notifications, or about building the application that receives these messages, or about figuring out how to consolidate for you the other information you want in your unified environment (such as urgent e-mail or instant messages). Instead, they can focus on delivering the services they want to provide-which is faster, less expensive, and far easier for them to maintain later.
By using .NET My Services, the company in this example can reach more people (since no custom application installation is required to use their services, users will already have the software they need). Because their solution is integrated with other connected services, it can be more valuable than it would be by itself-without requiring them to do any work to make those value-adding connections happen. Urgent messages won't have to wait until the next time you're using some custom application; they can instead be sent to you as alerts whenever you're using any .NET My Services-connected device. Bringing together those services into a single solution is far more valuable to a user than half a dozen independent solutions could ever be.
Finally, using .NET My Services will make it possible for some application developers to reach a far broader audience than they otherwise could. Initiating a session in a collaborative application will not require that both you and your collaborator currently have that application open, only that you're both currently using a .NET My Services-connected smart device. For the application developer, that means their users can now touch orders of magnitude more people, which helps to build momentum for their offerings.
There's been a lot of talk about the Tablet PC. When do you think we will see its launch in Australia?
MS is planning to launch Tablet PC toward the end of next calendar year (2002) but it is to soon to say exactly when. I would add that there is a lot of interest and support from leading OEMs about Tablet PC and that we will be able to provide more details about its availability in the first half of 2002.
Why will the Tablet PC format work now, given that previous attempts in that area have all failed?
Microsoft has worked hard to ensure that the Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition operating system represents an evolution of laptop PCs and is designed to deliver unprecedented new enhancements in both hardware and software capabilities. Tablet PCs today have more of a chance to succeed in this form as it combines power and portability as well as the ability to run on a battery life of a full day of undocked usage.
Tablet PCs have come a long way and now all Tablet PCs are designed to be primary business PCs and will support docked configuration for use at a workstation, undocked configuration for keyboard entry, and tablet configuration for pen and speech based entry.
What percentage of Australian buyers of Office XP have opted for the "subscription" method of purchase?
Of retail purchases, 25 percent of customers opted for the subscription method. This is in line with our expected target.
Has the scheme been successful enough to warrant further offerings?
We regard this as a successful figure as it was in line with our expectations for the sale of Office XP. This is not a once off offering-we are certainly looking to offer the subscription method of payment in the future.
Why does users' Passport information need to be stored on Microsoft's servers? Couldn't it be stored locally, or with a third party?
Storing locally is what we used to do with Microsoft Wallet but that didn't work because users move from device to device, computer to computer. It was impossible to synchronise information. In terms of third parties, that's in effect what Microsoft is doing today with BBBOnline and TrustE. Microsoft recently announced the strategy of "Federated Passport". This means numerous third parties will have the ability to store Passport information.
Of course, this is part of the federation initiation. In 2002, .NET Passport will be enhanced to use the Kerberos version 5 standard. This standard allows autonomous realms to enter into a trust relationship. Therefore, an enterprise will be able to run .NET Passport on servers they control within their enterprise, and that realm can, if it meets certain security criteria, be trusted by the .NET Passport realm operated by Microsoft. This will allow enterprises to have one identity for their users inside and outside the company instead of many identities, as is the case today. Federation is a critical part of the .NET Strategy which we announced in June 2000. Federation allows entities to control their local resources while still being able to interact with people, organisations, and software that are not within their control.
Similar to the ATM bank network, Passport federation will offer users the benefits of a single system through a common operating agreement with our federated partners.
By adopting the industry standard Kerberos for Passport, we are striving to enable universal single sign-in across the Internet. Now, enterprises and Internet Service Providers will be able to interoperate with Passport. The benefit to Microsoft, the rest of the industry, and end users will be the accelerated adoptions of Web services Passport users will continue to use the single sign-in service they use and are familiar with today. As other Web site operators federate with Passport existing users will benefit greatly from this by having a greater number of destinations in which they will be able to sign into. Federating with Passport may be appropriate for those consumer sites or networks that already manage a large namespace of users, such as e-mail providers. For such consumer sites, federating with Passport means recognising and providing personalised experiences to users that are already authenticated via other partners, just as their users will be recognised and accepted at all Passport sites. So the easy first step that can be deployed today is this recognition of Passport users. The next capability that will be made available is managed namespaces within Passport, where the partner gets to add or remove users in its namespace from the Passport system, which continues to provide the authentication service. The third step would be to federate with Passport such that the site can manage its own authentication and get the benefit of these authenticated users being recognised by all other services in the trust network.
Is it better to have a series of competing standards such as Passport and AOL's Screen Name Service, or to have a single open standard?
It's always been best to have a single Open Standard. Passport is an Open standard that has been published and available for the broad community to develop to on the Internet. AOL only works on the AOL network. That's a proprietary network.
We believe that no one company will control all user authentication on the Internet and that the our federation strategy provides leadership as to how the Internet can evolve a network of trust that will both benefit customers and increase opportunities for MS, AOL, Yahoo!, and others.
We absolutely hope that by embracing Kerberos, they will join in the creation of this broader Internet trust network in the belief that no one company will be the single source for authentication. By removing barriers for end users we can help make the Internet easier to navigate and the potential of web services will be one step closer to reality, which we believe will benefit both Microsoft and our competitors. Microsoft plans to lead the way by example with its own Passport service.
Windows chief Jim Allchin said that open source software was "an intellectual property destroyer", that it was the worst possible thing for the software business, and that it was anti-American. Is open source really that much of a threat to Microsoft?
What we are offering is shared source. This is a balanced approach that provides source code while maintaining IP rights needed to support strong software business. Shared source covers the spectrum of source code access programs and licenses creating business value and fostering technical innovation. The source licensing programs and licenses are tailored to the diverse needs of Microsoft's customers and partner communities.
What can you tell us about B2B Web services (codenamed Blizzard) or developer Web services (codenamed Iris)?
The foundation of Web services has been laid. Companies are already realising business value with current Web services standards and Microsoft products (Visual Studio.NET, BizTalk Server, and SOAP Toolkit). Clearly, there is more standards work to be done that will make the development of Web services faster and more cost efficient. This is especially the case for Web services interoperating across companies.
Microsoft has a history of commitment to standards. In 1996, Microsoft co-authored the first draft of XML. In 1999, Microsoft and its partners presented SOAP to the IETF. In March 2001, WSDL was submitted to the W3C by IBM and Microsoft. Also, Microsoft is a member of the industry initiative developing UDDI.
Total load of M$ "spin".
Useless propoganda... .Net is dead in the water already and it hasn't even begun yet!
M$ "shared souce" model is rubbish, Open Source is killing them.
So long M$....nice knowing you.