Bill Gates unveils his .NET vision of the future.
On June 22, Microsoft rolled out Microsoft .NET, its strategy for the future, at its Forum 2000 press and analyst event in Redmond, Washington. Bill Gates, the company's chief software architect, opened the event, which combined speeches, prototype demonstrations, and videos to show the company's vision of how we will all be computing over the next several years.
Gates spoke of an era of computing that goes beyond mere browsing. This will be the fifth era, following the terminal/mainframe, character-based PC, graphical user interface, and browsing eras. This new generation will be marked by highly personalized Web sites that are compilations of data from multiple sources, including data available anywhere, properly presented for the device, whether a PC, a PDA, a telephone, a tablet, the computer in your car, or any other smart device. Gates also spoke of a natural interface that easily integrates speech and handwriting recognition and allows not just reading of data but also creation and annotation.
Little in the Microsoft presentations was unique or particularly revolutionary. Examples of many of the concepts that Microsoft demonstrated have been talked about by other companies and, in some cases, are already available in existing products and services, although often as individual islands of technology. On the positive side, this means the industry will likely be willing to move forward with Microsoft to achieve NET's goals, although perhaps not exactly as Microsoft envisions them. With its development and marketing might, Microsoft may be able to help bring the industry together and provide one cohesive vision. What remains unclear is whether a single company is needed to provide this direction -- and whether a single company can dominate as thoroughly as it has in the past, in a world of open standards, without creating some sort of proprietary extensions.
XML at the Core
At the heart of the .NET vision (formerly referred to as Next Generation Windows Services, or NGWS) is the eXtensible Markup Language, or XML -- an open-standard metalanguage for defining data languages. Client and server applications that understand XML can easily exchange data and work together to provide a richer computing experience. XML is far from perfect, but developers have been quick to embrace it. Microsoft has already shown its belief in XML with the XML-based SOAP standard (Simple Object Access Protocol), which lets programs on different platforms work together across the Internet. In addition, Microsoft BizTalk Server uses XML-based schemas to move documents and data between applications across the Internet. Data storage will move from today's file-based systems to an XML-based data store, similar to the vision Oracle has pushed with its Internet File System.
In today's world, Gates sees the computing device as the center of your universe. Each device contains different data, and the data has to be specifically preconfigured for that device. In the .NET world, the users become the center of the universe, having secure access to all of their information on any device anywhere. The user interface will be abstracted from the data so that the same data can be intelligently presented on all devices. Users will control their privacy, deciding what information they share and with whom. Information agents will perform work on their behalf.
The Universal Canvas
Other elements of the .NET world include a new user interface called the universal canvas. Within a single screen, users will be able to browse the Web, write documents, and communicate. Elements of this can be seen today in the preview of the new interface for Microsoft's MSN Internet service at http://preview.msn.com. The new MSN will integrate music, videos, chat capabilities, and a browser into one interface. Add document-authoring tools such as Word and Excel into the same interface and you have an idea of how the universal canvas will look. Applications will be abstracted more, though, so users won't explicitly need to decide whether they need a word processor or a spreadsheet in a specific document.
Another aspect of the new user interface is SmartAgents, which will automatically recognise text phrases and provide intelligent hyperlinks to related data on the Internet, the intranet, or the user's own data store. The SmartAgents are similar to the Flyswat and Third Voice Internet services that automatically create hyperlinks from recognized text, but the SmartAgents should be able to draw from a much larger pool of data.
Yet another feature is a "type-in" line where the user will be able to input questions and commands in plain English. This is not a particularly new concept, either. Think in terms of the Ask Jeeves search engine, but again, this will be able to query any data the user or business deems appropriate. We hope it will be more intelligent than current services.
The Tablet PC
Microsoft also showed prototype and concept versions of several new devices. Foremost was the Tablet PC, a notebook-size slate that looks similar to many of today's e-book devices, such as the NuvoMedia Rocket eBook. The difference is that the Tablet PC, due out in a year or two from Microsoft partners, will be a fully functional computer with wireless Internet access, designed to run Windows 2000. Several other companies, including Cyrix, NEC, Sharp, and Vadim, have tried similar PCs over the years with varying degrees of success. Microsoft also showed cell phones with larger color screens running .NET technologies, PDAs in a variety of form factors, smart televisions akin to more intelligent versions of WebTV, and picture frames that resemble the Ceiva and Sony Cyberframe photo frames.
Microsoft recognises that security and privacy are at the core of such a highly distributed world. Toward that end, the company sees an authentication system based on versions of its Passport system and Windows 2000's Active Directory. Smart cards, which Americans have been very slow to adopt, and biometrics such as voiceprints will also be crucial parts of any such system.
The .NET strategy involves close integration among client computing devices, servers, and Internet services. Microsoft sees more and more applications being run as services rather than as licensed software, including a future version of Office -- currently referred to as Office.NET. Microsoft is currently playing with Office 2000 as a service over the Internet, but for the productivity suite to be truly viable as a service, it will have to be significantly redesigned into a highly componentized application like the ThinkFree Office suite.
Help for Small Businesses
For small businesses with minimal IT resources, many of the .NET services will grow out of Microsoft's small-business portal bCentral. In the near term, Microsoft will also be offering access to Exchange 2000 to bCentral users through the Outlook Web Access interface. The company also demonstrated a forthcoming Customer Manager solution, similar to current services by Salesforce.com and Upshot.com. Microsoft's vision goes a little farther, though, with tight integration between the customer manager, Web site-building tools, marketing tools, and commerce tools. As with everything else in the .NET vision, these will require a great deal of data exchange between services. NetLedger, a Web-based accounting service, has recently offered a similar vision with its SMBXML interchange format.
For larger businesses and developers, Microsoft showed the tools that will be used to integrate various systems. These include an upcoming version of Visual Studio that will feature a much richer graphical authoring interface, similar to Macromedia's recently introduced Dreamweaver UltraDev. But the new Visual Studio should easily be able to integrate distributed programs from other sites and platforms based on the SOAP standard. More details about Visual Studio and .NET-related development tools will be unveiled at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in July.
One of the most intriguing product demonstrations was a forthcoming development tool called BizTalk Application Designer, which will let business analysts diagram processes and developers turn these processes into executable applications. Designer is based on the diagramming application Visio. Microsoft purchased Visio Corp. in January for more than a billion dollars, and BizTalk Application Designer shows why the company felt that this product was so important to its future strategy.
Looming Concerns
Many questions still remain about Microsoft's .NET strategy. Obviously the government's antitrust case also looms over any Microsoft announcement, although Microsoft president and CEO Steve Ballmer stated that the case has not changed Microsoft's basic vision for the future. Yet other concerns abound. The complete .NET vision will take several years to come to fruition. It's highly dependent on other application and content providers, device manufacturers, businesses, and individuals buying into Microsoft's vision. Microsoft showed videos by executives from Andersen Consulting, Ariba, Commerce One, Dell, Verio, and others touting how they believed in this vision. Of interest was a video and quotes from Loudcloud executives Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, both formerly from Microsoft's rival Netscape.
The other major question mark is whether a single company can continue to dominate and set the direction for this industry in a world of open standards. Microsoft acknowledges that open standards are critical to a highly interoperable world. In a world of proprietary technologies, companies often have to adopt the products and technologies of the industry leader, whether or not they're the best. But open standards mean that any company tool, application, service works with any other. This should allow individuals to make decisions based on what suits their needs best rather than what one company dictates. Microsoft has a history of producing excellent tools, applications, and technologies, and we hope it will not have to resort to proprietary extensions for success.
