Alex Barnett blog : WindowsLive

Astoria at MIX08 (REST in Vegas)

alexbarnett — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 02:11:00 GMT

As much as I'd love to make it to MIX08 this week, time will not allow me...But if I were, then I'd be going to the following three sessions related to the Project Formerly Known as Astoria:

Wed, March 5th - RESTful Data Services with the ADO.NET Data Services Framework
Fri, March 7th - Accessing Windows Live Services via AtomPub
Fri, March 7th - Building RESTful Real World Applications with the ADO.NET Data Services Framework

Ozzie's "Cloud OS" Raises More Questions than Answers

alexbarnett — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 20:04:00 GMT

Ray Ozzie's briefing this week provided quite a bit more detail around Microsoft's "Software Plus Services" strategy. It's definitely worth a read (or a look, and if you're feeling too lazy for either you can read Nick Carr's summary).

It's been a year since Ozzie took over the role as Chief Software Architect from Bill Gates, and I think it is exciting to see his influence further emerge throughout the business, architectural and experential direction of Microsoft. The 30 year old company needs this injection - a shot in the arm. And his vision is the right one. It is the only one that has any chance of seeing Microsoft through its need for growth.

However, as the Ozzie's "Cloud OS" story slowly becomes more concrete, the future influence that Microsoft will have throughout the software and internet services ecosystem is becoming less clear.

Yes, we know Software as a Service (Saas) is becoming an increasingly significant trend, and we know that the enabling role Web Services (SOAP and REST based) has to play as part of the overall move to a distributed computing model is becoming ever more central, and we know that the browser will continue to further its dominance as the primary interface between humans and data, functionality and people, but what is not so clear is how many "major players" there will be in that future, what their roles will be, nor what the roles of the "everyone elses" will be.

Microsoft Partners have been assured a place by Microsoft's side in this future, but does anyone really know? How will all this fall out? How will Microsoft's traditional partner profile fit into Ozzie's new brave future? What kind of ecosystems will emerge? Will Microsoft's ecosystem of tomorrow look radically different to its ecosystem of today? Who are the Microsoft partners of today who will find themselves competing head-to-head with Microsoft tomorrow? What will Microsoft's competition of the future even look like?

The answers to some of these question may surprise us. How many people, for example, would have imagined a just few years ago that search engine providers or an online bookseller or online university network would emerge to become a serious potential competitor in the computing and software space of Microsoft? Not many. In the second internet age Microsoft's future competition and partners can literally come from any direction at any time. And they often do. In many respects, the future looks bright, but I suspect that for many in the software / computing industry the future is also very cloudy indeed.

Silverlight and Windows Live Hosting

alexbarnett — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:20:00 GMT

I've just sat through Ray Ozzie keynote here at MIX07, his first public speaking engagement to a dev audeince since joining Microsoft, where he made a few interesting announcements relating to Silverlight.

I won't repeat all the details here since Ryan Stewart seems to be totally on the ball in having the scoop right away. To summarise:

"First, Microsoft is announcing that the CLR will be a part of Silverlight. Two, they are also announcing a Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) which is open source and will allow developers to write dynamic languages to be compiled into .NET bytecode. The DLR will be open sourced under the Microsoft Public License. Third, Windows Live will provide Silverlight developers a way to deploy applications on their service by implementing a hosted solution around Windows Live."

Hosting a solution on Windows Live? That's right...More on the Windows Live Hosting news:

"Finally, one of the interesting announcements is that Microsoft is going to provide a hosting service to budding Silverlight developers via the Windows Live property. The serivce gives 4 gb of space to anyone building and deploying Sliverlight applications. This means you can store Slverlight movies and applications on the Windows Live service and then deploy those on your blog or web page."

That's very interesting news but I can't find the link to Windows Live Hosting to check it out for myself.

In the meantime, Joshua Allen has also posted more details and links to the announcements themselves.

Microsoft has also just launched Silverlight.net and updated microsoft.com/silverlight.

Also announced: Expression Studio is now shipping.

Update: 11:15am:

Silverlight Streaming is the name of the Windows Live hosting service for Silverlight content and apps - silverlight.live.com
Dan Farber has a good summary of Ray Ozzie's talk this morning. In a nutshell: software + services model. Services being Windows Live APIs plus content + app hosting service for Silverlight apps, Silverlight Streaming.