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Microsoft Software IT

Microsoft To Enter Hosting Business 206

Posted by Zonk from the hosted-linux dept.
TM84 writes "InformationWeek reports on Microsoft's latest revenue plan. Within one year the company plans to offer hosting implementations of Sharepoint as well as CRM and ERP applications." From the article: "One thing is certain: Microsoft is exploring myriad ways to deploy and charge for software, ranging from subscription models a la MSN to easier ways for companies to buy incremental products not in their current Enterprise Agreements. Some industry observers liken the hosting move to the 'turn on a dime' shift that Microsoft executed years back when it discovered the Internet. When asked which other products and services Microsoft would host, another Microsoft insider said, 'Everything. Hosted Office. Everything hosted.'"
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Microsoft To Enter Hosting Business More

Microsoft To Enter Hosting Business

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  • MS Reactionaries - the next big thing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by yancey ( 136972 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @08:56AM (#13888217)
    Is it me or has Microsoft become highly reactionary? Google says they are going to start hosting things like databases and office applications on the web and *bam* suddenly Microsoft says the same thing. Mac OS uses the graphics processor and OpenGL to provide dazzling desktop effects and *bam* suddenly Microsoft says their next version of Windows will have the same thing. I'm sure there are probably many other examples. Can Microsoft not come up with useful new technologies on their own? Are they brain-dead followers blantanly copying everybody else's ideas?

    • Re:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What have OSS developers come up with on their own lately?

      What exactly is wrong with implementing a good idea, regardless of who came up with it?

      • Re:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anita Coney ( 648748 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:06AM (#13888265) Homepage
        "What exactly is wrong with implementing a good idea, regardless of who came up with it?"

        This shouldn't have to be explained, but when a person or entity can only steal ideas, that means they ran out of ideas. When a company runs out of ideas, the shark is jumped and the decline begins. Thus, we're witnessing the beginging of the end of Microsoft as a relevant force in the computer industry.

        "What have OSS developers come up with on their own lately?"

        A bullet-proof OS that NEVER gets viruses, spyware, etc. We could only dream that Microsoft would follow that lead!

        • A bullet-proof OS that NEVER gets viruses, spyware, etc. We could only dream that Microsoft would follow that lead!

          Linux is no more resistant to spyware than Windows, and viruses are only significantly different in a multiuser context (which isn't what most desktop installs are). Calling it bulletproof is entirely untrue.

          • Dear Customers,

            We are happy to announce that, in addition to providing hosting services for our customers, we decided to integrate a first class security model on the server to preclude any hacking worries.

            The system, as the front line ms system on your network, will also manage all security related matters - anytime an attack will occur, this system will be the first to fold! Because we implemented it so well, we can garantee that the system will then resist all effort to bring it back online, even if you

            • Hahahaha. Quite. This is part of the reason that people are trying to make program problems chargeable to the authors of a system — closed-source systems and the flexibility of computers give people endless opportunities that don't fit into the normal laws for suitability of a product.


          • A bullet-proof OS that NEVER gets viruses, spyware, etc. We could only dream that Microsoft would follow that lead!

            Linux is no more resistant to spyware than Windows, and viruses are only significantly different in a multiuser context (which isn't what most desktop installs are). Calling it bulletproof is entirely untrue.

            You're correct that calling Linux bulletproof is untrue - however Linux is far more resistant to spyware and viruses then Windows - as desktop PCs are multiuser (I guess you don't have kids

            • Agreed, using Windows multiuser in this way works too, however, but obviously the Administrator account either has to have limited access, or the person using it has to be a bit more careful.

              As for corporate uses, I count that as a different area than "desktop" (correctly or not). By desktop I mean "home", if I was meaning corporate I'd say "workstation". But on the other hand in a corporate context it's not really any safer since there is (or should!) be controls put on user accounts, and there are framew

          • Linux is no more resistant to spyware than Windows, and viruses are only significantly different in a multiuser context (which isn't what most desktop installs are). Calling it bulletproof is entirely untrue.

            However one of them gives you out of the box protection of a burlap sack and the other gives you at least a standard kevlar vest.

            Sure, they can be both penetrated by a .50 armor peircing round but...

            Given the option I'll take the kevlar vest.
        • It depends on what the goal is. If the goal is to provide known technologies at the lowest cost or highest value to the general population, then you don't have to come up with new ideas, you just have to come up with ways to produce / deliver the desired product at a lower cost or with higher value. It's a variant of commoditization. For instance, how much better would it be for the population if every car company could manufacture any other company's design? You could get the style you want and the competi

        • Re:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          "A bullet-proof OS that NEVER gets viruses, spyware, etc. We could only dream that Microsoft would follow that lead!"

          You must've missed the linux mozilla site in korea infection the other day. Yes it's rare, but so is linux. People say the numbers of users correlation to infection idea is flawed, but they're proof is never convincing.

          "This shouldn't have to be explained, but when a person or entity can only steal ideas, that means they ran out of ideas. When a company runs out of ideas, the shark is jumped
      • What have OSS developers come up with on their own lately?

        I'm sure plenty of people will give you examples, but the correct answer is that OSS developers don't need to.
        Computer users have given Microsoft more than sixty billion dollars for their operating system software over the past ten years. The cost of production of Windows is close to zero, the same cost as OSS software which you can get for free. What we've been paying Microsoft for is their development costs, and if development and innovation fr

    • Re:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Iriel ( 810009 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:06AM (#13888264) Homepage
      has become? Has always been. I'm honestly not trolling, but Microsoft is not smart in the innovative sense as much as they are at keeping an eye out for a good thing. Say what you want about whether or not MS will rape and pillage that good thing for the almighty dollar, but when they see something work, they know how to exploit that with their marketing to be 'good enough' to come out on top. At least, more often than not. Another great example is that they just joined Yahoo! with the Open Content Alliance, now that almost everyone is poo-pooing Google Print.

    • Re:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing (Score:4, Informative)

      by rolfwind ( 528248 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:09AM (#13888284)
      I noticed the same: all MS seems to do lately is flail about blindly attacking fad after fad to make money. It seems to be a lack of vision for what the future holds so they instead chase after every rainbow for that pot of gold at the end.

      Of course, with billions in the bank and their core businesses still sucessful - they can afford to do this. But for how long? I doubt with this (lack of) leadership, they'll innovate anything in the next 10-15 years. Though the one big sucess with this tactic was that they had was the Xbox, though I argue that this was a natural outgrowth of the PC/OS business, but at least they have a decent games division for it.

      The reason they do this is mentioned previously: cash in the bank - it wants to flow places and be put to use. However, I think Google has the better idea with employees playing around in their spare time and from that new business ideas get implemented.

      I'm sure enough people at MS are just as smart but the management is stifling them because they are too scared and want to protect the core businesses. Thus any 'new' business ideas are reactionary - the managers are reacting. Not acting on their own initiative.

      • I noticed the same: all MS seems to do lately is flail about blindly attacking fad after fad to make money. It seems to be a lack of vision for what the future holds...

        MS has always been a follower. Their lack of vision is nothing new, but I suppose that's why the PR team has been out prasing Chairman Bill's as a visionary. How much of a visionary can you be when your company/political movement is based on the fast follower strategy?

        More interesting question for me is why the sudden need for more

    • Is it me or has Microsoft become highly reactionary? Google says they are going to start hosting things like databases and office applications on the web and *bam* suddenly Microsoft says the same thing.

      Every product I've ever worked on has taken months if not years of business cases, planning, design and management before it is even mentioned to the public.

      I find it highly doubtful (although possible) that a company like Microsoft, hell any big company, would just announce they too are doing something

      • Re:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Foofoobar ( 318279 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @10:13AM (#13888664)
        Over promise... under deliver, remember? This is the Microsoft way. It's not plan well and then have a well structured launch. First they make promises and then they work on delivering. It's been this way with almost every single one of their products. They see someone making alot of money making a product and say 'me too! me too!' and then make loads of promises and lots of hype and then when it's delivered, the product only has half the features they mentioned and doesn't work well at all until at LEAST the third version. Did I just describe every Microsoft product? OOps.

        Nothing new here.

        • +555555555 Insightful (Score:5, Insightful)

          by bogie ( 31020 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @11:14AM (#13889090) Journal
          This is exactly how MS operates. If you actually pay attention from initial product announcement, through Alpha, Beta, RC, and Final, the backtracking is simply incredible. If you look at what MS first promises and then what they end up delivering it's a fair assessment to say that every OS and many products they have released are total failures based on what they were really supposed to be able to do. They promise the world and then upon Final delivery have a product that doesn't accomplish 75% of what you were initially promised. They hype up the next release as the be all end all, and then quietly yank feature after feature from the real release. I don't know of any company that is as bad as MS at announcing vaporware year after year after year. I also don't know any company that is as good as MS at pulling the wool over everyone's eyes year after year after year. Never mind that the products are usually buggy for several product revisions. Hell with 2000 out of the box you had to wait for hotfixes to even get features that were "officially" in the product when you bought it.

    • Google says they are going to start hosting things like databases and office applications on the web and *bam* suddenly Microsoft says the same thing.

      Someone announced it first, and MS are making an attempt at keeping up. Seems sensible from a business context, although yes, it's "reactionary", however this:

      Mac OS uses the graphics processor and OpenGL to provide dazzling desktop effects and *bam* suddenly Microsoft says their next version of Windows will have the same thing.

      Any idiot could tell you

      • The wonderful thing about computer science/software engineering (and the terrible thing about software patents) is that everyone can borrow ideas from one another to advance the environment as a whole.

        Spot on. THis is totally true of ClearType: there were some font-improvement and sub-pixel hinting idea kicking around out there, and MS brought them together and built a nice usable engine for them. Kudos. .NET is an interesting amalgam. It definitely borrows very heavily from Java (C# is so Java-esque it'

        • Monad apparently has registry support. I think that the registry deserves a chance though, it is distributed and recoverable these days, although I'm not sure if how that is done is immediately obvious. And if the registry is a "performance bottleneck", I'd think it was being used improperly. I like the idea of the registry, and I don't think that there's a fundamental problem with the idea that is a problem, although its implementation has been and is shoddy in many ways, although it is improving.

          Other th

          • The registry's idea of a centralized (and as you point out, distributable/replicable) database style solution for configuration is in itself not a bad idea. However, configuration is one of those situations that begs for tree-like information, rather than flat relation information - hence the slow but steady migration of almost every text configuration file towards XML or a variant. So if it's powered by a DB thoroughly comfortable with trees, that's great. And it may finally be getting there.

            But there's

            • Possible, yes, but the problem is that to have a semantically-powerful enough syntax, you'd end up with something (as a minimum) that's not easily manually fixed when it dies anyway, like XML. Everything's a tradeoff though.

              • That's true that in order to be semantically power it would need to be complex. I was thinking that it wouldn't need to run for regular config file reads, tho - maybe some kind of file alteration monitor could inform the syntax-checker when files were changed. Anyway, that's enough attention to an idle thought... Everything is indeed a tradeoff.

                • Indeed, that system is getting a bit complicated in itself, though. You might end up better with a centralised system that is internally and silently decentralised, rather than a decentralised system which is centralised externally anyway. But yes. Wildly off-topic. :)

    • MSN has always offered some kinds of hosting, but now they offer sharepoint as hosting. OK lets see here, sharepoint has been available for a long time. So MS offering their product that existed pre google ideas, as a host, which also pre existed google is copying. MS has been trying to get into software as a service, and when they launced sharepoint a lot of people figured that is where they were heading.

      I guess it is slashdot, for every valid argument that are a million others that just dont make any sens
    • Can Microsoft not come up with useful new technologies on their own? Are they brain-dead followers blantanly copying everybody else's ideas?

      Uhhh... yeah. You must be new here...
    • reactionary

      Hmmm. A "reactionary" is somebody who opposes progress... I think you mean "reactive"

      In any case, Microsoft is simply a company that understands competition, and has its own style that's worked well for it over the years. I coach a little martial arts. Once people get over the cringing stage, there are three characters of fighther: aggressors, runners, and counter-punchers. Microsoft is a counter puncher, whihc means they are reactive and opportunistic. Counter punchers don't like to attac

  • Way to shaft your partners, Microsoft! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LibertineR ( 591918 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @08:56AM (#13888218)
    Oh, this is great. I look forward to calls from all my hosting clients asking me about this. "Will Microsoft be cheaper?" "Will they help me design my web parts, since I am just too stupid to do it right myself?" Oh, its a beautiful thing.

    But then, we partners cant say "Hey, if we host you, we'll knock off 30% on that Open Licence Agreement". Thank you, Microsoft. If for anything, just for tossing a big FUD ball into the pool.


    • "Partners", from Microsoft's perspective, has always just meant "learn from them so that you can do what they do better."

      This is true since the mid-80s: witness Apple. They partnered until they learned enough to do it their own way, and then dominated the market. They've done it dozens of times since.

      That you didn't see this coming really is your own fault. Do you think that Microsoft thinks it has "peers" in anything? No. They see themselves as the big fish in a big pond, and if you haven't been eate

      • Until recently, I would have to say that Microsoft as a partner, has been 'berry-berry good to me', so to speak. This one caught me by surprise because I heard nothing about this at all. I guess there was just no good way to break this to us. The bad news is that they have probably destroyed the market until they flesh out what they want to do. Clients will just wait to find out the best way to go.

        • That's essentially Microsoft's modus operandi. It provides technology that can be used to build cool things, and it then waits for someone else to actually have the ideas and do the work. Once Microsoft's "partners" have determined, through trial and error generally, what businesses are the most profitable Microsoft swoops in and takes the business. Microsoft's partners are essentially doing market research for Microsoft. If the partners become successful enough to catch Microsoft's attention they are d

    • Using 'FUD' regarding to this topic is quite a load of BS
      Microsoft is a commercial enterprise, ofcourse they will try to earn as much money as they can, and if hosting is one of the ways to go, why not? It makes sense.

      People here are so blinded by hate they forget it's a company, not just a NGO or research institute.
      • Uh, I used to work for Microsoft. I think I know FUD when I see it. I dont hate the company, it just aint the company anymore that I worked for years ago. I dont see how Microsoft makes money on this, because customer service has never been their best weapon. I think this is all about customer lock-in, a familiar tactic. What I hope, is that they find a way to bring their partners along in this, and let us benefit from this initiative. But I aint holding my breath.

  • Well, they already are in the hosting business... (Score:3, Funny)

    by kah13 ( 318205 ) * on Thursday October 27, 2005 @08:56AM (#13888219) Homepage
    ...with Hotmail and Groove (you can buy Groove services from them, rather than run your own servers). However, this does sound a little too much like its justified by "well, Google is doing it!", which isn't exactly true. Running hosted services is a difficult proposition, unless you can either quickly crank out SLAs or its all zero-admin. Its not something they've really done before, but I suppose it worth a try, since it will give them lots of experience in improving their admin interfaces for Windows Server 2k* as well as learning first hand the risks caused by the security holes in their products.

  • "Everything hosted" (Score:4, Funny)

    by deanj ( 519759 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @08:57AM (#13888221)
    another Microsoft insider said, 'Everything. Hosted Office. Everything hosted.'"


    FINALLY .... a place for all that spam I've been getting.

  • Do hosting companies have a survival instinct ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @08:59AM (#13888235)
    Its going to see how many companies keep hosting on Microsoft products. Do they really want to use their competitors product ? Especially a take no prisoners competitor like Microsoft ?

    The situation should be comparable to when pepsi decided to get into the restaurant business and handed coke a great marketing tool. And it now seems, that the only fast food places that serve pepsi are owned by pepsico.

    • Re:Do hosting companies have a survival instinct ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by azaris ( 699901 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:14AM (#13888318) Journal
      I doubt Microsoft want to put their enterprise hosting partners out of business, after all they are paying bundles in license fees, training, certification etc. I have a hunch that Microsoft are having difficulties finding partners willing to host certain products in a large enough scale and they decided it's just easier to do it themselves. I certainly wouldn't want to host Navision or Exchange for any reasonably large number of users.
      • Yes, Microsoft's hosting partners are paying a bundle in licensing fees. But, they-the hosting companies-are making it back plus a substantial profit. This is just a classic cut out the middleman move. Microsoft will charge a bit less than the current hosting companies can and will will still make the licensing fees plus the profit that the hosting companies previously enjoyed.

        The question for many of the hosting companies is whether or not Microsoft will enter their specific niche by introducing their own

        • Yes, Microsoft's hosting partners are paying a bundle in licensing fees. But, they-the hosting companies-are making it back plus a substantial profit. This is just a classic cut out the middleman move. Microsoft will charge a bit less than the current hosting companies can and will will still make the licensing fees plus the profit that the hosting companies previously enjoyed.

          Granted, but it's not obvious that destroying fruitful business partnerships by entering into direct competition is necessarily m

  • Saturated Market (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Karzz1 ( 306015 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:01AM (#13888242) Homepage
    It seems as though MS is trying everything they can to enter new markets to make up for their lack of growth options with the OS and Office markets. From the sounds of it, they are going to try and proprietarize this venture and I dont see what the advantage would be for most customers. I can see small companies with 100% outsourced IT possible trying this, but not too much else.

    Anyway, to sum up, this looks like another example of MS entering a market too late to make much impact. Just my 2cents.
    • Heh.
      Once upon a time it was "embrace and extend", now it's "saturate, diffuse, and confuse".

    • "and I dont see what the advantage would be for most customers"

      The answer is there is almost no advantage for customers. The only thee advantages I can see in hosting things like office on the web:

      - if you move around a lot, and you are not taking an office suite enabled computer, laptop, PDA or cellphone, with you, then you would have access to your documents and office suite as you move.

      - you get regular updates though its open to debate if you actually want regular updates since most people want office

  • Hosted Office? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jkind ( 922585 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:01AM (#13888243) Homepage
    What does this mean exactly? When I want to edit a Word document I have to be online?
    "Microsoft's hosting push is expected to target the gamut of users--including small companies with five to 10 PCs and no dedicated IT staff--who may want to do things like share calendar items but not worry about how that is accomplished."
    Couldn't an undergrad CS student develop an app that could do this for said small IT company.
    • After thinking about it a bit... what advantage does a shared electronic calendar offer an office with only 5-10 computers? Couldnt a whiteboard handle all the calendaring they would need? Maybe one person to update it and send an email to staffers? I fail to see where a "web services portal for collabaration... bla bla market speak bla" could prove to be cost effective.

      • Re:Hosted Office? (Score:2, Informative)

        by OakDragon ( 885217 )
        You're telling me, brother! We have a similar situation (about 10-15 "real" users in the whole place). Our needs are actually very simple, the primary one being a shared contact/customer list for email and phone purposes. However, the boss wants the "latest and greatest" from Microsoft. Oh, well, he's paying for it...

      • After thinking about it a bit... what advantage does a shared electronic calendar offer an office with only 5-10 computers? Couldnt a whiteboard handle all the calendaring they would need?

        Bah... whiteboards! A pen and paper is all they need. No, scratch that, a piece of flint and a big rock to carve on. An replace e-mail with pidgeons.

    • Re:Hosted Office? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ctr2sprt ( 574731 )

      What does this mean exactly? When I want to edit a Word document I have to be online?

      I think what it means is that, if you don't want to buy Office outright (for example), you can pay a small monthly or yearly fee and use it online. For home users, not a big deal, but for a business it could be really handy. No need for local installs, just a web browser. Built-in easy document sharing. The license costs would be split into monthly payments, so it's more affordable for smaller companies who live

      • I suspect it will be built off of some form of ClickOnce technology which will, in theory, be the best of both worlds. A client-side application which launches with a click on a web page, remains available when offline, and auto-updates whenever online.

        I agree that there will be a monthly or annual fee. Although a pay-as-you-go plan at, say, $0.03.minute might also be interesting. (Of course, it's bad enough when I forget to hang up my cell phone; just imagine keeping a web browser window accidently open
      • I agree that what's really going on here is Microsoft seeing the value of subscription-based services. I think they'd be willing to sacrifice one-shot licensing (especially given the fairly weak rates of upgrade purchasing) in favor of a steady monthly payment. As you mentioned, there are a lot of advantages for the user in this arrangement as well (including, likely, free upgrades), though of course the big disadvantage is that if you stop paying, Office stops working. But the real $64,000 question:

        No

  • Cool (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kevin_conaway ( 585204 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:01AM (#13888245) Homepage
    From what I hear, a lot of depts have trouble implementing these Sharepoint solutions and other things. If you could get actual Microsoft people to run these solutions for you, I think it would save people a lot of headaches.

    Isn't this what a lot of other companies like IBM are doing anyway? "Heres your software. What you don't want to run it yourself? Thats fine, we've got this nice shiny datacenter here, we'll take care of it for you!"

    • Re:Cool (Score:2, Insightful)

      by kotkan ( 926308 )
      Thank you for that rational non-bashing comment. Offering another way to use their software is not an inherently bad thing. Windows problems aside (which are big), Microsoft as an apps company is pretty talented, and what they buy or copy often (not always) improves over time after a false start or two. Some products I dislike from Microsoft due to security issues, flakiness, design issues, or too-proprietary output: Exchange, Word, Frontpage, Project Some products I think work very well: SQL Server, Exce
    • Isn't this what a lot of other companies like IBM are doing anyway?

      Sure, but IBM's been doing hosted computing services since before Bill Gates dropped out of college. They have generations of expertise. I see no reason to trust that Microsoft's attempts to enter the market will be business-ready out of the gate, or possibly ever. Not with their product history.

  • Everything hosted? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:02AM (#13888247)
    Anyone else read that as everything hosed?

  • From the article (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dekortage ( 697532 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:07AM (#13888272) Homepage

    "Ozzie, the former chairman of Groove Networks, has been charged with leading Microsoft in this area." If only that was a criminal charge.

    Elsewhere: "How much competitive advantage does e-mail give any company? Wouldn't those internal IT resources be better deployed elsewhere?" said one Microsoft source, who asked not to be named.

    You mean, you won't need to buy email server software and support from MS?

    • Elsewhere: "How much competitive advantage does e-mail give any company? Wouldn't those internal IT resources be better deployed elsewhere?" said one Microsoft source, who asked not to be named.

      ask yourself this one simple question... As a business, do you really trust Microsoft not to peek at your confidential emails etc.??? If your data is hosted on their servers, then it isn't your data anymore.

  • Which insider ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by alexhs ( 877055 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:08AM (#13888278) Homepage Journal
    When asked which other products and services Microsoft would host, another Microsoft insider said, 'Everything. Hosted Office. Everything hosted.

    But isn't that insider a newly hired, "lower-level business person" who did not understand the company's obligations ?
  • Please join me in a prayer asking that the servers run BSD and Apache. I'd hate to see people's sites/apps/etc go down instantly.

  • Just another step (Score:5, Interesting)

    by keraneuology ( 760918 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:09AM (#13888287) Journal
    While the (theoretical) advantages are clearly there, I'm not convinced that this is the best move for small businesses. The big boys of Ford, GM, Lucent and EDS would all love to be able to have internal office hosting for thin client terminals that make it a piece of cake to deploy new desktops, but for small 10-15 user offices with expensive and relatively slow network connections there just isn't enough value in putting your entire productivity in the hands of Ameritech, Comcast or shudder Qwest. In my office if the network goes down it is terribly inconvenient but I can still compose replies to emails that stack up in my inbox, examine reports, and engage in many other productive activities. If a construction crew digs up a network cable, if the DNS goes flewkey on me or if another Paris Hilton prawn video comes out and everybody for miles around clog up the bandwidth then I'm left high and dry with nothing to do.

    From the MS POV, it is very difficult to pirate a hosted app and makes it easier to enforce EULA clauses along the lines of You may not use the Software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, or their products or services (FrontPage 2002).

    Personally, I don't think that the company that allows "low level" employees to announce company-wide projects that violate anti-trust agreements without review by upper management can be trusted with confidential and sensitive documents that I create. But that's just me.

  • How about "Hosted Windows" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:17AM (#13888332)
    As a Macintosh owner I have occasionally really needed Windows. I've spent money on various emulators (e.g., SoftWindows) and even bought a Pentium laptop at a garage sale for $35. But I never used these things as much as I thought -- only 3 or 4 times in the last 20 years. Hosted Windows for $4.99/day would be a good way to use Windows once every 5 years or so.

    Of course if MS can provide Hosted Windows then Google could provide hosted whatever (GLinux?) and things would get interesting.

  • This has sort of been an on/off thing with MS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:22AM (#13888367) Homepage
    They get warm to it, then it goes cold for a while. Then they warm up again.

    The reason? Some new exec ( I'm guessing ) dreams up a way of sustainable yearly revenue, only to find that people's network connections aren't good enough yet. Sure, in the redmond area I'm guessing their inet connections are as solid as t1s, but the rest of the country is severely lacking in even enough bandwidth to pull this off, nevermind the reliability of the line.

    This is an idea before it's time, and quite frankly, the implementation would appear to leave much to be desired. Not only that, but are still a ton of security considerations to take into account.
    • They should roll this out in one of those high population density places that have huge high bandwidth penetration.

      South Korea gets trotted out as being "advanced" because they have lots of apartment complexes with 10 meg fiber to every apartment.

      The US isn't ready for this stuff yet I think. Especially since most of the protocols for MS networking (file shares and such) are dirt slow once you get below the 10 megs of available traffic space. Ever try running a share across a T1 line? It doesn't work to
  • We already know everything at Microsoft's hosed. Oh...HOSTED! That's very a different story. So basically, what they are saying is...they want to move to a model where they screw you over and over, and you pay each time you're screwed. No surprise they are moving to that business model really...Microsoft has always acted like a two bit whore.

  • Could be a big mistake by Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RoLi ( 141856 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:28AM (#13888403)
    If they don't pay attention and become competitor in the "normal" hosting business, Windows by hosters could share the same fate as OS/2 on PCs: Companies don't like to put competitor's products on their products.

  • Microsoft or some 3rd party? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Raindeer ( 104129 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:28AM (#13888408) Homepage Journal
    I like the idea of hosted apps alot. I like it most for small (1 employee) to medium size enterprises (250 employees). Now that Fiber to the Businesses start to get some steam it is a logical step. If you're running a small to medium size company like a law firm, consultancy, factory, shop etc. the IT department is not the core of the business if it exists at all. Where it exists it only comprises up to 10 percent of the workforce which means too small an amount of people to actually have a clue of all the different branches of IT. (How many people do you know that have in depth knowledge of CRM, ERP, security, internet applications, databases, hardware, switches, archiving etc etc. You do know such a person? a SME can't afford her) So if you need several of these apps, you're in serious staffing trouble.

    Outsourcing seems the way to go. Let a knowledgeable company or group of companies run and maintain your apps for you. However, who would you trust to do that? For general programs like Office, probably Microsoft or Google would be a good choice as any. For specialised/customized programs, like CRM and ERP, I would go for a 'local' guy that is approachable. I would most definitely not opt for a company that is as huge as Microsoft to run my customized programs, because I'll end up in Helpdesk HELL.

    In my ideal world I would go to a company that offered me a subscription like model to a whole range of desktop apps (photoshop, acrobat, office, visio etc etc) and a company that runs my serverside apps and specialized apps) It could save alot of money on IT-people and specialized rooms etc. (And probably get me into trouble some other way)

  • Hosted EULA... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheIndifferentiate ( 914096 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:37AM (#13888460)
    I imagine their EULA for the hosted stuff would be just like their Hotmail one in that the user completely indemnifies them if they lose all the user's files like what happened to some Hotmail users a while back. Mmm... One of the biggest arguments they use against GPL/OSS is that there is no one to hold accountable for it if something goes wrong-What's the difference here? Oh, you are paying for someone to not be accountable.

  • Hmm. (Score:3, Funny)

    by displaced80 ( 660282 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @09:42AM (#13888495)
    another Microsoft insider said, 'Everything. Hosted Office. Everything hosted.'" .... before slumping face-first into his cornflakes?

    Sounds like someone needs to lay off the amphetamines for a while...

  • During comdex 1999 (the 20th anniversary of comdex btw) Bill Gates during his keynote speach spent the whole session evangelising about how we were going to see a shift in the software ownership paradigm. He was refering explicitly to ASP based activities and at the time said they were going to start providing hosted applications that would be rented to users.

    The following is cut n pasted from http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/11-14c omdex.asp [microsoft.com]

    MR. GATES: Now I'd like to show another great new thing

  • Hosted Reliability (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Aumaden ( 598628 ) <Devon.C.Miller@nOsPaM.gmail.com> on Thursday October 27, 2005 @10:09AM (#13888637) Journal
    This could be a lose/lose proposition for MicroSoft.

    They have touted their system as being capable of "five nines" [microsoft.com] (99.999% uptime per year, or, only 315 seconds of downtime per year). As being cheaper to operate and less vulnerable than Linux [microsoft.com].

    If they run BSD/Apache as another poster suggested, they admit FOSS makes a better platform. If they run their own software they risk major loss of face if^H^Hwhen servers BSOD, hang, get infected.

    It will a lot harder to blame admins for security issues when MicroSoft is the administrator.

    Or maybe their customers will simply turn a blind eye to it all. Much as they have reliability and security problems in the past.

  • Which color? (Score:3, Funny)

    by xactuary ( 746078 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @10:31AM (#13888803)
    I wonder, which color will their hosted screen of death be?

  • Oracle (Score:3, Insightful)

    by EraserMouseMan ( 847479 ) on Thursday October 27, 2005 @10:34AM (#13888818)
    I see this more as a move to compete with Oracle. Not to put all the hosting companies out of business or even to compete with Sun. I think the overall tone is that the infrastructure MS designs to support this will allow them to host anything. Not necessarily that they really intend to host everything.

    Face it, Sun has proven that they don't have what it takes to beat MS. And getting Google to sponsor their office suite isn't enough either.
  • Some industry observers liken the hosting move to the 'turn on a dime' shift that Microsoft executed years back when it discovered the Internet.

    By "discovered" they mean, "Ignored it until it smacked them over the head, forcing them to spin around in a circle (looking like they were turning on a dime), until they came to their senses and said, 'Hey, free dime!'"
  • Wow, crackers and script kiddies around the world are going to oggle this kill and salivate.
  • This reminds me of an old simpsons episode. Burns made a bet with another nuclear plant his baseball team would win in a baseball contest. Too win Burns hired several famous baseball players. Anyhow, somewhere in this episode Bart and Millhouse plays baseball at school. They are chosing teams. Bart picks one of the kids in school, Nelson or so. Suddenly Mike Scioscia or someone walks by. Millhouse asks if Mike wants to play in his team. He accepts. Now Bart (slightly annoyed) picks another of the school kid

  • Sorry for misreading the article.

    It reminded me of an old cartoon in the early days of the AOL MSN wars where Joe Consumer's latest computer indicated that it "works best with Microsoft House":)

  • Hotmail? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by serutan ( 259622 ) <snoopdoug@geekaz ... minus physicist> on Thursday October 27, 2005 @04:03PM (#13891750) Homepage
    ""Hotmail, you know, the world's biggest e-mail system, is hosted by us [said Gates]."

    Oh yeah, Hotmail. That's that big system they host on UNIX machines, isn't it?

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