Many look at Software program + Solutions (S+S) to become Microsoft;s method of maintaining its PC-software money-making machine afloat even though the cloud-computing waves arrive rushing in. But that view ignores the fact that it really doe is sensible to run some programs and/or items of applications locally,
Office 2010 Pro Plus, and others off-premise in remote datacenters, according to Microsoft;s Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie.
Mundie keynoted the Technologies Evaluation Rising Technologies conference in Cambridge on September 25. Mundie introduced a more technical and in-depth edition of a speak I heard him give in the company;s Monetary Analyst Meeting in late July. In that talk, a transcript of that is accessible on Microsoft;s Web web site, Mundie showed off proof-of-concept demos of a variety of technologies that present off the natural-user interface and multicore computing power that Microsoft officials think is going to be at the middle with the computing universe inside the coming decades.
While Mundie;s talk was enjoyable, it was my conversation afterward with him that gave me more food for thought. Mundie;s job is to aid the firm prioritize where it is investing time,
Buy Windows 7, many people and assets to be successful within the time period 3 to 20 years out.
Mundie;s current priority No. 1 would be to support the Softies, consumers and partners recognize the modifications necessary to system and use computing assets within the type of a composite platform — i.e., the cloud and the client as a single unit.
This composite platform is extra than “just” S+S,
Microsoft Office 2010 Professional, Mundie said. Currently, within the Microsoft world, services are additional of an adjunct to locally installed software program. (Assume Windows Live Messenger or Office Live Workspace as examples.) Within the not-so-distant future, Microsoft might be providing a programming model and tools that will allow developers to build programs that are designed, from the get-go, to span the client and the cloud.
(Mundie wouldn;t spill the beans on announcements Microsoft is teeing up for its Professional Developers Conference in late October. But Microsoft officials are slated to detail “Zurich” cloud programming companies, the Live Mesh software program development kit and the first Microsoft-developed Live Mesh applications that is going to be designed to straddle the client and the cloud at the conference.)
“There will probably be a set of things that are done around the client, and another inside the cloud. In the PDC present, we;ll show some of the necessary items,” Mundie said.
Mundie acknowledged that Microsoft “is still figuring all these things out as we go along.”
He said the firm has been slowly and quietly delivering technology elements that are part of this composite platform framework over the past few several years. He pointed to the concurrency and coordination (CCR) and decentralized software companies (DSS) runtimes that are currently embedded within the Microsoft Robotics Toolkit as an example of one such technologies.
Robotics — and the automated front-desk receptionist application that Mundie demonstrated again this week — are examples of how Microsoft is introducing to market distributed and concurrent computing technologies expected by composite client/cloud scenarios without disrupting the current legacy base, Mundie said. Another example with the kind of composite application/scenario that will mix client/cloud assets is the “first life” immersive navigation experience that Mundie demonstrated to Wall Street analysts in July and the EmTech audience at present.
I know there are quite a bit of doubters out there who;ve pooh-poohed Microsoft;s S+S technique. I really believed it made a great deal of feeling, in terms of helping Microsoft preserve its software program legacy and its users,
Office Pro Plus 2010 Key, their software base. I;ve noticed extra and a lot more vendors — Cisco,
Office 2007 Standard Key, VMware, Google and other people — increasingly adding on-premise software elements to their “all cloud/all the time” line ups. It wasn;t until these days, even though — when Mundie went deeper about how offering extra offline software program capabilities on phones and PCs would aid users (especially ones in emerging markets and with “occasional” connectivity) to use solutions even without constant Net access — that I felt that mixing the cloud and the client was a lot more than just a rationalization technique for Microsoft.
What about you? Do you assume unifying the cloud and client is a lot more than just a way for Microsoft to try to hold onto the past? Do you agree there are some programs that don;t make sense to run as “cloud only”?