A Microsoft technology that Bill Gates described last year as
"probably the most important ... building block service" of the
company's broad .net initiative, is being redefined because of
resistance from enterprise customers, company representatives
acknowledged Microsoft's annual developer conference
yesterday.
.Net My Services, previously known as Hailstorm, has long been
described as a network of services controlled and managed by
Microsoft and linked over the Internet that could be automatically
accessed by consumers.
Enabled by a technology known broadly as Web services, it would
allow software and content to be delivered over the Internet to
users on any connected computing device.
Now Microsoft is recasting .net My Services into a technology that
corporations or service providers will control and manage
independently of Microsoft, while retaining the functionality it
was meant to have all along.
First announced in early 2001, .Net My Services has come to include
a set of more than 10 basic services such as calendaring, alerts
and an electronic wallet that would be hosted by Microsoft's
Internet service MSN. Microsoft had been recruiting partners such
as eBay and American Express to customise those services or build
their own that could then be plugged in to Microsoft's central
hosting service.
"The original strategy began as one big cloud that MSN would host
and anyone who wanted could build an application that would plug
into that," said Adam Sohn, product manager for .net platform
strategy.
Microsoft handed developers an early set of tools at its
Professional Developer Conference in October to begin building .net
My Services that would plug into that cloud. At the time, it
discussed with attendees the business model for how it would sell
software to developers.
However, Microsoft learned that the model failed to appeal to most
of its enterprise customers, mainly because they did not want to
have their customer data stored with MSN, Sohn said.
Instead, the enterprise customers interested in developing .net My
Services asked Microsoft to offer a packaged version of the
technology that they could purchase to build and host services on
their own.
Examples of possible operators of such services included
corporations that would create these Web services for their
employees, as well as Internet service providers and Web portals
that could offer services to their subscribers.
"We learned from everyone we talked to that the monolithic
structure would not happen," Sohn said, having noted that customers
signalled they were not interested in having a single store for all
their customer information that was managed by Microsoft. "We know
federation is the way to go."
While Microsoft has sided with its critics and decided to make the
shift to the new model, it kept quiet most of its plans to have
customers host the service on their own.
"We didn't announce it because we're delivering on the same
vision," Sohn said, adding that the new federated approach still
gives consumers the same benefits of accessing services and content
as its original model.
Microsoft had taken some flak from consumer groups about the
concept of having vast amounts of user data stored in a single
warehouse. Most of the controversy surrounding .net My Services
focused on the single sign-on authentication system called
Passport, which allows users to access and manage their various
services with a single name and password.
Ryan Freebern, programmer for Applied Science Associates, said:
"Given Microsoft's past accomplishments in the field of security,
Hailstorm seemed like a risky idea at best, and a downright
catastrophe at worst."
There were also concerns that Microsoft would sell the information
to marketers, said Barry Briggs, chief technical officer at
Wheelhouse, a customer relationship management software company.
One analyst said that Microsoft may have learned the hard way that
it went about promoting its Web services strategy poorly by first
pitching it as a consumer service.
Dana Gardner, research director with Aberdeen Group, said: "They're
focusing on the enterprise and not so much on the end user."
Expedia has already built Passport and .net Alerts into its system.
The company, which was originally funded by Microsoft, said it is
unfazed by Microsoft's changes, according to Suzi LeVine, director
of product management for Expedia.
"We welcome a shift to offer the software to multiple operators. It
continues to fulfil the goal of a more personalised and consistent
user experience," LeVine said.
Microsoft executives stressed that the company is not abandoning
its consumer services. However, it has not yet determined how it
will package .net My Services for enterprise customers. The company
added that as corporations and other customers decide to build the
.net My Services technology on their own, it could be resurrected
through MSN in the future.
"We've not changed our vision of user-centric Web services
available from any place. What's changed is the question of the
road we're taking to get there," Sohn said.