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Another new Window Live buzzword is born

By | July 26, 2007, 10:48am PDT

Summary: There’s a new Windows Live buzzword in town: Windows Live Cloud Infrastructure. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer mentioned publicly the elusive term during his remarks at Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) on July 26 in Redmond.

There’s a new Windows Live buzzword in town: Windows Live Cloud Infrastructure.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer mentioned publicly the elusive Windows Live Cloud Infrastructure during his remarks at Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) on July 26 in Redmond.

Microsoft has been bucketing and rebucketing its collection of Live services for months, in an attempt to explain succinctly where Microsoft is playing in the online services space. Ballmer divided up its services offerings into four groups:

Personal services: Windows Live, Office Live, Popfly, MSN, Live Search

Developer services: Windows Live Cloud Infrastructure services; Silverlight Streaming, BizTalk Services

Business services: Exchange Hosted Services, managed communications and collaboration, Office Live Small Business, CRM Live and accompanying Titan development platform

Service enablers: Windows Server, SQL Server, Visual Studio, adCenter, click-to-run client (ActiveX, Ajax, Silverlight, .Net and Win32 Softgrid for streaming apps on Windows XP)

Cloud Infrastructure Services recently got a new chief at the start of Microsoft’s fiscal 2008. Amitabh Srivasta, a former Core Operating System Division (COSD) leader and Microsoft Technical Fellow, is the new Corporate Vice President in charge of Cloud Infrastructure Services, according to Microsoft’s Web site.

Microsoft has been working on what’s been known as Windows Live Core. There’s a back end component — the infrastructure needed to manage and host Microsoft’s various Live services across its growing farms of datacenters. But there’s also some kind of a front-end Live Core component that will allow users to make use of a consistent user experience whether they are on the Web, on a device, or on a PC.

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie is expected to shed a bit more light on exactly what these infrastructure services are during FAM later today.

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Window, Microsoft Windows Live, Microsoft Windows, There\, Mary Jo Foley

Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).

Disclosure

Mary-Jo Foley

Freelance journalist/blogger Mary Jo Foley has nothing to disclose. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). I do not own Microsoft stock or stock in any of its partners or competitors. I have no business ventures that are sponsored by/funded by Microsoft or any of its partners or competitors.

Biography

Mary-Jo Foley

Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 25 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet, and more recently the Microsoft Watch blog for Ziff Davis.

Got a tip? Send her an email with your rants, rumors, tips and tattles. Confidentiality guaranteed.

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RE: Another new Window Live buzzword is born
homeioy26-24353595963389203614689387349918 Updated - 12th Nov
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Would you please translate all this...
Userama 26th Jul 2007
...into something I could care about?

Microsoft needs a distortion field that gets them back to reality. They are WAY overboard into developer gobbledygook "cloud" stuff and not enough into things that really matter (or even make sense) to the average consumer.
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History
MrJG 26th Jul 2007
A large part of Microsoft's historic success has been based on creating a platform which is attractive for developers. These developers then built applications which were valuable to consumers, which sold more PCs and copies of Windows which made the platform ever more attractive to developers who wanted to reach the widest possible audience. This "Gobbledygook" may not be important for you today but if it attracts developers to the new Windows + Web Services platform then eventually you will have access to great new applications and services which are valuable to you...all based on this "Cloud" infrastructure stuff...By the way the term "Cloud Infrastructure" is just another way of saying that MS is building an operating system which runs on some servers in a datacenter somewhere rather than on your own personal PC. Think of it as operating system like windows which delivers applications to you from a remote location over the internet.
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Thanks for the explanation.
Userama 26th Jul 2007
You're right. All the buzz words mean much more to a developer than to an average user (that would be me).

I also have some history behind me (quite a bit, I'm afraid!). These "new" online apps remind me all too vividly of the bad old mainframe/dumb terminal days when if the network was down, you were basically SOL. Seems like this approach gave way to the "smart" desktop for good reasons. Don't net-based applications and data have potentially the same problems as the old approach? And personally, I'd much rather retain my private data locally than let it reside in "the cloud".

Functionally, I can't see many advantages to the online approach, other than portability. From the business standpoint, I can understand why Microsoft is pushing it--renting software is a good thing for their income flow! But personally, it seems to me like they're hitching their future to a boat anchor.
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Microsoft is not pushing purely web based computing
xuniL_z 27th Jul 2007
They still stand behind the smart client idea. Software plus services. I don't think you'll have any lack of support for web-free apps from MS for a long long time. Not to fret.

Although I wouldn't doubt their next OS is thinned down A LOT and partially available via web services.

Just when OS X thought it was making a move into Microsoft's domain, the domain changes. wink
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Works like this...
Cardinal_Bill 28th Jul 2007
Years ago SUN started talking about network computing and how everybody should install "Thin" clients and they would talk over the network to the massive servers somewhere that had all the software installed on them. The PC crowd (including Microsoft) hooted and laughed at this stupid solution because if there was any problem anywhere between the client and server you were SOL. So they said everyone should have a "Fat" computer on their desk. Then the internet boomed.

Now, Microsoft has decided that the "Fat" client isn't the only place where they wanna butter their bread from. So, they have a new solution, with the new name containing "Cloud". It's "Fat" clients (still have to have their bloated OS) and even "Fatter" servers holding their "Giganto" server software. Oh yeah, you can write your own apps to make use of this impressive "NEW" computing model.
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Oh yeah...
Cardinal_Bill 28th Jul 2007
Forgot to mention that while SUN was trying to get everyone to use the network...IIRC, Microsoft was trying to get their communication protocols updated so they would pass through a router. The first TCP/IP stack running under Windows wasn't written by Microsoft. This just might have produced a bias on their part to large networked solutions at that time.
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M$ releases only buzz words, products nada!
Linux Geek 26th Jul 2007
"Windows Live Cloud Infrastructure" is the new translation for hot air(or steam).
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Message has been deleted.
xuniL_z Updated - 30th Jul 2007
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The NEW "Real" BuzzWord...
TheViewMaster 26th Jul 2007
..."Sugar"!
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Powerful stuff, as usual...
Mike Cox 26th Jul 2007
The power of these services is unreal. I have seen the PowerPoints and the canned demos and all I can say is, WOW. There are so many services here I do not even know where to start deploying them all. To help me figure it all out, I bought some MCS consulting hours. I have named the project "Storm Cloud Rising" and have given my reference architecture to my MCSEs and MCSDs. When one of the MCSDs complained the architecture seemed more marketing driven then technical, I told him he was SOL and would never work on the SOA cloud I was building with Live Services.
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Oh yeah!
WNelWeb 27th Jul 2007
Give 'em what for! Good post. Thanks for the chuckle!
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The Mainframe Is The Ultimate Software As a Service
chessmen 29th Jul 2007
If software as a service is really such a good idea, why not just chuck the pcs and buy a mainframe. Its cheaper, the company gets total control of everyone's desktop; and its more secure. As an additional bonus, if your ISP goes down, all your applications still work.
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RE: Another new Window Live buzzword is born
jackson1984-24316069205748857739440257893812 10th Oct
Have you ever at any time literally regarded as about along with some bit above just your posts? I signify, that mulberry purses which you say is crucial and nearly all.
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Another new Window Live buzzword is born
homeioy26-24353595963389203614689387349918 Updated - 12th Nov
I am just actually ultimately reviving itself nfl jersey in order to hubpages. nevertheless nfl jersey whatever you put up regarding this conditions significant wnfl jersey eb business log is brilliant and as well as really essential.

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