Weekly Review: bCentral Takes a Back Seat

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Microsoft's inability to turn its bCentral accounts into paying customers was the subject of a previous column. (See Microsoft Can't Give It Away) As signalled then, the vendor's focus is turning to the delivery of Web services components as a more promising future revenue-generator. Now it seems to have turned its back completely on the concept of replacing established offline applications with online equivalents.

There are, I think, three conclusions we can draw from Microsoft's decision:

1. Microsoft never took its online applications seriously and made sure they were never in a position to threaten its lucrative revenues from conventional shrinkwrapped apps. As a result, takeup was low, since savvy online users turned to more full-featured alternatives from competitors. Microsoft has decided it's not worth the bother any more.
2. Yes, given the choice, small businesses do indeed prefer richer applications. Especially if it's possible to pick them up for little more than the cost of a few months' rental of a less functional online alternative — one that performs more slowly and has no third-party support or training ecosystem.
3. Internet computing isn't about taking existing applications and delivering them online — neither existing products, nor existing packaged-application categories. An entirely new form of computing will inevitably give birth to an entirely new class of applications. Ultimately, Internet applications are going to be built on the fly by bundling together online Web services components. The most fertile breeding ground for the first generation of those components will be in supplementing existing offline (i.e., "on-premise") applications with online functionality.

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