Microsoft's HailStorm announcement on Monday overshadowed the previous week's main news announcements.
Its deal with eBay last Monday (March 12) presaged HailStorm — eBay is one of five .Net development partners named during the HailStorm launch who plan to incorporate the technology in their own online offerings. (See related ASP News story on internetnews.com, Is HailStorm Really a Maelstrom?).
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Also last Monday Microsoft finally got around to naming the first three US ASPs to gain its coveted Gold partner award. (See related ASPnews.com story, Microsoft Names Gold-certified ASPs.)
But despite the long-term importance to Microsoft of building a strong ASP partner channel, the present efforts of ASPs on Microsoft's behalf pale into insiqnificance compared to the vital strategic role that HailStorm is slated to play in securing the vendor's continued market dominance.
Passport to Security
HailStorm takes Microsoft's most popular web services technologies — in particular the Passport Internet authentication service, but also Hotmail email, Messenger instant messaging and many new additions — and packages them as a set of XML-based component building blocks that developers can plug into their online applications.
The Passport technology is the most important part of the package, serving as a secure store of user profile information. It allows users to set policies that control which elements of their personal data is made available to specific applications, and in what circumstances it is used.
The other elements of HailStorm provide additional functions such as an address book, calendaring, location tracking, a unified inbox based on Hotmail and notification services via Messenger instant messaging.
HailStorm allows a partner like eBay to authenticate users without them having to register separately for its own service, and then provide value-added services such as sending alerts when the status of an auction changes. Users can manage how they receive alerts from a range of services via a single console within HailStorm rather than having to maintain a series of separate account profiles.
"The thing that pulls all of these services together with HailStorm is this idea of having the user, or the user credentials, at the center," explained Bob Muglia, group VP of the .Net services group, launching HailStorm.
For eBay, the relationship with Microsoft also lets it develop new services that target the business market in addition to consumers. HailStorm supports group profiles, which can be used to define organizations, businesses or workgroups of individuals as separate entities with their own sets of policy definitions. Other partners who are already prototyping applications that use HailStorm include American Express, ClickCommerce, Expedia and P2P developer Groove Networks.
Open but Proprietary
Microsoft is making much of the fact that HailStorm is based on open, industry-standard XML web services. But although it is built in XML, the system itself is a proprietary schema that binds users into a set of Microsoft-owned application services. Takeup will be reinforced by building direct links to HailStorm services from Microsoft development tools, operating systems and applications, making it a no-brainer for developers to adopt HailStorm in preference to alternatives.
That's if there are any alternatives — Microsoft certainly isn't keen that there should be. "Whenever you need to identify a user," said Muglia yesterday, "that's where it's important to ... make sure that those services are extended in a way that's compatible with the HailStorm architecture and that doesn't introduce duplications and schemas that just make it confusing for the end user."
But if Microsoft manages to establish HailStorm as a de facto proprietary standard, it will achieve a stranglehold over Internet computing that is even tighter than the control that its ownership of Windows has given it over PC computing. The significance of centrally stored profile information in the Internet computing environment was first spelt out last July in edition 1.0 of the ASPnews report Internet Application Engines:
"In an Internet-centric computing model, directory services act as a central store of information about the location, identity and access profiles of users, content and computing resources. Directory store operators ... effectively become the banking institutions of the Internet economy. They will need to prove themselves worthy of the highest levels of trust and probity, and will be able to charge a high premium for doing so."
The flaw in HailStorm — which is slated for production-quality release next year — is the idea that individuals and businesses will be prepared to entrust so much valuable information to Microsoft. Muglia admitted as much yesterday, recognizing that Microsoft still has some way to go before it fully establishes its credentials as a service provider rather than a technology innovator. "Having Microsoft viewed as a company that can provide operational excellence is critical to our shift to software as a service," he confessed.
What Microsoft does not yet fully appreciate is that the loosely coupled architecture it is so keen to promote for the emerging web services world has profound implications not only for the way that software is built, but also for how enterprises are constructed. Software companies — even Microsoft — are going to have to choose whether they want to operate infrastructure or create applications. Those who attempt to do both will not be able to offer customers the same breadth of choice available from decoupled rivals.
Sitting on a Gold Mine
Which is where Microsoft's Gold partner ASPs will finally come back into the picture. The likes of USinternetworking,
ManagedOps.com and Qwest Communications — who earned their Gold stripes last week — along with NetStore and Equant, the European companies that were first to win the badge back in October 2000 — are the natural candidates to host HailStorm as independent repositories, once Microsoft is forced by market pressure to give up its own hosting role.
By next year they should have established enough of a track record to have built up customer confidence in their security and integrity. And if they still need to beef up their image, then maybe that will be the moment when we see banks stepping firmly into the ASP game with a few well-placed acquisitions. I for one would feel much more comfortable storing my personal data at Wells Fargo, Citibank or NatWest than I ever would leaving it in Microsoft's care, provided they could tap into the right infrastructure skills. I suspect many others would share the same reservations.
This review of the week's news highlights is by ASPnews.com founder and consulting analyst Phil Wainewright. A comprehensive news digest is published every month in the ASP News Review newsletter, available exclusively to subscribers.
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