Don't be misled by Microsoft's decision last week to rethink HailStorm, the portfolio of personal Web services also known as .Net My Services (see Microsoft Puts .NET My Services on Hold).
Those .NET My Services plans were always destined to change, and in no sense does this change of heart reflect any lessening of Microsoft's broader Web services thrust.
If anything, the .Net strategy can now power ahead even more strongly, fueled by another repositioning that escaped close scrutiny thanks to last week's nifty news management tactics by the Microsoft.
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Just a Matter of Time
It was only a matter of time before Microsoft gave up on the idea of offering HailStorm components as proprietary hosted services rather than as a platform product. Particularly in the case of the Passport authentication service, the idea of Microsoft being the sole host of sensitive and valuable personal identity information was never going to fly, as we noted when it was first announced a year ago: "The flaw in HailStorm ... is the idea that individuals and businesses will be prepared to entrust so much valuable information to Microsoft" (see All Hail HailStorm?).
However, the company had no choice but to go ahead with the plan anyway, as we noted six months later when HailStorm made its ill-advised name change to .Net My Services (see One Small Step for Microsoft ....). Unlikely as it was to succeed, Microsoft had a duty to its shareholders to at least attempt to seize monopoly control of directory services for every individual Internet user. The potential rewards were so huge that it had to be worth a try. Now that it has clearly tried and failed, it can move ahead with the strategy we recommended then: "Before it can become the universal solution Microsoft wants it to be, Passport will have to be operated and managed by a neutral third party."
Microsoft's Media Management
Despite the predictability of last week's move, the way the news slipped out almost as an afterthought suited Microsoft's management well, and for once it wasn't because of the company's legendary inability to ever admit it did something wrong. Letting journalists think they were onto a scoop meant that the HailStorm rethink grabbed the headlines, drawing attention away from other announcements that were strategically far more important.
By the middle of last year, Microsoft had already shifted away from the concept that it could own what insiders had started calling the Web Services Ecosystem by attempting to play every role itself. In presentations that it began taking round to its partners, it outlined three separate roles that participants would play:
- Web Services developers — software providers that develop Web services
- Application Infrastructure Providers (AIPs) — suppliers of the managed systems, hosting and intelligent networking that support Web services
- Web Services integrators — aggregators of multiple services to create finished solutions for customers
Every one of the many announcements from Microsoft last week — including the decision to repackage HailStorm as a platform product rather than a service — fits into this picture of the Web Services landscape. Although Microsoft still expects to offer certain application-level components as services — a case in point is the newly announced MapPoint .NET location and mapping tool — its infrastructure platforms are now all clearly positioned as packaged products. This enables it to sell those platforms to Web services developers and AIPs in the guise of a friend and supporter rather than as a potential competitor.
Certifying the Infrastructure
In further support of the emerging AIP category, Microsoft last week (April 8) named the first Gold certified AIPs, launching this new subcategory of its elite partner certification program. Digex, divine (which earlier this year acquired Data Return), Genuity, Intel Online Services and Loudcloud are the five charter members. The launch of the program and its debut with five such distinguished members makes a clear statement that Microsoft now regards this certification at least as important as the equivalent Gold ASP badge, if not more so. These are the companies Microsoft anoints as fit to host the infrastructure for the Web services ecosystem, which doubtless includes services like Passport.
Meanwhile progress continued on creating the remaining building blocks of the Microsoft ecosystem. Akamai's announcement that it will integrate its EdgeSuite services with .Net was an illustration of how the ecosystem permeates across the network, accelerating the delivery of applications to users by distributing the processing load to Akamai edge servers (see Microsoft Drives .Net Forward at TechEd).
With many of the world's most sophisticated AIPs aligned with Microsoft and a host of infrastructure technologies like Akamai's adding to the appeal of .Net, it begins to become clear why the manner of HailStorm's deployment no longer matters. It was unnecessarily ambitious to attempt to own the entire infrastructure (and way too obvious). Microsoft can achieve the virtually the same effect if everyone builds their infrastructure on its products, leaving it owning the architecture as a result of customer choice rather than supplier dictate. Last week's announcements brought the company several large strides closer to that goal.
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