NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article
.NET
by Barry Simon, contributor to PC Magazine, January 2001
Reprinted with permission
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http://www.woodyswatch.com


Microsoft's plan for the future is a vision, a plan and a mishmash. From various announcements and presentations, I believe there is a pony buried in that pile of horse manure but alas some parts of the company are so taken with the buzz around the term that everything has become a .NET even if it is distant from the true vision.

About every seven years Microsoft reinvents itself - not totally since it keeps the old stuff in place suitably evolved towards the new strategy. In 1975, Microsoft started out as a supplier of computer languages. In 1981, it took advantage of IBM's offer to become the DOS company and in the years around 1990, it morphed to the Windows company. In 1996, it embraced the web - later than some nimble newcomers but earlier than the other big guys and in an aggressive way that remade the company. I believe that we'll look back on .NET as a similar tectonic shift in the way Microsoft operates. And make no mistake: it is Microsoft's ability to reinvent itself that has caused it to thrive while the Novells and Word Perfects of the world have floundered.

While the official explanations obscure some of the key issues, I believe there are three basic concepts in play:

  • centralized user data storage
  • the programmable web
  • a shift to software as a subscription service
  • Take email - please. You access it from the office, from home and on the road. From the messages that I get as the occasional Outlook columnist for Woody's Office Watch I know that many of you have problems juggling where mail is stored as you move from place to place. What we really need are ubiquitous really fast web connections and a place on the web to store our data accessible in some transparent way over the web. In some ways, this is an already there for some. For example I know people on Exchange Server at work which they then access from home and haltingly while on the road. Or there are people using Visto on the web to synch their appointments from different places. But these are ad hoc solutions for only some data. Clearly, we need infrastructure -- both the availability of better remote disk services and the OS support to make their access transparent. That's the promise of centralized data storage.

    With cgi, perl, VB Script, Java Script, Jave, ActiveX and Active Server Pages, you may wonder how anyone can talk about the programmable web as vision rather than reality but those languages and technologies are about programmable web pages, not the programmable web. There is still no standard for exchange of information between web sites so that, a site like Yodlee has to do its magic by ad hoc agreements with each site it scarfs data from. XML has been a work in progress now for several years and everyone agrees that it will be the plumbing below interpage programming but beyond that there is jockeying for the standard. Microsoft and IBM have embraced SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). Beyond ways for sites to exchange information programmatically, Microsoft's .NET programming model involves new paradigms for cross language programming.

    If data is moved from local machines to the web, can programs be far behind? The third prong of Microsoft's vision is software that you run over the web. Once the software is there, the software vendor has the kind of control it can't have so easily with programs on your local machine. Some specialized software currently requires an annual license fee. There is run protection built into the product so it stops working if an annual fee is not paid but the model is regarded as heavy handed and only works in specific markets. A shift to a new model of online usage that a given user can access from anywhere could easily be accompanied by a switch to a subscription model which has long been Microsoft's dream. As programs become feature rich, upgrades become less attractive and revenue streams to vendors become less certain. The switch to subscriptions is the answer to a software vendor's prayers. I think Microsoft may be surprised to find a reluctance of much of its customer base to be willing to make such a shift!

    The first two of these elements are evolutionary in that some parts of each are present in most products that Microsoft already produces. Thus we have the absurdity that the marketing team for the latest iteration of Microsoft servers (Exchange, SQL, Commerce and 5 others) can trumpet themselves as .NET enterprise servers even though they are really very far from embracing the full .NET vision. So expect new versions of Microsoft software to have .NET added to their names whether they buy into the long term vision or not. Meanwhile, start thinking hard about how you and your company will react to a proposal for shifting to a subscription model for software for that's the one element of Microsoft's .NET vision where you and they may not see eye to eye.

    This article is brought to you by the Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer Users Groups (APCUG), an international organization to which your user group belongs.

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