It is always interesting to hear Steve Ballmer spin Microsoft's latest marketing, product, technical, whatever announcement. As if on cue eWeek.com published an article titled
"Microsoft CEO Touts Company 'Bet' on Web Services"
Quoting Steve Ballmer characterizing the move as a "big bold bet". I just had to laugh. How could anyone view this as a "bet" in the current technology environment. About the only part of this decision that could be considered a risk is weather to use the W3C "formal" Web Services specifications or a more lean REST based architecture. Granted the formal Web Services specifications are starting to get that hairball consistency, but there are still valid reasons to go either way.The article goes on to state...
Quoting Steve Ballmer characterizing the move as a "big bold bet". I just had to laugh. How could anyone view this as a "bet" in the current technology environment. About the only part of this decision that could be considered a risk is weather to use the W3C "formal" Web Services specifications or a more lean REST based architecture. Granted the formal Web Services specifications are starting to get that hairball consistency, but there are still valid reasons to go either way.The article goes on to state...
Microsoft believes Web services will work in tandem with PC-installed software, a vision that differs from that of "software as a service" advocates, such as Salesforce.com and Google, who expect services delivered over the Web to replace traditional software... "We believe this shift is the most important technological transformation during the next decade," Ballmer said.
Aahhh.... now this is more like it. I began to have a flashback. [the screen goes fuzzy and "Dreamweaver" begins to play in the background...] In my days at Viant Corp. during the Web 1.0 heyday (don't remember if it was 98 or 99), I had the privilege of being invited to Seattle for a special Microsoft conference. Before I arrived, I didn't have any other information than that it was a selected audience of internet savvy technology partners.
Microsoft began by discussing what they felt was a challenge for them. They were encountering both resistance and lack of interest to using their products any deeper in Corporate America than the desktop. The biggest issue seemed to be the integration challenge. Unix seemed to be the OS lingua franca for integration projects and Sun was selling servers by the boat load.Microsoft proposed that they were considering XML messaging as the lingua franca for their platform and were seriously looking into embedding its use throughout all its products. From applications like Excel, Outlook right down to the core operating system, all would expose access to features through XML messaging. I was not a Microsoft fan at the time, but the idea was exciting, Microsoft even had a cool code name for it... "Mega Services!".Alas, although Microsoft bore SOAP and .NET, the vision never seemed to fully pan out in the way described in that conference. This latest announcement is probably the closest they've come and is a step in the right direction, but I still hope for a day when the vision is fulfilled;)