Today at Microsoft’s Mix conference for developers, which Duncan just finished liveblogging, chief software architect Ray Ozzie hinted at a new service Microsoft is about to preview that will be called Mesh. It sounds like cloud computing for the masses—an ambitious platform that will attempt to unite Web applications across all of your devices, from multiple PCs to cell phones. I got my hands on the transcript of Ozzie’s speech, and this is the part I found most intriguing:
Just imagine the possibilities enabled by centralized configuration and personalization and remote control of all your devices from just about anywhere. Just imagine the convenience of unified data management, the transparent synchronization of files, folders, documents, and media. The bi-directional synchronization of arbitrary feeds of all kinds across your devices and the Web, a kind of universal file synch.
Just imagine the possibilities of unified application management across the device mesh, centralized, Web-based deployment of device-based applications. Imagine an app platform that’s cognizant of all of your devices. Now, as it so happens, we’ve had a team at Microsoft working on this specific scenario for some time now, starting with the PC and focused on the question of how we might make life so much easier for individuals if we just brought together all your PCs into a seamless mesh, for users, for developers, using the Web as a hub.
Before you know it, you in this audience are going to have the option of being the first to try out an early technology preview of this simple but incredibly useful new software and service. As this product emerges just over the horizon, I think you’ll find it to be quite intriguing and key in delivering upon a compelling vision of a personal device mesh and of connected devices.
Notice how many times he says the word “mesh.” Well, if you go to Mesh.com, it brings you to Windows Live ID sign-in page for a site that is not yet up. I tried to sign in and was told my account is not authorized, but was sent to this URL: https://preview.mshorizon.com/. People have personal, device and businesses meshes, and Microsoft wants to connect them all. What Ozzie is describing (remember, he is taking to developers) is the age-old dream of writing an app once and having it deployed anywhere and everywhere. It’s a bit of vaporware right now, but well worth keeping an eye on to see if it fulfills the promise Ozzie is hinting at.
Now, one more technical detail that might shed some light on what Mesh will be. Shortly after this part of his speech, Ozzie announced the beta of SQL Server Data Services, a hosted database. I am not sure that the two are connected, but SQL Server Data Services sounds like Microsoft’s Blue/Cloud project. And if this is part of Microsoft’s entry into cloud computing perhaps Mesh is built on top of that hosted database. Thoughts anyone?
“…Thoughts anyone?”
Clippy will be able to ask you if you want to search for that Power Point presentation across all your devices. Yawn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clippy
I am afraid that this type of system will fall on deaf ears at the moment. It seems like this is where the future is headed, but I think it might be a little premature at the moment. Most users still exist in the single computer mindset. While I do not have any hard facts to back me up, and others are more than welcome to correct me, it seems likely that very few people actually use more than 2 smart devices (a computer and a smart phone for instance, or a gaming console, etc). That is not to say that Microsoft should not push their technology to the cutting edge. It just seems like they have an obligation to patch up their existing technology before they forge forwards.
At the same time, this would be neat technology, and would certainly be something I would like to see out on the market.
Can’t wait for this to happen…
2nd Thatcher. “AppTorrent” might seem like a logical idea, but that’s pretty much “mesh” in a current-tech nutshell. But hey, I’m sure Ray hasn’t gotten to where he is without a little MEGO, so look for more buzzwords in the future for us to guide our ships by.
This idea has been tried before with companies like ZKey.com (Deadpool).
And I agree it is still ahead of its time for most users, especially since people are still getting usto gotomypc.com
very cool
bf
It will succeed because we are a connected society moving towards common standards across communication devices.
It’s logical that sharing of information between devices will happen and it’s logical that this sharing should be centralized to some higher control arena.
Mesh will happen and if MS can’t achieve then no one can!
Same old same old: the universal platform to rule them all. But it’s worth considering that neither Microsoft nor Google (with Android) is truly trying to achieve one-write, run many. Neither is trying to connect Windows, Embedded Linux, Symbian, Android, etc.
Voyager (www.recursionsw.com) is one platform that bridges Linux to Windows to Symbian. A few others can be found by googling something like “bridge windows linux symbian”. Once Android is folded into one of these products then you could argue a universal platform exists that would truly give consumer’s choice.
HA !!!!….sounds like another Microsoft MisMesh adventure to me. These people had yrs head start with Win CE for mobile phones and accomplished exactly what ?
Ray Ozzie ‘talkin the talk’ but it will be quite awhile ( if ever ) to see Microsoft walkin the walk.
And accomplished exactly what? Ummm… let’s see. Win CE/Mobile is the dominant smartphone OS. What else did you want to know?
that kind of lexical stream he uses (centralized, unified, cognizant, etc) suggests that his office has solved legal issues with corporate purchases of pot and delivering them straight to offices. What I do wonder now is how on Earth MS shareholders still tolerate this “strategical dark magic”…
This sounds like “Synapse” from the Antitrust movie…
I think every related companies will try to do this one way another. Those who provide the best product / service and experience and not to forget: price, should survive. Not to mention the openness and interoperability, whick I think M$ quite lack of it. Google might be able to do it, imagine Android for desktop (any OS). Well, everything is too early to predict, some company might (surprisingly) make smart move and some might (surprisingly) make stopid move. The time will tell.
Definite wave of future SaaS and end-user device cloud awareness. The problem is the reliability of the network itself. Look at the many outages recently: Hotmail, Salesforce.com, RIM, YouTube, Skype … Basic requirement - have a backup.
SSDS is MSFT’s riposte to Amazon S3 (bit late but never mind). It will use ADO.Net Data Service under the hood whch, as announced last week, is what Microsoft are now using for ALL their Windows Live web services.
So, SSDS is just a branded, hosted offering of a technology that they are just about to release as something else to the dev community. Still, at least for once there isn’t loads of different teams in Redmond building exactly the same thing. They are also leveraging an industry standard (AtomPUB) for a change.
-Jamie
Reminds so much of Microsoft’s .Net Initiative of 2002. Hope this one will work out.
Keep in mind, this isn’t an either-or strategy. Microsoft is building all their apps on web services, so the same software base can be deployed as traditional embedded software, on demand/SaaS/hosted software, and distributed + virtualized within the cloud.
Concerns about reliability of the cloud only apply to part of the scenario, not the underlying idea Microsoft pursuing.
Here’s a few posts about this from my Network World blog:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/25733
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/25732
- Mitchell
very cool. thanks!!
Re: Bar
>March 5th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
>And accomplished exactly what? Ummm… let’s see. Win CE/Mobile is the >dominant smartphone OS. What else did you want to know?
Actually it is not, I believe a few weeks ago on techcrunch that some statistics were published in regards to the iPhones market share of smart phones. Windows CE (Crappy Environment) was well below the iPhone and Blackberry.