Microsoft warms up to renting apps
Alexander Gusak
By Dan Briody and Bob Trott
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 6:52 AM PT, Sep 27, 1999
Although it may be premature for IT shops to rip out their existing hardware
and software, each week the trend toward rentable Web-based applications
gains momentum. And while productivity-application giant Microsoft weighs
its options in the application-rental arena, start-ups are already making
the case for the virtual desktop.
Microsoft's rent-an-application efforts will begin in the consumer and the
small-business arenas before the company offers them more broadly. While
company officials would not elaborate on timing, Microsoft Office 2000 will
be available to small businesses through the company's bCentral Web site,
which goes into beta testing this week. The initiative is part of
Microsoft's expansion of its MSN portal site into an "Everyday Web"
offering, which it hopes will become a one-stop site for Internet users.
Microsoft's hosting efforts will likely become more focused this week, when
the company announces an alliance with outsourcer USWeb/CKS.
The bCentral portal -- which will offer products and services to small
businesses -- will sort of act as a trial run before Microsoft offers
rentals to large corporations.
"We will be adding Office services and Exchange services, and those things
will have a price that reflects the value we are currently delivering to our
customers," said Steve Ballmer, president of Microsoft in Redmond, Wash.
"Instead of getting new [software] releases every n years, you get new
releases continuously," he said.
"You will move to the world of no management. Now you have your software
with you [on a PC], but you can live out in the cloud of the Internet."
Although Microsoft has to contend with the huge financial stakes of shifting
to a network model of selling software and the legacy of a PC-centric
design, a slew of start-up companies are staking their claim to the
Web-desktop space. These companies are offering APIs for the development of
faster and better applications designed specifically for the Web, because
speed and bandwidth have been at the core of IT concerns over Web-hosted
applications.
"We're not about trying to replace operating systems," said Shervin
Pishevar, CEO of MyWebOS, a start-up based in Baltimore. "We believe in a
democracy of technology. MyWebOS comes complete with an API for developers
to build next-generation Windows-like Web applications that run almost as
fast as desktop applications. Nobody is going to use apps, for productivity
or anything else, if it's slow."
But IT managers continue to approach the new technology conservatively,
scared off by the instability of the Internet and investments in the
existing infrastructure.
"We've taken a look at Web-source applications, and they are in our plan
strategically," said Frank Petersmark, assistant vice president of IS at
Amerisure and Co., an insurance provider in Southfield, Mich. "But we would
certainly have concerns over bandwidth and investments in network
infrastructure. I don't think the Internet is as stable as a VPN [virtual
private network] that any company has built. And I would be hard-pressed to
find that from a vendor on the Web, but that's not to say that it couldn't
happen over time."
Other companies are focusing on creating a place where users can go to have
the look and feel of a traditional desktop. Last week, a new company,
Desktop.com, located in San Francisco, was launched to provide the mass
personalization of Web-hosted environments.
"What we're doing is different in that we are focused on the environment and
infrastructure of applications; we want to be the point where you log in,"
said Katie Burke, CEO and co-founder of Desktop.com, a competitor of
MyWebOS. "Applications aren't necessarily where we expect to be building
value. It's more of an aggregation point."