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(Hints of) The Future of Windows Live as a platform

This story at Redmond Developer News discusses the future of Windows Live as a platform and includes an interview with Adam Sohn, director of worldwide sales and marketing in Microsoft's online services group.

Main points of the article (plus additional notes and links): 

  • "Microsoft's MIX07 developers and designers conference is set for the end of April in Las Vegas, and promises to be the venue where the company reveals more of its plans to make Windows Live into a bona fide platform for third-party developers"
  • "First, the company is working to present a more cohesive architecture than it has previously for its emerging Live Services businesses "
    • Sohn: "With the emerging framework, APIs fall into two fairly distinct categories-infrastructure and applications"
    • LiveSide has intepreted the breakdown of the two categories as mentioned in the article as follows:

InfrastructureApplications
     identity     IM
     relationships     search
     advertising     Spaces
     domains     mail/calendar
     storage     classifieds (expo)
      mapping

  • "some of the pieces have been delivered, at least in version 1 form. Others, such as the Windows Live Contacts Control, which Sohn describes as providing access to "probably the largest social network on the planet," are still in beta test."
  • "As Microsoft is developing the software needed to make Windows Live work, the company is also dashing to create enough server space to provide Live services on a truly global basis. That is, Microsoft is investing heavily in data centers to support all of those users and their services"
    • Sohn: "This is a scale game"

Robert Scoble's reaction to the piece:

"I’m worried about the boil-the-ocean approach. Web developers like small, discrete APIs

...Oh, and they like to see lots of iterations, er, small improvements in the service over time that demonstrates a team’s commitment (Virtual Earth got dozens of little, and some major, improvements over the past three years)."

And LiveSide:

"Developing an architecture around Microsoft's Live services has been and will be a big part of what happens in this coming year and beyond.  It may be why Ray Ozzie has been so silent lately.  We may find out as early as his keynote at Mix07. " 

I suspect there will be some more reactions to the RDN article, so I'll update this post if I see stuff of interest.

Comments

james governor said:

it would be great to be invited to MIX. RedMonk is very interested in Microsoft's story in this area. we would like to be on the relevant AR radar screens. can you help alex? thanks.

# February 23, 2007 11:03 AM