Services Strategy - the 3 C's

Over the past decade our lives, our businesses, and our society have been transformed by the web. In its early days the web grew through the explosion of information portals as gateways to content, marketplaces for commerce, and communications tools such as email, IM and newsgroups that drove a sense of community on the internet. Over time, the significance of these “3 Cs” – content, commerce, and community – has expanded tremendously, growing in ways through which they‟ve become intermixed and mutually reinforcing.



Content has changed at both the “head” and the “tail”. The line between editorialized portals and blogs has blurred, and all are consumed through feeds. Beyond news, movies and music and television have all expanded to embrace the web. And the interrelation of content and community has created a world of “social media”, where both head and tail content is intrinsically social by virtue of community linking, tagging, and ranking. Relationships and collective behavioral intelligence have changed how we stay informed, find and share media, and interact with one another.

Commerce on the web has moved well beyond the early online shopping cart. Nowadays, community is impacting commerce in dramatic ways. Head retailers such as Amazon utilize community extensively for recommendations, reviews, and wish lists. Tail commerce websites such as Craigslist utilize community extensively for conversation around local products. And Search has completely transformed online commerce. It‟s an essential utility for how we research, how we shop, and how we buy on the web. It‟s also become an essential mechanism for how we market on the
web, and increasingly for how we sell on the web.

Community on the web once meant “group communications”, largely through rudimentary tools such as email, IM and IRC, message boards and newsgroups. Today, the action has shifted toward using composite communications tools and platforms that mash together content, applications and commerce, all within the context of group interaction. These social platforms are altering the way we connect and coordinate, establish identity and affinities, and build reputation. While this notion of composite communications is most prominently demonstrated in how we use profile-centric consumer social networking tools, such as Facebook, the social platform is also finding its way into the workplace in the form of increasingly rich workspaces, both real-time and asynchronous, that integrate communications and content relevant to a project or a team.



As the “3 Cs” have evolved, so has the significance of online advertising as the economic engine powering our world of services. With growth projected from $40B today to $80B in the next three years, online advertising will continue to be the primary monetization mechanism for consumer services on the web. As advertising transitions more and more to being digital, measurable, and competitively bid, the “ad platform” is key. The advertising ecosystem surrounding this platform is reliant upon the continuous innovation of publishers and developers, whose interesting and engaging properties capture users‟ time and attention and ultimately serve to match advertisers with a relevant audience. Continuous innovation in such high-engagement products and services, in each area of the “3 Cs”, will continue to
provide the fuel to drive the advertising-based economic model.

Microsoft Software + Services and Cloud Computing - Developer Perspective

Software + Services (S+S) Architecture: The future is a combination of local software and Internet services interacting with one another. Software makes services better and services make software better. And by bringing together the best of both worlds, we maximize choice, flexibility and capabilities for our customers. We describe this evolutionary path in our industry as Software + Services. The following website has been developed to explore the architectural impact of building, running, consuming and monetizing S+S solutions. Get Started…

Windows Azure Developement Platform: Explore and experiment with the Azure SDKs Get Started. Also visit the Azure Services Platform Developer Center on MSDN.

Windows Live Development Platform: The Windows Live Platform is focused on providing developers and businesses with everything they need to build on top of Windows Live services. Microsoft is providing APIs for core Live services - such as Windows Live Contacts, Windows Live Messenger, Live ID, Search, and Virtual Earth - so that developers can access and use these services in the applications they create. Learn More and Get Started…

Microsoft SOA Products: Oslo” is the codename for Microsoft’s forthcoming modeling platform. Modeling is used across a wide range of domains and allows more people to participate in application design and allows developers to write applications at a much higher level of abstraction. Learn More and Get Started...



For further information refer to the Microsoft microsite for Software + Services.

Microsoft Software + Services and Cloud Computing - End User Perspective

The introduction of the mass-internet services in the 1980’s, and subsequent commodity availability of high-speed internet services for businesses and consumers has given rise to a new generation of online software services.

Software + Services (S+S) Architecture: The future is a combination of local software and Internet services interacting with one another. Software makes services better and services make software better. And by bringing together the best of both worlds, we maximize choice, flexibility and capabilities for our customers. We describe this evolutionary path in our industry as Software + Services.

1. Microsoft Online Services: Today’s business world demands that technology add value and reduce costs. Online Services from Microsoft can help relieve the burden of managing and maintaining business systems, freeing IT departments to focus on initiatives that can help deliver true competitive advantage. Key components...

i. Microsoft Office Live Meeting: Connect with your colleagues and engage your customers through real-time meetings, training sessions, and events—using only a PC with an Internet connection and basic software.

ii. Exchange Hosted Services: Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services (EHS) offers online tools to help your organization protect itself from spam and malware, satisfy retention requirements for compliance, encrypt data to preserve confidentiality, and maintain access to e-mail during and after emergency situations.

iii. Exchange Online: Microsoft Exchange Online is a hosted enterprise messaging solution based on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 that helps give your business the protection it demands, the anywhere access employees want, and the operational efficiency your IT staff needs.

iv. SharePoint Online: Microsoft SharePoint Online provides a highly secure, central location where employees can efficiently collaborate with team members, find organizational resources, manage content and workflow, and gain the business insight to make better-informed decisions.

v. Office Communications Server Online: The Office Communications Online solution provides a unified communications capability that helps people be more productive by enabling them to communicate easily with others in different locations or time zones using a range of different communication options, including text based instant messaging, voice, and video.

vi. Dynamics CRM Online: Businesses today need a better way to find, keep, and grow customer relationships.

2. Microsoft Windows Azure Online Services: Windows® Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft® data centers. Key components...

i. Windows Azure for service hosting and management, low-level scalable storage, computation and networking

ii. Microsoft SQL Services for a wide range of database services and reporting

iii. Microsoft .NET Services which are service-based implementations of familiar .NET Framework concepts such as workflow and access control

iv. Live Services for a consistent way for users to store, share and synchronize documents, photos, files and information across their PCs, phones, PC applications and Web sites

v. Microsoft SharePoint Services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services for business content, collaboration and rapid solution development in the cloud.

3. Microsoft offers web based services which enhance products that you may already use:

i. Microsoft Office is enhanced by Microsoft Office Online: Offers how-to articles, downloads, templates, clip art, and training

ii. Microsoft Xbox is enhanced by Xbox Live: Xbox LIVE is the Ultimate Broadband Gaming Experience that lets you play multiplayer Xbox games live using broadband Internet access (cable or DSL)

4. Microsoft Windows Live Services: The best of Windows and the Web together, E-Mail, chat, blogs, photos and more. With Windows Live you're connected to the people and things you care about most.

i. Hotmail: Stay connected anywhere with your Web e-mail account

ii. Mail: Access your multiple e-mail accounts in one place

iii. Messenger: Connect, share, and make your conversations count

iv. Toolbar: Easy access to Windows Live services from any Web page

v. SkyDrive: Password-protected online file storage

vi. Spaces: The best place to share your world online

vii. Photo Gallery: Get creative and share your photos and videos

viii. Writer: Easily publish pictures, videos, and other rich content to your blog

ix. Events: Plan your event. Send invitations. Share photos.

x. OneCare Family Safety: Help protect your family and computer

- from technet.com

Google Knows the Mobile Web Isn’t Only About Phones

The mobile Internet will be responsible for getting more of the world online, according to Internet co-founder Vint Cerf, who now works for Google, speaking at a conference in Madrid today. In an earlier post, Om made a similar point, saying that instead of a one-laptop-per-child initiative, we should be thinking along the lines of one smartphone per child. But Google knows access to the web will be about more than mobile phones.
Google, which employs Cerf as vice president and “chief Internet evangelist,” has a stake in mobile web access becoming ubiquitous, not only because more web access equals more people searching on Google and clicking on ads, but because Google has more flexibility in the ways it can control and monetize the mobile web experience as compared to the wired broadband experience. To that end, it has especially high hopes for its Android mobile operating system, which is being used on smartphones, netbooks and eventually on other devices.

Android gets Google deeper into a device’s software layer than search does, giving the web company more influence among developers, and the ability to tie its products together. It’s also pushing wireless access through unlicensed bands such as whites spaces, and by investments in satellite companies. This takes carriers out of the equation (neutering potential attempts to cut into Google’s ad-supported revenue streams) and gives the search giant a stake in a direct pipe to web users.

The mobile web will be important to getting the rest of the world online, not only through smartphones, but through anything with a radio and display. That means everything from television to e-readers, which is why forward-looking software companies are investing in operating systems or software platforms that can go anywhere. As the web expands beyond boxes moored to desks, and infiltrates the daily lives of more of the population, Google wants to control as much of that experience as possible

- from GigaOm

.NET 4 Future

.NET Framework 4.0



Microsoft announced the .NET Framework 4.0 on 29 September 2008. While full details about its feature set have yet to be released, some general information regarding the company's plans have been made public. Some focus of this release are:

• Improve support for parallel computing, which target multi-core or distributed systems. To this end, they plan to include technologies like PLINQ (Parallel LINQ), a parallel implementation of the LINQ engine, and Task Parallel Library, which exposes parallel constructs via method calls.
• Full support for IronPython, IronRuby, and F#.
• Support for a subset of the .NET Framework and ASP.NET with the "Server Core" variant of Windows Server 2008 R2.
• Support for Code Contracts.

- from wikipedia

For specific types/APIs included follow the links below:




- from Addison/Wesley