Tuesday, November 15th, 2005, 2:42 pm
Microsoft to Drop Shrink-wrapped Software?
Filed under:
Media slowly becomes redundant
while network-based services take over
HE interesting item come from the Financial Times and discusses Microsoft’s wishful (and thus far unsuccessful) strategic move to providing on-line services, e.g. MSN and so-called Live Software.
For long-time Microsoft watchers, there was a strong sense of déjà vu about Bill Gates’s description this week of a new vision for the future of software.
The future, he declared,
laylies (I had to fix this typo that hurt my eyes) in delivering services over the internet, not selling shrink-wrapped CDs containing code that customers could load on their own machines…[...]
But the internet’s impact on the software business continues to spread, and the idea of software-as-a-service is back in fashion in Microsoft’s Redmond HQ — this time under the new rubric of ‘Live Software’.
Microsoft’s CEO therefore admits that Microsoft’s weakest point is in fact where future IT is headed. Can the Internet become safe haven for the troubled and perplexed Windows code? Will Microsoft’s Singularity (a new O/S) become a reliable replacement/successor instead? It it all as realistic as edible manour?
