Microsoft promises a merry Christmas in dotcom land

On the day that Microsoft launched the first batch of its .Net servers in London, Jeremy Gittens, group marketing manager for Microsoft UK's new Strategic Development Group, urged ebusiness professionals to take a serious look at the goodies on offer.

The spinmeister of Reading took time out of the event to outline the software giant's .Net vision to uk.internet.com, a sister site of vnunet.com. Microsoft is said to have a new vision. What is it?
The vision used to be 'a PC on every desk and in every home'. People said it couldn't be done, but it has been done. So now, Microsoft has re-thought, from Bill Gates down, and we have a new vision called .Net.

We're saying that .Net projects a far-reaching aspiration that we think that our customers can reach, using tools from Microsoft and our partners. It won't happen overnight. Reaching it will involve stepping stones based on dotcom technology, inside and outside the firewall, by which is meant web-based server technology used to create business-to-consumer [deals] on the web, and to create services for your staff. That's the big idea.

What else?
Another stepping stone will be the increased use of ASPs [application service providers]. We believe that software as a service will be a great option for our customers. There has, admittedly, been a lot of hype about it, but I'd stress that Microsoft will actually be delivering through 27 companies in the UK alone.

A third aspect of the journey towards the realisation of the .Net initiative is a concentration on the emergence of the multi-device world. We're famous for the PC, and we're going to be famous for feeding great information, customised to the user on any device.

You've recently established a new group at Microsoft UK focused on the strategic issues connected with dotcoms, ASPs and wireless technology. What's that about?
The dynamics in the UK demand special treatment. There is a whole industry of web developers, ASPs and dotcoms, and high usage of mobile phones that, taken together, means there is a special chemistry here.

The .Net vision is bold and imaginative, but the technology requirements to realise it have been described as staggering. You don't think you've over-reached yourselves and are peddling a fantasy - an imaginary resolution of a set of material problems faced by business people wrestling with IT?
Well, you could have said that when we said 'let's put a PC on every desktop and in every home'. Today the internet is great, but we haven't reached Nirvana in any respect. Think of the internet as at the crystal radio stage. Let's face the reality of the current situation squarely. The browser just gives you an island of information. You have to use a PC, you have to use a keyboard and a mouse. In the future, you will look at the web on any device, and there won't be these disconnected islands of information.

So, you don't think that Wap is crap?
No. I think that Wap has made some great strides and is a great standard. Microsoft is working now with standards bodies to make sure that Wap technology builds on the web. It's very important that there shouldn't be two ways of looking at information - Wap or web. There should be one, and XML is the critical technology here.

How important is broadband to the .Net vision?
The bigger the pipe the greater the experience.

Isn't the brutal truth that we are years away from broadband being a mass market reality?
I wouldn't say we are years away from anything in this industry. If the technology and right economics are there, then the technology can be deployed very quickly. There is a huge economic opportunity to deliver fatter pipes, and I believe that broadband is on the verge of happening.

You're marketing .Net as 'beyond browsing, beyond dotcom'. Why?
'Beyond browsing' is all about getting beyond the keyboard - the interface will be voice activated. As for the dotcom world, again it's islands of information and .Net is, again, about connecting those islands into one experience.

There are three things about .Net which I think are important. First, software as a service. Our software, and our partners' software, will be available on the web as a service. That will have a huge impact on our revenue model, and we're still working out what that will entail. We won't let the licensing model dictate the technology. We'll do the technology first.

The second thing is that we're no longer just PC-oriented. It's any device with us these days. The third thing is that the architecture is universal. We believe in common universal runtime, which will, incidentally, take us beyond Java. It enables anybody to use any language on any platform to create their application.

What's the reason for you turning to ASPs?
Serving our products through ASPs is a very important stepping stone to the .Net vision. One example of how it is working is with NetStore, a European ASP. You can have a fully managed mail account for your business through NetStore. You don't need a technical support department - it's just a flick of a switch.

A good number of our readers are charged with developing ebusiness strategies, whether they are running their own startups or working in the strategic planning departments of large bricks and mortar companies. What central piece of advice would you give them?
If I were a startup today I would, candidly, take a good look at the technology [Microsoft is] launching. Time to market - time from idea to revenue - is critical today. Our platform is built on minimising the risk for those guys.

For example, there is a Datacenter version of Windows 2000 launched today that will deliver three times the power, three times more cheaply than any competing product. So, if you get that technology, when the Christmas ebusiness boom comes along your server will scale to that opportunity.

Or take the Microsoft Mobile Information Server, due to ship next year. That will provide a layer on top of Windows 2000 that will serve out to mobile devices. It will be like Christmas for a dotcom when they open the package of products we're releasing today. I'm tempted to do it myself!