Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing

Microsoft Silverlight

Microsoft has announced Silverlight 1.0, a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering Rich Internet Apps (RIA) on the Web. Silverlight works with all the major browsers including IE, Firefox, and Safari.

Microsoft unveiled new Silverlight customer experiences on Entertainment Tonight, HSN and World Wrestling Entertainment. Major League Baseball and Disney Interactive also have amazing demos of Silverlight.

Miguel de Icaza and the Mono team at Novell will implement open source versions of Silverlight 1.0 and Silverlight 1.1 that will run on Linux. Novell has a clever name for their version called Moonlight.

Silverlight delivers very high quality video with no jerky motion and buffering issues. Silverlight can progressively download and play media content from any web-server.  You can point Silverlight at any URL and it will download/play in any browser.  No special server software is required, and Silverlight can work with any web-server, including Apache on Linux.

Microsoft is very serious about delivering great tools for designers and developers on both the PC and Mac, and for Explorer, Firefox, and Safari browsers. Microsoft is working closely with Novell to make it available on Linux as well. Here are my high level take aways on this announcement;

Designers and Developers can work together and use the same tools. Microsoft Expression tools for web designers, Visual Studio for web developers, and Silverlight for cross web browser and cross platform support. The combination of great tools for building applications and Silverlight for cross platform distribution creates real synergy for developers, web site owners, and users.

Developers can use their language of choice. With Silverlight you can code in C#, Javascript, Visual Basic, Python and Ruby. And because the the CLR (Common Language Runtime) the code can be deployed on the desktop or on the web across platforms.

Silverlight Streaming - hosting and streaming for FREE. Silverlight Streaming allows users to host their Silverlight content and apps on Microsoft servers, taking advantage of the global data centers and content delivery network. It supports up to 4GB of content, and allows streaming up to 1 million minutes of on-line video delivery at  DVD quality.

Get all the details at www.Silverlight.net

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Powerset - Open Source approach to beat Google

Powerset is slowly coming out of stealth mode. Dan Farber at ZDNet has an excellent in depth story on Powerset and PowerLabs, their approach to including the community in developing and QA'ing the Powerset search engine index. It is a novel idea, empowering of the open source community to join the fight to beat Google. Open Source contributors love to join a crusade, contribute their skills, and change the world.

Steve Newcomb, co-founder of Powerset, said in the ZDNet story; “We want as many people in Powerlabs (as possible) to help us build and test the product. Powerlabs tells us when we are ready to go. We could have 50,000 people QAing our product,” he added. So far Powerset has 10,000 Powerlabs users. “Imagine how many widgets that could sit inside of Facebook, MySpace and even Second Life. It gives us the ability to launch with an extremely passionate set of people.”

Powerset is using linguistics and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to better understand the meaning and context of search queries. But the real power of Powerset is applied to the search index, not the query. The index of millions of web pages is indexed in the traditional way but they also analyze the pages for "semantics", context, meaning, similar words, and categories. They add all of this contextual meta data to the search index so that search queries can find better results.

Who is the best ballplayer of all time? Powerset breaks this query down very carefully using linguistic ontologies and all sorts of proprietary rules. For example, they know that "ballplayer" can mean Sports. Sports can be separated into categories that involve a "Ball". Things like baseball, basketball, soccer, and football. Note that soccer does not include the word ball, yet Powerset knows this is a sport that includes a ball.

Powerset knows that "ballplayer" can mean an individual player of a sport that includes a ball. They know that "best of all time" means history, not time in the clock sense.

Why hasn't this been done before? Powerset uses all these rules and linguistic approaches to analyze millions and billions of web pages, and adds "meta data" hooks into each word on each page. As you can imagine this is a huge scaling problem, that has been impossible to solve economically. With Moore's Law applied to constantly reducing the cost of computing, storage, and bandwidth, it is now possible to solve this problem, and within a few years it will be economically viable. Powerset may sustain some losses in the early years but economics and scale are on their side.

Remember, "Why 1% of search market share is worth over $1 Billion" This is a huge market with staggering growth. Powerset is banking the lowering cost curve and the growing revenue curve. Both curves are moving fast. Grabbing 1% of market share can pay for a lot of early costs.

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Vista more secure than Linux, Apple OSX, and Windows XP

Jeff Jones, Director of Trustworthy Computing at Microsoft, has released a very detailed report comparing the vulnerabilities reported and fixed, in the first 6 months after release, of each of the major operating systems. Vista is the most secure operating system ever released.

Microsoft took a lot of heat for delaying release of the Vista operating system, but it has paid off in terms of security and defending against hacker vulnerability.

Vista is more secure than Red Hat Linux, Apple OSX, and even Windows XP. The Linux and Apple fans will be sure to rant and object, but not with facts, just opinions. This report is very detailed, includes actual reported facts, and even strips out some bugs associated with Linux add-on software, so there is a fair "apples to apples" comparison. The report is fair and comprehensive.

Vista is more secure than Windows XP. That is the real measure of success. Linux and Apple OSX do not have much market share, so they don't attract hackers as much. Vista is attacked by all the worlds hackers because it is the biggest target. Given that exposure it is even more impressive that Vista is the most secure.

The Linux and Apple OSX fans will never be convinced, so it is irrelevant to them. It is however, nice to see a report based in facts, rather than the fanatical and biased opinions we often hear from the Linux crowd. One bright spot, Jeremy's Blog, a blog written by a Linux and Open Source evangelist, says;

This report indeed does a better job than some from a methodology standpoint. For instance, he didn’t simply compare a default RHEL install, which includes a full Office suite and a whole host of apps not found in a default Windows install, with a default Windows install. He attempted to rip out the packages from the Linux installs that he perceived as being extra functionality when compared to a Windows install. This gives a much better baseline.

Flame wars are likely to erupt, but to be fair, demand equal attention to detail and supporting facts, and ignore the fanatical opinions.

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Silverlight on Linux - Miguel de Icaza's moonlight project

Miguel de Icaza, Open Source developer of Mono, has turned his attention to working with Silverlight on Linux. Miguel and his team worked 21 straight days to build a demo of Silverlight on Linux for the Mix07 Paris  show going on now in the city of lights.

Miguel's team did an outstanding job. He has a day by day review of what they did and how they did it on his blog. This quote from Miguel, an Open Source and Linux developer, summed it up for me;

Needless to say, we believe that Silverlight is a fantastic development platform, and its .NET-based version is incredibly interesting and as Linux/Unix users we wanted to both get access to content produced with it and to use Linux as our developer platform for Silverlight-powered web sites.

Miguel and his team built a Silverlight Airlines demo that shows how you can make an airline reservation, put it in your calendar, and see the flight path on a world map. It lets you compare flights and make changes. You would have to see it to understand the power and flexibility of the application and how Silverlight makes it easy and beautiful.

The Mix show, first seen in Las Vegas, is traveling the world. Today there are Mix sessions in Paris and Silicon Valley, and more planned over the next several months.

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Who pays for Open Source? Freemium conversion rates

Open Source Software companies give the software away for free. They hope to make money by selling maintenance, support, training, and consulting. How many free users actually pay for service?

David Skok from Matrix Partners did a presentation at the Open Source Business Conference on the Open Source business model. David Skok has invested in several OSS companies including JBoss. He knows the business well.

According to Skok, business users of Open Source Software want professional customer support and are willing to pay for it. Consumer users are less likely to pay for support. On average about 3% of all OSS users pay for a support contract.

This correlates with my findings on "Freemium" conversion rates where the average conversion rate was also 3%. The Freemium model, popularized by Fred Wilson, is where a service is offered for "free" with additional "premium" services offered for a fee.

I remember many years ago talking to a bulk mail list company about response rates to targeted mailings...the same result...about 3%.

Maybe it is just a strange coincidence. Every product is different. The value propositions are different, the prices are very different, and the competitive environment is different. But, the results are strangely the same.

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Dell signs on with Novell and Microsoft

Dell has joined the Novell/Microsoft alliance and has agreed to distribute SUSE Linux on Dell servers.

BusinessWeek reported "On Sunday, Microsoft and Novell said Dell has agreed to buy Suse Linux Enterprise Server certificates from Microsoft and that the computer maker will set up a services and marketing program aimed at getting users of open-source platforms to switch to the new Suse Linux offering."

The Boston Globe has an interesting quote from Rick Becker, vice president of solutions at Dell.

"The Novell-Microsoft deal ensures that users of Novell Linux are safe from Microsoft patent infringement lawsuits. Dell's Becker said that was a key reason his company wanted to join the alliance. "There's many aspects of open source that delight my customers," Becker said, but "they have concerns . . . about software licensing. . . . Those concerns go away when they deploy Microsoft and SLES Linux."

Customers have been using Linux and Windows for years, but typically on separate servers, and for very different tasks. It is now quite common for a customer to choose Windows to run a CRM or production management system, and choose Linux to run a print server, file server, or a rapidly changing environment.

What has changed is that now customers are using virtualization to better utilize their servers, and they now want to run Windows and Linux on the same server. Customers also wanted assurances that they would not be caught in the crossfire of patent infringement lawsuits between  the vendors.

The Dell announcement and the adoption of customers like Wal-Mart, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse are further proof that the industry wants Windows and Linux to work together in a way that protects Intellectual Property.

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Miguel de Icaza, Mike Schroepfer, Whurley, and other Open Source leaders at Mix 07

Some of the biggest names in Open Source were at Mix07 and participated in a panel discussion "Open Source, the Web, Interoperability and Microsoft".  

Pictured left to right: Sam Ramji - Microsoft, Rob Conery - SubSonic, Andi Gutmans - Zend Technologies, Mike Schroepfer - Mozilla,  Miguel de Icaza - Mono, Novell, (William) whurley - BMC Software.

Miguel de Icaza has an excellent post on his reactions to the Microsoft announcements and the Mix conference.

A very impressive set of demos at Mix 07, the 72 hour conversation that Microsoft is having in las Vegas.

The focus was mostly around Silverlight, Microsoft's new web plugin to author rich application and tools used to design this content.

The whole Expression suite was adorable, and Blend is fantastic.

The demos were pretty amazing, Scott built a nice animation for an airline reservation system on stage.

Later the Open Source guys joined a chorus line with Microsoft's Sam Ramji in a demonstration of unity and harmony. Even though we might have different approaches to the software business, we all have the same goal...deliver great software solutions that solve real problems.

Zimbra - the on-line vs off-line user experience

Zimbra is extending its on-line email collaboration suite to enable offline use...something Microsoft's Outlook has been able to do for 10 - 15 years. Here is the conundrum; Will the user experience be better for Microsoft Office trying to go on-line, or for off-line apps like Zimbra, Zoho, Google Apps trying to support off-line use? Not only are they starting from completely different bases, but the user expectations for features, performance, and support, are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Microsoft Office has 450 million users and generates $12B in revenues, which is about $27 per user per year. Zimbra claims to have 6 million users, not all paid, but they charge about $30 per user per year.

The advantage to being a start-up or beta product is that expectations are low, and any feature enhancement is heralded as a killer innovation. Start-ups attract "early adopter" users who are willing to try new things, put up with missing features, bugs, and poor customer support. They are willing to grow along with the product. This is why it is easier for start-ups or low end products to move "up market" than it is for established high end products to move "down market".

Email, web browsers, and office suites are the killer apps for most information workers.

• Email can be accessed on-line, processed off-line, or even on your smart phone or Blackberry. Microsoft Outlook allows users to have all email on the local disk and work offline. You can read, delete, respond, and create new emails in off-line mode, and everything synchs up when you go back on-line. The on-line and off-line problem has been solved for email. Zimbra, and other on-line start-ups are just catching up.
• Browsers only work effectively on-line. You can of course "cache" web pages locally or use the browser off-line to render local content. Technologies like AJAX and Apollo are putting more functionality in the browser, and small local databases are being used to store more application logic and data for off-line use. Given a large enough disk it is possible to store most of the web sites you care about and keep them up to date (synched) with the latest content. So, the off-line problem is technically solved for web browsers, but not practical for browser based applications.
• Office suites (spreadsheet, word processor, presentations) have been strictly off-line client applications. Zimbra, Zoho, Google Docs, and others have recently released "on-line" versions of these office suite tools. These applications are primitive compared to Microsoft Office in terms of features, and only work on-line. The on-line start-ups, the Firefox browser team, and the Apollo team, are working hard to bring off-line functionality to browsers.

It is all about the user experience and expectations. It is really not a question of if on-line apps can work off-line, or vice versa. Lets assume really smart engineers can figure out how to make it work. The question is "Is the user delighted with the experience in both modes?" 

Microsoft has been talking about the seamless Client/Server/Services continuum for years now. The idea is that users want the same functionality and seamless user experience on-line or off-line, on a laptop, in a browser, or on their cell phone. They want  all their actions in synch across all usage modes and devices so that the email you read on your cell phone shows up as read on your laptop, or the change you made to your spreadsheet shows up in all versions.

Finding the right balance is the key. The data and "state" must be the same across all devices and usage modes, but the presentation and navigation on your cell phone will be different than what you see on your 17 inch desktop screen. Desktop applications have tons of features, integration with other applications, and leverage the desktop operating system. All of this can't be replicated in a browser. The trick will be finding the right balance of features and functions that make the user experience seamless and obvious.

The expectations of these users and the sheer scale of serving hundreds of millions of users on-line makes this a very significant challenge for Microsoft. Microsoft is building two giant $500M data centers to support the on-line business. Office Live is a whole new on-line platform for hosted applications. The infrastructure and platform is in place, now the challenge is designing applications with seamless user experiences. That will be the toughest job of all.

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The Open Source identity crisis - A distinction without a difference?

The Open Source world is once again arguing with itself about what Open Source means and which companies can claim to be Open Source. EnterpriseDB is currently in the hot seat. The problem is that there are many definitions of Open Source and many Open Source style licenses like GPL, Creative Commons, BSD style, Apache style, MySQL style, and Sun's CDDL.

Is this a distinction without a difference? Do customers really care about the details of all these licenses? It should be noted that Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, HP, and every other software company have unique licenses as well. In my experience, customers care about a reliable solution to their problem, that works well with what they already have, with professional technical support, at a reasonable price.

Is it all about the source code? To me anyway, Open Source means you get access to the source code. The particular license determines what rights you have to the source code and what you can do with it. For most customers any of the licenses will allow them to do whatever they need to do for internal use. The reality is that only a tiny percentage, 8% or so, actually touch the source code, and still fewer contribute any changes back to the "community".

Is it all about the community? The GPL demands that any enhancements or changes to the source code be offered back, free of charge or encumbrance, to the community. The myth is that Open Source code is developed by thousands of members of "the community". The reality is that in most cases probably 50% of the code is developed by not more than 20 people. The BSD style license allows anyone to make enhancements or extensions to the source code, and to resell the software to customers for any price they see fit. And, no requirement to contribute those changes back to the community.

Is Sun's Solaris or Java truly Open Source? Was it developed by the community? To use Bill Clinton's words "It depends on what the definition of "is" is". Is MySQL considered Open Source? Go check out the MySQL web site. There are 4 different licenses for the same MySQL code...it all depends on how you want to use it. Hey, I have no problem with this. I think all software developers have the right to decide how their software will be used and distributed.

Customers don't care if the software was developed by one individual, a community, open sourced, out-sourced, or any other way. Customers care about solving a problem, having the software work well with what they already have, and having access to good support and documentation, all at a reasonable price.

This explains why the same customer will choose Windows for one application and Linux for another. They will choose SQL Server for one database problem and MySQL for another. It is not a religious issue for customers. It is a practical decision. I am reminded of a brilliantly simple statement by Microsoft's Jeff Raikes "Stay focused on the customer, not the competitor". At Microsoft we try hard to stay focused on the customer needs. Everything else is a minor detail...like those distinctions without a difference.

Microsoft and Open Source? Aras leads the way

Microsoft and Open Source seems like an odd combination. But it makes a lot of sense. Aras today announced Aras Innovator, built on Microsoft's .Net and SQL Server, and offered as an Open Source product.

eWeek says Aras move puts new spin on Open Source "Aras, which makes product life-cycle management software, has a new spin on open source: making the code to its Aras Innovator software, which only runs on proprietary Microsoft technologies, openly available under the Microsoft Community License and hosted on Microsoft's Codeplex Web site."

InfoWorld interviewed Aras CEO Peter Schroer " In late 2005, Aras made the decision to ditch cross-platform support and base its offerings on Windows, .Net, and SQL Server. With Microsoft's help, Aras worked to integrate its software with the latest Windows-based technologies, including SharePoint Server and Office 2007. Only recently did it make the decision to open its code.

Schroer says there's no contradiction between open source and the Microsoft software ecosystem. "Microsoft has a particular business model that works for them. But around that they're encouraging open source development," he explains."

Cnet ran a story about the transition from perpetual license revenue to subscriptions and from traditional licensing to open source.

Advocates of open-source businesses say that the loss of license revenue, particularly for pricey business software, has to be offset with lower operating expenses. Generally speaking, that means cutting back on sales and marketing.

Aras, for example, eliminated its sales positions and is replacing them with application engineers who will provide support to customers' nitty-gritty questions. Those are "the people the customers want to talk to anyway. They don't want to talk to a salesperson," Schroer said.

Bill Hilf , General Manager of Microsoft's Platform Technology Strategy said "Aras brings a new value proposition to the enterprise software solution market by delivering direct customer benefits to companies running Microsoft technologies.” “We are supportive of Aras’ move to offer enterprise open source solutions on the Microsoft stack, and we continue to see tremendous growth in the Microsoft partner ecosystem as a variety of industry partners are finding innovative ways to take advantage of the value of the Microsoft platform under a wide range of licensing models.”

The customer wins and Aras wins. Aras made the decision to rewrite their application on Microsoft platforms like .Net and SQL Server because all of their customers already had Microsoft infrastructure. Then Aras converted from a traditional licensing model to a free download Open Source model. This in turn meant that Aras eliminated the up front perpetual license and went with a monthly subscription. So, Aras eliminated all their sales people and instead have application engineers help their customers with installation and customization.

Aras is in the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) space and provides a process oriented approach to manage, measure, and improve product development and quality compliance.

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