Cloud, SaaS, ASP, Web Services – Microsoft Live Services, Windows Azure, Live Mesh Adds to Confusion

Ed: Do we need more confusion? Here it comes – more jargon from Microsoft. 

IBM offers hosted or outsourced services. Google Apps offers free, hosted, outsourced services. Microsoft leverages it’s many products and intellectual property into a new service – sold for an undisclosed rental fee over the web. Let the new war begin.

I prefer simplicity for consumers, customers, and partners.

Ray Ozzie Has His Head In the Clouds

Microsoft wants in on cloud computing. At the company’s Professional Developer’s Conference today, Microsoft’s chief software architect Ray Ozzie announced Windows Azure, its “internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers.” Windows Azure will only be open as a technology preview to a very limited number of developers for now, and no pricing details have been revealed that I can find. But this is basically Microsoft’s answer to Amazon’s Web Services and cloud computing initiatives from other enterprise IT players, including everyone from IBM to RackSpace. Azure will run Windows servers and the .Net framework in the cloud as a hosted, pay-as-you go service. It will be part of what Microsoft is calling Live Services, and it will run Live apps, .Net apps, SQL server, Sharepoint servers, and Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM…

Microsoft PDC2008: Ozzie Introduces Azure

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie started off the company’s 2008 Professional Developer Conference With a discussion of the back-end , server parts of the company’s “software plus services strategy.” This doesn’t get the attention that goes to client solutions – like Windows, which I expect we’ll hear more about tomorrow – but it is crucial for developers and corporate users.

Ozzie said that Microsoft’s big advantage in writing platforms comes from three items: It builds its own apps on the platform, which makes sure the platform works. Because of the size of Microsoft, its platforms are likely to reach critical mass. Microsoft has always understood that ISVs need to be successful for the company to be successful.

There’s a lot of truth in that – there are many companies and developers who have grown using Microsoft’s tools. But Microsoft has been a very aggressive competitor to some of its ISVs, a point Ozzie didn’t make. Perhaps as a result, is seeing more competition than it has in years – particularly from open source software on the server and tools side…

Ray Ozzie Announces Windows Azure – “Windows in the Cloud”

Ray Ozzie opened the Microsoft PDC ’08 this morning with a keynote speech. In it he announced Windows Azure, Microsoft’s “Windows in the cloud”. It is a new service based operating environment. He described it as a massive highly scalable service platform. What is being released today is just a fraction of what it will become. It will be Microsoft’s highest scalable system enabling people and companies to create services on the Web.

On the new webpage for Windows Azure, it is described as follows:

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.

To build these applications and services, developers can use their existing Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 expertise. In addition, Windows Azure supports popular standards and protocols including SOAP, REST, and XML. Windows Azure is an open platform that will support both Microsoft and non-Microsoft languages and environments.

Use Windows Azure to:

* Add Web service capabilities to existing packaged applications.
* Build, modify, and distribute applications to the Web with minimal on-premises resources.
* Perform services (large-volume storage, batch processing, intense or large-volume computations, etc.) off premises.
* Create, test, debug, and distribute Web services quickly and inexpensively.
* Reduce costs of building and extending on-premises resources.
* Reduce the effort and costs of IT management.

Steve Ballmer on Search Strategy, Why Silicon Valley Matters Less, Ad Business Myths, Energy, Education, and Fixing Windows…

Ed: Distracted.

Steve Ballmer on Search Strategy, Why Silicon Valley Matters Less, Ad Business Myths, Energy, Education, and Fixing Windows…

Here are 7 minutes of spirited highlights from Steve Ballmer’s recent visit to Silicon Valley at the Churchill Club. He talks about the billions of dollars Microsoft is prepared to spend on building its search business, the relevance of Silicon Valley to Microsoft, education and the myths around ad supported business models, and much more.

YouTube, Google and Blip.tv

Here is the entire Steve Ballmer talk:

Click To Play

Yahoo and Blip.tv

Microsoft Recruiting Blog Sites for AdCenter Ad Network

Microsoft in Bay Area Recruiting Blog Sites for AdCenter Ad Network

Microsoft has begin to recruit Bay Area blog sites to its adCenter Publisher advertising network, which competes against Google’s AdSense. I just had a meeting with Tony Cappaert, Ad Platform Evangelist, he’s in town for the next two weeks and looking to meet up with other bloggers (send me your email if interested.)

Microsoft is keen to try out its contextual advertising technology against Google’s and is inviting “coke and pepsi” test trials. It also allows other ads on the same pages, which many ad networks prohibit.

More importantly, it is invite-only for publishers and will remain invite only. Google AdSense allows almost anyone to join its ad network, which has resulted in a lot of low quality sites, and link farms. By keeping the network limited and of high quality, Microsoft believes advertisers will have a better ROI and thus will pay more for the advertising and that will mean larger payouts to publishers.

Foremski’s Take: MSFT is wise to limit which sites are allowed intothe adCenter network and it shouldn’t be too difficult for it to provide a better revenue stream than GOOG’s AdSense.

It’ll be interesting to see how much better the adCenter revenues will be, and if Microsoft provide decent tools for publishers and advertisers to help optimize both ends of the ad network.

We certainly need a better value recovery mechanism for online content than we currently have with the ad networks. All of them take a much higher cut of the revenues than they should: 30 to 70 per cent of revenues is way, way too much for serving up some ads. Microsoft won’t disclose its share of adCenter revenues but says it is very small right now because it wants to recruit publishers. It will take a larger cut later as the network grows.

Microsoft: Forget Canoe, We Have Targeted TV Ads Figured Out

Microsoft (MSFT) is showing off its new targeted ad platform for Internet TV providers, just in time for AT&T’s (T) U-Verse in 2009: The system is called Mediaroom Advertising Platform, and as Multichannel News reports, it includes pieces of two recent acquisitions: aQuantive’s Atlas AdManager and Navic Networks’ interactive TV technologies.

Multichannel News: The software giant’s Mediaroom Advertising Platform will provide the ability to deliver targeted, interactive TV ads to individual set-tops or other IP-based devices, and to track responses to those ads.

The advertising system runs on top of Microsoft’s core IPTV platform, and comprises two main pieces: a campaign manager to manage and schedule ad inventory; and a decision-making engine that places ads based on business rules, such as an individual subscriber’s demographic or behavioral information.

‘This is a complete platform to insert ads into traditional linear TV, video-on-demand, interactive third-party applications, the guide and other operator-owned assets,” said Terri Richardson, Microsoft Mediaroom group marketing manager for advertising.

The first adopters of Microsoft’s TV ad platform are AT&T (T), British Telecom, and Deutsche Telekom (DT). Richardson says the system will be ready for deployment in 2009.

How does this compare to Canoe Ventures, the joint venture of six U.S. cable operators? Canoe has a staff, a cable channel, and a built-in customer base once they get a system up and running. As yet, though, it has no technology.

Microsoft Improves Mediaroom IPTV

Microsoft announced that it has improved its Mediaroom IPTV service to bring more show producers and IPTV networks to its platform.

According to Microsoft, its plan for increasing the value of Mediaroom IPTV contains three parts: increase advertising opportunities, make it easier for IPTV networks to port shows to the platform, and make IPTV more interactive.

The improved Mediaroom platform will let service providers using the service offer targeted, interactive advertising spots and have access to better data in order to target ads to specific groups. Microsoft didn’t elaborate on how that would be possible, but claimed more would be coming soon.

To make it easier to switch from another platform, Microsoft started the Mediaroom Migration program, which should give IPTV providers the tools they need to switch. According to Microsoft, before those providers switch, it will provide them with business and technical workshops to review set-top box portability, network compatibility, and audio-visual interoperability.

Microsoft is also trying to make Mediaroom IPTV more interactive, so the company will show how BBC shows can have a news, sports, and weather overlay during viewing so users can do more than just watch shows while using the service. So if you’re watching a show from the BBC and your wife comes in asking what the forecast will be tomorrow, Mediaroom will now let you pause the show and access BBC weather information, which will be displayed over the paused show. And while you’re at it, you can see what’s going on in the world by accessing the News section by clicking on the widget to the left of the weather widget.

Microsoft has been hard at work trying to improve Mediaroom and its newest additions should help a bit. But these improvements smack of desperation as Microsoft tries to increase the service’s presence. And in a hotly-contested market like IPTV, it will take more than some new ad-targeting and migration tools to make that happen. It will take broader adoption of IPTV, which is in the hands of Microsoft’s partners.

Microsoft Ad Team: Crispin Porter + Bogusky

What is the deal…with Seinfeld as a pitchman for Microsoft?

MG Siegler

I can hear it now: What is the deal with Apple? They don’t sell Apples. Why call themselves that? … Yes, ladies and gentleman, Jerry Seinfeld is Microsoft’s new pitchman.

Microsoft is still being very secretive about its new $300 million advertising campaign that it plans to unleash shortly, but Seinfeld will play a key role in it, the Wall Street Journal has learned. He apparently will appear in commercials alongside the recently retired (but apparently not-so-retired) Bill Gates. And he’ll supposedly earn $10 million for his troubles.

Microsoft Ad Team: We’ll Sell Vista, But We’re Using Macs

from Silicon Alley Insider by Peter Kafka

Microsoft has hired Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the ad industry’s hottest shop, to improve its battered image. So what’s their plan?

Step 1: A weird candid camera commercial. Step 2: Paying Jerry Seinfeld $10 million. Step 3: Convincing its own staff to use Microsoft products instead of Apple’s. From Fast Company’s Crispin Porter profile earlier this year:

In April 2007, long before the Microsoft account came Crispin’s way, Bogusky had told me that“Crispin sort of exists because of the revolution in desktop publishing that the Mac brought about. You could be a small shop and compete against Madison Avenue for the first time because all the tools were in your computer.” That may explain why Keller and Reilly are today using their team as an early focus group for learning how to persuade Mac lovers to embrace Windows. “You’ve got a lot of passionate Mac people in here, and they’ve got to get their head around this thing — why Windows is genius,” says Keller. He and Reilly have outfitted their shared office (inherited from Bogusky) with an Xbox 360, which they’ve been using as a wireless hub. But their joint desk also holds two ultrathin MacBook Airs. When I ask if they’re making their team get rid of their iPods and PowerBooks, Reilly responds, “It’s not a matter of forcing people. It’s getting them to want to use it. If you can’t, you’re not going to do great advertising.”

See Also: Microsoft Hires Seinfeld To Make It Cool. But Is Seinfeld Still Cool?