Microsoft Turning On A Dime

Today Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie (respect) are expected to announce the software as a service. Initially it may be a storage offering, communications package for SMBs and CRM because of competitive pressure, but this pressure is from all sides. The difference this time is it requires breaking something, not venturing out into whitespace. Sergey Brin wasn't wrong when he said at Web 2.0 that Google Office, with the disclaimer that it may not exist, wouldn't be anything like the old Office. You see, replicating Word for the web isn't social computing. Office and PC era apps do a great job serving the lone producer's need to complete finished documents. But the process of creating that document is only served through clumsy means (read: email). The next generation of productivity gains will come from something new. I'd also make an argument that the business model for software is shifting to a blend of software as service delivered as hosted or appliance with the production dynamics of open source. At the end of John Markoff's book on the birth of the lightnet in which any competing software as service or unsanctioned content vendor will have to get through them to the desktop. Not just through the web, but as deep as P2P itself. waiting for Vista, we have lost trust in these guys and it's time to get these things out of the OS. Ross Mayfield is CEO and co-founder of Ross Mayfield's Weblog which focuses on markets, technology and musings.