Microsoft Architect Forum 2007 :: Session1: Software+Services

This last Wednesday I went to Microsoft Architect Forum 2007, held at the Lisbon. Here are some of my notes over the 1st session:

Session: Software+Services
Beat Schwegler

1. Service Transformation trends

• Service Delivery (of which SaaS is a model)
• Service Composition (of which SOA is a model)
• Service Experience (of which Web20.,0 is a model)

2. Service Players [this is how I've named them]

• Desktop
• Enterprise
• Online
• Devices

Schwegler argued that the software won't just defect from the desktop to the cloud. Though this is a trend, other relationships are still needed, and the role of the desktop, while changing, is still of great importance.

3. Strategy [toward these new paradigms]

• Experience: consistent across multiple clients
• Deployment: on-premise and hosted
• Development: extend tools and platforms to the cloud
• Business Models: expand monetization applications and models

4. Others

Schwegler talked about the importance of federation and composition of services - on respect to composition of services he referenced popfly.

5. Conclusion

Service+Service is a concept of ANDs:

• software AND service
• hosted AND on-premise
• RIA AND web AND desktop
• transaction based AND subscription based AND advertisement based model

My conclusion: Schwegler gave us the "the future will not exist solely over the cloud" message. Microsoft depends heavily on the desktop model to perform, and is sometimes afraid of defections to the cloud (Google Apps and SaaS in general). But though frightened, Microsoft is right: we won't depend solely on the cloud. At least for now.