[Am-info] Microsoft's .Net 'Marketecture' Is Lacking in Real Innovation

[Fred A. Miller]

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Microsoft's .Net 'Marketecture' Is Lacking in Real Innovation

Listening to Bill Gates speak on Wednesday, I wanted badly to get him on
the phone with Vadim Maslov. I think the conversation would do
personal-computer users a world of good.

Mr. Gates you already know. Mr. Maslov makes a free program called
RoboForm that automatically fills out forms on Web pages, like a
subscription asking for your name and address.
Thoughts? Write to Lee Gomes at lee.gomes@wsj.com

I find RoboForm (www.roboform.com) easy to use, and without any hidden
"spyware," either. But that's not the point. The point is that this type
of software exists today -- something you might not have thought=20
possible while listening to Mr. Gates.

He was appearing at a Microsoft briefing about ".NET," the company's big
new technology strategy. I was struck by how speaker after speaker, from
Mr. Gates on down, would identify problems in the computer industry --
such as Web sites that are hard to use -- and then talk about how .NET
would one day solve them.

But .NET is behind schedule. Out in the real world, people like Mr.=20
Maslov haven't been waiting for this Promethean gift from Redmond.=20
They're rolling up their sleeves and getting to work, making the sort=20
of innovative, lean, useful products one rarely sees from Microsoft. Of
course, these outside products march to their own drummer, rather than
conform to Microsoft's worldview. They're thus not cogs in some=20
Microsoft master plan to increase its hegemony.

Microsoft, for example, will tell you that its answer to RoboForm=20
involves a .NET service called Passport. But Passport is widely seen as=20
Microsoft's way of preparing for the day when it can collect a=20
percentage of every online sale. Give me something unmettlesome like=20
RoboForm any day. Users Still Waiting for Microsoft To Deliver on=20
Promise of '.NET' 07/24/02 Just as people grow up to become their=20
parents, companies morph into the firms they spent their formative=20
years fighting.

Sun Microsystems, for example, now looks a lot like Digital Equipment of
the early 1980s, clinging stubbornly and perilously to a strategy made
out-of-date by cheaper machines.

Microsoft seems to have become like the IBM of old -- moving at a=20
glacial pace with massive self-serving software "architectures,"=20
apparently unmindful of the PC being a lean, grass-roots machine.=20
(There's a sly name for these sorts of .NET-style strategy=20
announcements that are heavy on marketing but light on specifics:=20
"marketecture.")

What exactly is .NET? Microsoft says it's a way to allow all kinds of
programs and devices to communicate. How? Essentially by taking existing
computer products and adding "XML" to them. XML, or extensible markup
language, is a method programs use to exchange data; a Web page you=20
visit might be using XML when it asks you for your name and address.=20
This species of software is known as plumbing.

XML isn't a bad thing -- although some gripe it's a little bloated. But
it's no panacea.

A video for .NET, though, promises it will allow companies "to get
products out the door in weeks, not months." But XML is just one of
numerous methods computers can use to exchange data. A company taking=20
too long to get a product out the door has problems bigger than=20
anything XML could solve.

Actually, XML is just this year's version of that venerable=20
tech-industry sales pitch: "This is the last software you will ever=20
need." That come-on may have worked in the tech-credulous '90s, but not=20
these days. Companies are hip to the fact each piece of new software=20
billed as final always needs some still-newer piece to work right.

XML is one of those good ideas that gets turned into a bad policy, or
worse, into dogma. Some buzzword-compliant venture capitalists have been
telling aspiring entrepreneurs, "Sorry, but XML has already solved that
problem."

A person attending Microsoft's briefing Wednesday and hoping that the
world's most important technology company would provide the excitement=20
and vision needed to lead the industry out of its current malaise would=20
have been distressed.

The demos, for one, were soporific. By far, the most exciting one=20
involved a Windows program that turns your PC into a TV, complete with=20
remote control.

Visionary? Hardly. Not only do TiVo and Replay owners have such a system
now, but so do people who have PC graphics cards made by ATI=20
Technologies.

Microsoft diehards who want a PC TV will have to wait, because like=20
=2ENET, that software isn't ready yet. Could it be that Microsoft itself=20
needs help getting products out the door?

Write to Lee Gomes at lee.gomes@wsj.com

- --=20
Fred A. Miller
Systems Administrator
Cornell Univ. Press Services
fm@cupserv.org, www.cupserv.org
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