Net: Interpreting the new Microsoft Internet Strategy (i)

Internet | microsoft | Strategy NET: Interpreting the new Microsoft Internet Strategy (on) (Seal Dragon Pavilion Collection, strongly recommended!) ）
http://www.chinabyte.com/column/column_page.shtm?column_type=comp_search&coluid=2215


"Author" Mao Xianhui Chen Zhihong

Article outline:

First, the big strategic shift
1,. NET is what?
2,. NET is the transformation of computing mode
3,. NET's transformation to software business model
4, Microsoft's ultimate goal
5,. NET business impact on the Internet
Second, the overall strategy and product objectives of the close cooperation
1, the extension of the PC era
2. Facing new equipment
3, MSN Network Services
4, enterprise Application server products
5, other products
6, the products will be eliminated
Third, management Elite
Iv. competition for new rules of the game
Prepared
V. The story is just beginning.



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In the last 25 years of 20th century, there was a company with far-reaching influence. Not only does it create a "soft product", it dramatically changes the way people work, live and entertain, but it also creates a new business miracle that is extremely rich for individuals and businesses. This is known as Microsoft, a software empire that has frightened countless rivals. However, with the advent and commercialization of another new "Internet", Microsoft suddenly no longer occupies a dazzling position in the media, and Microsoft's sluggish response to its cyber-strategy makes people wonder whether Microsoft will continue to dominate the Internet. However, people tend to see only Microsoft's appearance, or just like "hope" Microsoft's leading position is replaced.

Microsoft, which we once thought was familiar, has changed a lot in recent years, its core in the network craze for several years constantly learning from outside the new ideas and business models, with its strong economic strength and research and development capabilities, a "software Empire" to create a "digital service empire." Microsoft is taking advantage of its software market to push aggressively into every corner of the global economy. Microsoft's new strategy will control these lifelines without exception, if there is some lifeline to the future digital economy, as the company tries to occupy the upper reaches of a new round of competition. This article will try to analyze Microsoft's defensive strategy in today and future from an objective point of view, and provide reference for the practitioners in the whole industry through the fact. I sincerely hope that with the information and analysis listed in this paper, people can really help in the network, software and information business in the "terrible" Microsoft can find their most appropriate positioning and countermeasures.

Big shift in strategy

"Microsoft. NET will launch a revolution in computing and the way people communicate in the first decade of the 21st century. Microsoft. NET's full maturity takes several years of toil, but we are very excited and look forward to this day to come. ”

--Microsoft board Chairman and Chief Software architect Bill Gates

People who are familiar with Microsoft must have "information at your Fingertips" (Information at Your fingertips), "every home has a personal computer on every desktop" (a computer on every desk and in every.) is not unfamiliar. These two words are the market slogan that Microsoft used in the past time and the description of company vision, they are always throughout the company's products and marketing strategy. After entering the internet age, Microsoft has also been beaten, launching a new slogan, "Where Are you going today" (Where did you Want to go?). In the years of Internet Business Mania, Microsoft has been consolidating its position on the one hand, and studying and studying the characteristics, computing models and business models of future networks. Microsoft redefined the company's vision in 1999, "with advanced software that allows people to gain power from any device anytime, anywhere," (Empower people through great software-any time, the any, and the any dev Ice.). This new formulation has not only redesigned a vision for Microsoft to look forward to more than 10 years or even decades, but also made it clear that Microsoft will begin a new phase of development. For some time from 1998 to the beginning of 2000, Microsoft has been poised to deploy its research and development force and management team to make a full transition in the new century.

Sure enough, June 22, 2000, Microsoft officially announced its. NET (sound dot net) strategy and decided to invest 4 billion of dollars in research and development costs each year for this new strategy. NET this once vague and uncertain huge system quickly become the focus of the industry attention. One cannot ignore the software empire's movements in the new era. In fact, the announcement was called the second important transition within Microsoft, a big shift from a company-wide strategy from MS-DOS to Windows. Microsoft's top officials are almost Shang and have been repeatedly interpreted and marketed over dozens of different occasions in just a few short months. NET's business model, technical meaning, let people see Microsoft is not hasty to launch a market concept, but all round to reshape a new giant. Many people would like to see Microsoft Shine no more, but in fact ignore the huge innovation power inherent in Microsoft. Microsoft is using a new strategy to reach people in all corners of their work, study and life in the digital age.

. NET is what?

Commentators in the IT industry were not able to accurately grasp. Net at the outset, and some columnists were not even willing to comment on it, lest it be biased. In fact, it's really hard to say it through words. NET's exact definition, we have to use considerable space. NET and make a concrete analysis of the ins and outs.

. NET was once by Microsoft in the internal "next-generation Windows Service" (NGWS), finally identified as. NET name is not only Microsoft's market-oriented approach for catchy and user-friendly recognition, but also to transform this innovative concept into a new business model, a new technology model in one unified framework. NET's core concept is "the software as a service", that is, the application of software products and business, content, information services into one thing, make it can be used on the network to subscribe to the service form. The way people design, construct, implement, operate, integrate and use the software will be done through the network, so it is also necessary to pay the corresponding fee in different ways of using these services.

. NET is the transformation of computing mode

. NET completely shifts computing patterns from stand-alone, client/server, and Web Web sites to distributed computing (distributed Computing). We know that Corba and COM are the most popular part object computing models today. But they all have the limitation of "local computation". In other words, these models are only local computing or network computing mode, but not the entire Internet as a computational resource system to use. NET is via a Web service called "Network Services", which is. NET's core concept, the technology of distributing the various resources on the Internet is effectively integrated into the specific application interface by means of programming. Web Service is equivalent to the API functions we used to call in the past and the parts interfaces commonly used in object-oriented programming, except that APIs generally exist in different modules of a single program, and the part interfaces exist in different parts of the same machine, and the Web service will be ubiquitous across the network.

. NET supported Web service and various control processes will adopt a technology called XML as the core. XML is also a world language (lingua franca), known as Network computing by industry, and is an extensible Markup language that replaces HTML. XML uses the form of text tags to define a variety of interchangeable data structures and can be transmitted using standard network protocols. Because of these characteristics, XML actually represents the trend of platform neutrality and network computing. With XML as the core technology, the services offered by various websites are no longer limited to some colorful pages, but can be programmed to invoke the Web service. For example, two business managers can only view the items displayed on the page of the other's web site today through a browser, and each transaction must be in the form of an email or a written order. If two sites are able to upgrade to an xml-based Web service, then one company's site Procurement Service can invoke each other's supply services and automate transactions. What the managers of two companies do is to set some rules for the supply and demand relationship between the two companies at once. This is the change that XML computing can bring.

XML is a display-independent data representation language, so XML also supports automatic conversion of various devices and display environments, and developers do not have to prepare different content and data for different sizes of devices. So XML is exactly what Microsoft. NET needs to be able to access services through a variety of devices, and naturally becomes the core technology of. Net.

Microsoft is working with several companies, including IBM, to define a range of standards around Web service, such as soap, WSDL, WSML, and so on. These standards ensure that future software developers will be able to develop and invoke various service interfaces from around the world in the same way, whether it is a large number of computing services provided by a supercomputer, or a market information service provided by a stock exchange. Microsoft also claims that Web service will support a variety of platforms, such as UNIX.

In addition to the emergence of a new computing model such as Web service, Microsoft is still there. NET has added its own research achievements, including: natural language processing and recognition. These technologies enable users to manipulate a variety of computing devices more flexibly without having to rely on the traditional mouse or keyboard. Natural language processing can also improve the intelligence of automatic processing of various XML information by computers.

Anyway. NET includes a new generation of computing models, that is, distributed computing across the globe. The makers of such rules would be likely to benefit from the business model with which they were matched.

. NET's transformation to software business model

. NET also brings a brand new business model to Microsoft. Microsoft foresaw that "service" is the core business model of the digital economy, so it will gradually transform its reliance on selling the boxed software in its profit form today. NET "Software as a Service" (Software-as-service). Microsoft has taken a step forward by transforming the software into a service that can be used in a "subscription" fashion, just as we pay for "usage" today in the same way that we use telephone services, utilities and subscriptions to magazines. For this, Microsoft is still. NET, a series of auxiliary modules are constructed. These modules include user authentication, notification, network storage and other functions. Once Microsoft. NET of various basic construction modules, Microsoft will first start to take their own products to do "service" attempt, in the near future, software users will be able to experience the registration of software on the network and according to the use of time, storage requirements or the use of the function modules how much to pay the way. In addition, Microsoft will consider a variety of business services, content services and software services, so that users in the future will not feel "software" and other information products are any different, because what people really need is to quickly complete their work goals, rather than consider the "software" and other product forms.

In the next few years, Microsoft will gradually try to transform all the boxed software products into a "subscription" mode, Microsoft will break the model of software only for PCs, thus providing all the users with a variety of digital services, which will greatly improve the economic penetration of Microsoft, bring greater commercial value.

Microsoft's ultimate goal

It can be said that Microsoft has put all the bets on. NET. NET reflects its ambitious dream of becoming a provider of core digital services for the future. Passed in. NET on the continuous investment, Microsoft wants to be able to ultimately dominate the client, control the path of information and charging way, occupy the server side of the platform. Microsoft wants to be able to issue digital IDs for each user, and more bluntly, Microsoft wants to be a "government" in the new digital economy.

The following schematic diagram shows Microsoft's ultimate goal at several levels:



　　

First, Microsoft wants to capture all of its user terminals, including telephones, televisions, personal computers, and so on. Microsoft will continue to invade every corner of the business and the family, and this is not simply achieved by producing some equipment. All of Microsoft's device strategy will be closely integrated with Microsoft's software services, information services and business services, and users will naturally be attracted to the benefits of these crossover services and then willingly adopt all the relevant products in the system.

On the second level, Microsoft will also work tirelessly to bring the flow of consumers from around the world through services. Microsoft uses its own device installation advantages to authenticate all users. This certification is achieved through the Microsoft Passport technology. If Microsoft had not been aware of the current development of the Internet a few years ago, it would be inaccurate to simply buy the passport.com domain name to reflect Microsoft's early foresight. Microsoft will build a comprehensive service system, including business, finance, family life, education and so on, of course, Microsoft will not provide all the services and content alone, but it wants to be able to share with all the key service providers of user resources and even service income.

Third, Microsoft will continue its position as a software empire, and it wants more service providers to use its operating system platform and computing model to develop reusable Web services using Microsoft's own development tools.

By working together at three levels, Microsoft will be able to dramatically expand today's business model and create multiple new revenue streams. Make a bold assumption, if. NET can be successful, Microsoft will reach 10 times times more than today's income level in 10 years.

Here we use a popular metaphor to describe Microsoft's ultimate goal------Microsoft wants to use. NET control the key link of the digital economy, really control the lifeblood of the digital economy, and ultimately design the game for their own constantly favorable rules. Every day users turn on the "digital faucet" to access any service, you have to pay a portion of the money to Microsoft.

. NET business impact on the Internet

. NET reflects the high level of Microsoft's understanding of the digital economy, but also reflects the overall decision-making ability of Microsoft. Just because. NET contains a range of business ideas, technical ideas, and business philosophies that reflect future trends, so whether or not Microsoft will ultimately assume the burden of achieving future goals, the changes brought about by this process can have far-reaching socio-economic, commercial and personal implications.

First of all, people will be able to use wireless, broadband in the next few years, free access to all kinds of devices to network services. The way in which these devices are used will be accessible, that is, there is no need to prepare different data for different devices. Phone contacts and work arrangements and the Office of the computer is always fully synchronized, mobile phones can be seen with the same TV news program, but the size of the TV is smaller.

Secondly, the services that people receive will be able to integrate with each other and intelligently provide people with personalized support. When you are planning a trip to a certain city, the actions of flight booking, hotel reservation, customer meeting, restaurant reservation and notification to family members will be delivered to different service points or terminals in a single way, and all actions can be completed at one time. You may even be surprised to find that the dishes you eat are chosen according to your preferences. And when you cancel these actions, only one button will be able to complete all the notification process. Why is today's website hard to profit? In addition to traditional services and the lack of social information and other reasons, there is also a reason is that the site itself to implement the user authentication, market development and business processes are too isolated, the cost is too high, it is difficult to ensure that customers with the greatest value. And the future of a variety of service agencies only need to realize their core business can be, these services will be integrated into the user's complete activities, realize its commercial value.

Again, the efficiency and accuracy of society will be greatly improved. More business activities can be done automatically under the established rules, and the intermediate processes and red tape will be phased out and replaced by more competitive services for people to choose from. This characteristic is especially obvious to the improvement of education, and learning will become a very easy personality selection process for a person. All this will depend on something similar. NET, the development of new generation network software and computing technology.

Microsoft's strategy is positive, if you can grasp Microsoft. NET's thought essence, the service provider, the software developer, the Enterprise user all will benefit greatly.

Close coordination of overall strategy and product objectives

"Any enterprise must form a real whole and integrate individual efforts into a common endeavour." ”

--Peter Durac, Master of Management

One of the key reasons Microsoft is a successful software company is its core management and product implementation capabilities, which provide Microsoft with an ongoing and ongoing product integration strategy, and ultimately the development of Microsoft's robust product line.

The extension of the PC era

Microsoft's growth is closely related to PCs, and Microsoft's operating system is the key to Microsoft's ability to dominate the software industry. In the past more than 20 years, every development of Microsoft's operating system has produced a new stimulus to the PC industry. And because of the PC's core position in the information industry, Microsoft's success in PC operating systems has naturally brought its place in the information industry. However, in the late 90, the network, E-commerce has become the driving force of information industry, the PC is no longer the only information processing tools. Microsoft almost lost its initiative in this change, but it quickly adjusted itself to meet the needs of market changes. Microsoft has made a new position in the post-PC era through years of effort.

Whether it's a matter of face or genuine understanding, Microsoft believes that even in the post-PC era, PCs still play a central role in computing tasks. So Microsoft. NET policy will naturally inherit and develop the most successful PC windows, although Windows 2000 does not have the same market effect as Windows 95, but Microsoft does not care about these short-term gains and losses. Because in a long-term strategy, Windows 2000 is nothing more than a transition product. Microsoft is about to release its next generation of unified operating system Windows XP this year (Microsoft is no longer naming new operating systems and Office apps in the year, but XP, meaning "experience", experience). Windows XP not only unifies Microsoft's previous kernel different enterprise, the home operating system platform, or the Microsoft first generation realization. NET core technology, the operating system will provide a good client and server-side user base for Microsoft's overall strategy. Different versions of Windows XP will be the core operating system that Microsoft locates on large-screen devices (PC,TV, gaming consoles, Tablet PCs, etc.). An embedded version of Windows XP, for example, will be the operating system of Microsoft's personal gaming terminal Xbox.

From MS-DOS to Windows, Windows 95 (and OS/2 with IBM), Windows NT, until today's Windows XP, Microsoft is constantly making its own innovations in tune with the development of the entire information industry. As you can imagine, the banner of Windows will continue to flutter over Raymond's Park.

Facing new devices

Microsoft only a few years ago production of mouse, keyboard, game controllers and other ancillary equipment, and did not really dabble in other consumer hardware products. But with the advent of the post-PC era, Microsoft is also aware of the importance of controlling end-user terminals. Since 1997, Microsoft has really invested in human and financial resources to develop the operating system and applications of non-PC devices, with the advent of the Windows ce,windows NT embedded version of the product line. And 2000 years later, Microsoft has gradually introduced more equipment systems, and gradually cooperated. NET's overall development strategy.

Microsoft's early device products, both in terms of performance and functionality, have struggled to get rid of the shadow of the PC operating system and are really hard to live on in the marketplace. But Microsoft has gradually adjusted its PC mindset to develop hardware that is designed for low memory and low computational speed. With a lot of money invested in small-screen devices, Microsoft is regaining market share that has been encroached on by other vendors and moving towards the eventual interaction of large-screen devices and small-screen devices. Microsoft's Pocket PC, the successor to Windows CE, has risen 5% per cent over the past year, although far below palm in its overall share, there is a clear prospect of growth.

Many comics have likened Microsoft to a large octopus with many tentacles, and Microsoft's tentacles are indeed ubiquitous. It does not hesitate to insert a foot in the next generation of handheld phone devices. Recently announced "smart phone" Stinger is the latest PocketPC applications, Microsoft has authorized a number of vendors to start design based on Stinger smart phones, Microsoft's window interface to mobile phones, so that users can more naturally from the desktop to mobile devices for seamless operation. Stinger not only integrates telephone, network and entertainment functions, but also implements a smooth transition to 2.5G and 3G communications.
Handheld computer PocketPC Smart phone Stinger


The public spotlight is also on Microsoft's move into the gaming market. Since Microsoft's ultimate goal is to capture as many terminals as possible, Microsoft will not be willing to ignore a tens of millions of-user and billions of-dollar gaming console market. So in this context, Microsoft is both eyeing Sony's gains and looking to open up new equipment markets to access information and networks. The Xbox not only integrates Microsoft's many years of DirectX technology, but also integrates better hardware with the features of entertainment electronics. Clearly, in Microsoft's territory, the group of consumers has been further expanded.

Microsoft's interactive television products are not lagging behind, although the 1995 acquisition of WebTV has been lethargic the number of registered users, but Microsoft's determination to enter the family living room is unwavering. Based on WebTV recently, Microsoft has also worked with Direct TV service to develop ultimate TV products and has gained a lot of popularity at CES 2000 (Electronic consumer Fair). The famous ZDNet anchordesk column editor David Cossi to this section can watch while the TV set box products also praised as many times to.

In addition, Microsoft has revealed its writing pad computer (Tablet PC) development plan, further extend its mobile computing territory. The tablet computer can be viewed as a keyboard-free laptop, and users can manipulate it with a pen (or sound) using Microsoft's identification technology. The Tablet pc itself doesn't have much innovation, but for Microsoft. NET in the new user experience is critical, I believe Microsoft will soon officially announced that the product