| Gates weighs in on software
as a service
27 March, 2006
By Robert Dutt
DALLAS -- Microsoft chairman and chief software architect
Bill Gates Monday said his company not only embraces the idea
of software as a service, but has been doing so for quite
some time.
Speaking at the Microsoft Convergence user and partner show
for its Dynamics business software division here, Gates acknowledged
that software as a service is a very important trend and "something
we believe in a lot." He said that the company has been
looking at aspects of software as a service for some seven
years, and that there are aspects of that mentality manifest
in Windows today, including ideas like Microsoft Update and
the Watson utility that monitors the behavior of applications
on a system.
"It's a major switch from buying a bunch of bits from
us, and then us telling you three years from now that it's
not good enough anymore and you have to upgrade, to the ability
to get feedback and update our products on a daily basis,"
Gates said. "It's a change in our relationship with our
client."
He noted that there are going to be instances of choices
between the two models, and even blending between them in
Microsoft apps and those from others. For example, while it
makes sense to have functionality like voice recognition local
on a machine because of the computing horsepower needed to
make it happen, it doesn't make sense to go through anything
but a hosted service to do live map callups because of the
large size of the database being used.
"We'll make things available on a server basis, and
on a service basis," he said. "We don't think there
will be a huge swing towards one at the expense of the other."
Gates said that even within the service movement, there would
be choices to be made between on-premises hosting, which would
be more likely for larger businesses, and off-premises or
third-party hosting, which would become more attractive to
smaller businesses.
At the same time, Gates downplayed comments by others that
software is dead, and in fact said that we're almost at a
point in computing power where some of the things which have
long been promised from software will be fulfilled.
"The impact of software will continue to surprise people
again and again," Gates said. "Look at areas like
speech recognition, where everybody knows that once it's there,
it'll be a big deal. We've been a little naïve about
it being ready for primetime, but it's getting close."
Gates said that software will still have major roles to play
in healthcare, education and in the design of safer vehicles,
among other fields.
"Software is the ultimate empowerment vehicle, and there's
still lots left for it do, but it's very possible we'll approach
that within 20 years," he said.
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