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Web 2.0 : A Musing

Stephen Bryant at Publish.com has been writing about the Web 2.0 Conference out on the Left coast and what repercussions that is having on computing. He is naming it a Call to Action – which is a delicious irony because most of Web 2.0 is about the Server becoming the arbitrer of what appears on the desktop and other devices (see whats happening in new software). Web 2.0 sort of cements the Web interface ascendant. Thus the Web Server is dominant because the Server through the Web provides or calls the appropriate UI/Presentation layer depending on what device, including a PC, is being talked to. This is not the way things were to play out in Redmond.

Web 2.0 is very bad news for Microsoft. It is Microsofts worst fears – the Web will find a way around making the PC Desktop the Center of the UI Universe. The Web will also continue to deliver ever more viable cross platform integration be it SOA, ESB, CORBA, or J2EE. This of course has implications on the Gates of Longhorn … Vista, the ultra-secure gated desktop OS community that is to be the nexus of Rich UI Experiences and Everything Runs Best on Windows. This Gated Community is slated to be controlling everything from Home Media Centers through Developer Collaboration Worksations to Digital Dashboards …no, uhh maybe Shared Portals in the Executive Suite while the troopers make do with Smart Clients.

And now the Web as UI Server is taking off, through dozens of firms not within the Redmondian sphere of influence. Remember LAMP-Linux Apache MySQL PHP/Perl/Python dominates web serving. So now recall those Calls to Action at Microsofts PDC-Professional Developers Conference. Sometimes those were heard as edicts pronounced on High from the 1 Microsoft Way. I wonder if Stephen deliberately chose his title ?

(c)JBSurveyer 2005

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