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Microsoft and the app stream

July 18, 2006

Yesterday, Microsoft completed its purchase of a little company named Softricity. It's an interesting acquisition, one that sheds a little more light on the virtual future of information technology.

Softricity was born in Boston's Computer Museum a decade ago. Three guys were putting together an exhibit on kids' software and had to figure out a way to deliver a bunch of applications - mainly games - to a dozen or so PCs and let children fool around with them without screwing up the systems. They developed a way to, in effect, stream the applications over a network, downloading bits of code as required to the desktop machines and running them in a "virtual container" that shielded the underlying operating system. The technology became the basis for Softricity's core product, SoftGrid, an application virtualization system that allows you to stream any Windows application to a bunch of PCs or thin-client terminals over a network.

Microsoft has had a partnership with Softricity for a while, but the acquisition points to something bigger. Most obviously, Softricity's technology will help Microsoft better respond to companies' growing desire to centralize the provisioning of desktop applications in order to reduce the burdens of maintenance, upgrading and troubleshooting (and in the process trim their IT staffs). When you stream an app, everybody gets the same version in the same configuration - and their core system remains untouched. Desktop maintenance issues go away, and upgrading becomes a snap.

Second, the technology may help Microsoft sell (or give away) a range of applications - or even entire desktops - as services that customers can subscribe to. That would be a different take on software-as-a-service, because the applications could be traditional ones - the same ones you used to have to install on your own PC. Also, because Softricity's system caches code on the client machine, you'd have the ability to run the apps even when you weren't connected to the Internet, an important advantage for mobile workers. You can already stream audio and video over the Net. Why not stream applications as well?

Of course, there's also a defensive reason behind Microsoft's acquisition, as well as its other recent virtualization initiatives (including its linkup, also announced yesterday, with XenSource, the supplier of open source virtualization software). If your products are going to be virtualized, it's better if you're doing the virtualizing rather than a competitor.

Posted by nick at July 18, 2006 09:11 AM

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Mainframe! Multivac! Everything old is new, again!

Posted by: Phil at July 18, 2006 11:31 AM

What we now call Windows applications will be legacy applications in a few years. With the advent of Vista comes the widespread distribution of the ".NET 2.0" platform, which is a revolutionary step away from the "Windows API" platform we've lived with since time immemorial -- i.e., before Windows 3.1. The new .NET platform makes the streaming, caching, and running-off-line paradigm easy for both developers and users. I expect such applications will be showing up under Microsoft's Live brand in 2007.

Posted by: Brad at July 18, 2006 03:41 PM

Microsoft and the app stream

July 18, 2006

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