PERSONAL NETWORKING
You miss a flight in Chicago, and you've lost your PDA. No worry: You can rent a Handspring and log on to Microsoft's HailStorm network. Using Passport, you can access your calendar and contact list, reschedule a presentation, then instant message the client and email the friend who's meeting you at LAX. Convenience worth paying for? Or the Internet as a Microsoft platform?
Set to begin beta testing by year-end, HailStorm is act one of Redmond's .Net initiative, which aims to turn the Web into an operating system accessible through any Net-ready device. The concept is simple: Microsoft stores millions of user profiles (in what senior VP Craig Mundie calls a federation of databases), sells the data back to users in the form of Web services, and makes it available, with user permission, to third-party vendors who pay to play. All the while, Microsoft woos software developers, hoping they'll build more around its offerings. Not a bad business model: Microsoft collects from you, from the developers who write apps for HailStorm services, and from the service providers who join the network.
Big-name partners, including American Express, eBay, and Groove Networks, are already on board, agreeing to pay at least $10,000 to join the federation.
Microsoft stores all your data as XML and repackages it as Web services, with names like myWallet and myInbox (for voicemail and email). Microsoft's challenge: to host a hackproof data storage system and (along with its HailStorm partners) honor its opt-in privacy policies.
Using any Web-enabled device, you log on to HailStorm through Passport, your centralized digital identity. Brian Arbogast, a .Net VP responsible for Passport, says some services will be free at first, but Microsoft eventually plans to implement a usage-based fee. HailStorm's primary revenue, he adds, will come from individual and business subscribers.
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