“Microsoft has issued a last minute cancellation of its Next
Generation Windows Services (NGWS) announcement, which was
scheduled for June 1st. Several times already the company has put
back the date when it will put some flesh on the bones of the
project it has described as comparable in cost and ambition to the
development of the Boeing 747 and NASA’s lunar programme, but this
time it could be serious. NGWS now seems poised on the brink of
disappearing into a legal morass which could last months, even
years.”
“Microsoft’s problem is that the new platform is a victim of
timescales and technological approach. Since the company announced
the (provisional) name at the beginning of this year, a verdict
from the judge that would effectively block its construction has
been imminent, and that’s not going to be any different for months
to come. NGWS is intended to be a broad grouping of products that
brings us Integration Everwhere (not a slogan MS will choose to TM,
we’d hazard), and transforms Windows into an all-encompassing
Web-based services platform.”
“Even without the forcible splitting of Microsoft into two
companies with barbed wire and government-constructed
watchtowers, searchlights and machine guns between the two,
it’s difficult to see how any imposed legal remedy would permit
anything even slightly like NGWS, as currently planned by
Microsoft.”