The Microsoft Stack: Sharing Comes Together Under 'Live Mesh' Banner

By Patrick Hynds

June 1, 2008 —  (Page 1 of 3)
When I first heard that Ray Ozzie would be the new chief software architect at Microsoft when Bill Gates moved on to do his philanthropy, I wondered whether Ray would stay the course, fail miserably or bring something better. After the TechEd keynote in Boston  back in 2006, I thought that the odds of things going awry were a bit higher, but I am now starting to believe in him.

Ray has a reputation for getting “it,” even if he can’t always communicate that “it” in a lively way. It is only with the recent announcement of Live Mesh that I think we really are seeing what this man can do for the largest software company in the world; namely, help them understand that the PC is the foundation, not the whole house.

Live Mesh is a recently announced technology that is available during the tech preview to a limited group on Vista and XP SP2, with mobile and other devices to follow soon. I had a chance to talk to Jeff Hansen, general manager of services marketing, about the new platform, and it is clear that this is not a rehash or replacement to Instant Messenger, though it does leverage it in some places.

Live Mesh aims to do four primary things: make devices work together via the Internet, give you access to information and news, enable Simple Sharing, and enable you to get anywhere access to your information via various sharing scenarios.

I find that I can’t live without the Internet, and the things I need are on devices (often ones I don’t have with me when I need them). The scenarios this enables could really change resource allocation because it includes things like printers.

Imagine you are on a PDA and want to print to your home or office printer. With Live Mesh your printer can participate over the Web. A more useful device to enlist might be a fax so I can fax from my PDA without a dedicated fax server. Hansen said, “Administrators might innovate by using the Live Mesh to help with remote deployments or many other business scenarios as they might discover them,” so really it will be up to us to help shape how we leverage this platform.

Related Search Term(s): Desktop management, mobile development

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