I saw this article from the NY Times and thought I would share it.  It is a report on MS plans for Internet enabling even more things that we do.  Some key statements from it included:

• "any big payoff from those investments would not come for a few years" - so this is a long term play
• "Internet search, according to Microsoft, will increasingly become seamlessly integrated into the Windows desktop operating system, Office productivity software, cellphones powered by Windows and Xbox video games" - I like the idea of hybrid utilities and the fact that search is a tool for me to do something, rather than something I explicitly have to go to a web site to do
• "In a demonstration, Mr. Mehdi showed some of the work being done by a group exploring the future of advertising in Microsoft’s research labs. In a digital television prototype, a viewer who liked a dress worn by Sarah Jessica Parker in an episode of “Sex and the City” could click on it, automatically pausing the video, and on the screen an Internet search result would appear, identifying the dress, its maker and a link to buy it" - contextual use of the search utilities - buying a dress rather than searching for a place to buy a dress.
• "Microsoft executives acknowledge that as computing increasingly gravitates to the Web and often toward ad-supported services, it creates both a technical and business challenge for a company whose great strength is in personal computer desktop software.

  But the Microsoft vision is that Internet services can complement rather than cannibalize the company’s traditional business if they are built into products like Windows." - This is key for me - people often ask me why Microsoft supports hosted services, Windows and Office Live and products like SBS.  The answer is choice, and the fact that one day people will need it all.  Imagine a server that has services that make it a better product - that is where we are headed.  Some people say SBS and hosted Exchage compete, but they only have a little overlap - the Exchange piece.  How will you manage your PCs, share applications, manage security etc with just a hosted solution - so SBS is needed.  If you need to have big files on the internet - doing on the end of a 512Kb ADSL line is not the answer!

The meeting is discussed in a broader sense at HunterStrat with Software as a Service Week blog discussing Ray Ozzie's new message since he has joined Microsoft.

ttfn

David