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To: Dinesh who wrote (7911)	4/30/2000 9:19:00 AM
From: Heeren Pathak	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9068

Dinesh, I believe that MSFT's NGWS is really more hype than reality. This is their latest "annoucement" of ubiquitous computing and is more of a way to keep attention from Sun's Jini initiative. To understand these move, I think you need to step back and look at the big picture battle currently underway. The "softare as a service" Microsoft quote from the article is suprisingly simliar to Sun's "The network is a computer" marketing slogan from a few years back. Microsoft and Sun both see a future where the wires of the Internet act in a similar manner as the wires in your PC. The motherboard in your PC hook up various components together and allow them to work with each other. Microsoft (with UPnP) and Sun (with Jini) are are taking the first steps in providing that wiring. Of these two efforts, I believe (with no real proof) that Sun is ahead in this battle. However both technologies only provide the wiring. The next critical step in hooking up diverse things together is to provide the interface. On a PC motherboard, we have a number of these interface (PCI, AGP, etc.) These interfaces provide a standard way for manufacturers in a particular product are to plug into the system. In a software environment, this interface translates to an API. Currently, there are no standardized higher level API's that sit on top of Jini or UPnP. These API's will needed to allow different vendors to "plug" into the web transparently for users to use these services without spending big $$$$ on product integration. As the article mentioned, this was the aim of IBM's failed SAA initiative. It is my understanding that one of IBM's first Java proponents and the key reason IBM jumped so aggressively into Java was the techinical person who headed up the SAA initiative. He saw that Java approach provided some of the key issues that plagued the SAA initiative. For another interesting data point, check out IBM's Next Generation Initiative site (http://www.ngi.ibm.com/). It has a very broad perspective of the same problem. It will be an interesting race to see who ends up solving the problem. IMHO, IBM may end up being the person to do it since they are the only entity that seems to fairly technology agnostic and has the breadth in the business model to remain that way. Heeren