6 Nov 2008 Liberation Day - A new dawn for developers with the freedom of Software + Services

By bringing together the best of both software and services, we maximize capabilities, choice, and flexibility for our customers. Microsoft's software-plus-services approach unites multiple industry phenomena including software-as-a-service, service-oriented development, and the Web 2.0 user experience under a common umbrella.

The movement to "Client + Cloud"

As often happens with industry transformations, some early commentators and dedicated software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors advocated the extreme position that Internet services would entirely replace on-premise software. They defined the future as 'cloud only' with some even taking the inherently contradictory view of a future with 'no software'. As technologists have more deeply considered the advantages and disadvantages of services and realized that, ultimately, customers need solutions optimised for their specific needs, it has become clear that by marrying the advantages of Internet services with the advantages of client or server software, it is possible to deliver solutions that provide new capabilities and offer new levels of utility, convenience and flexibility.

Support from all sides

Evidence of the benefits of this marriage between software and services is demonstrated across the software industry by countless examples of companies enhancing their applications with the addition of services. Companies that people think of as 'services-only' SaaS providers are providing installable software components to better address their customers' needs. Web-based companies including Google, Yahoo! and eBay all ship client software to enhance their web-based offerings. Line-of-business applications vendors including Salesforce.com and RightNow have acknowledged the importance of the offline capabilities of software and the need to integrate their services with their customers' preferred tools, particularly Microsoft Outlook, rather than force them to learn multiple, separate browser-based UIs.

Equality for devices

Microsoft is uniquely positioned to help its customers and partners capitalise on the opportunities presented by the evolution to software-plus-services. While Microsoft's competitors have mostly chosen to specialise in one class of services manifestation: services delivery (SaaS), services composition (SOA) or the services experience (Web 2.0), Microsoft's platform uniquely supports all of these. Only the Microsoft platform supports the development of software across a range of devices in addition to the PC, the various types of browser clients, servers in data-centres and Internet services.