Microsoft's New Take On IT Community

Last night, I spent about an hour poking around Aggreg8, Microsoft's social-networking site for IT professionals. I found the site to be more a place for people using Windows-based products to hang out or to collaborate. Aggreg8 is one of several newer Microsoft sites aimed at business technology managers or developers. Another is Port 25.

The Aggreg8 and Port 25 names are clever--at least for Microsoft, which in recent years has no great success creating compelling product or services names. Who else would take a product code-named Origami and officially call it Ultra-Mobile PC, or release a browser with name Windows Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP? Every time I see the IE name, I want to take an editor's red marker to one of those "Windows." There are exceptions to Microsoft's naming follies: Soapbox is pretty good, and Zune isn't bad (and the logo is refreshing, for Microsoft).

Websites like Aggreg8 and Port 25 are important Microsoft experiments, as the company seeks to re-energize community and development enthusiasm around Windows, particularly among big businesses. For anyone that hadn't noticed, development momentum increasingly is accelerating towards the Web. How much that means moving away from Windows (and I think it's only a little bit, for now) remains uncertain. That said, last week's Web 2.0 Summit is a good gauge of shifting development winds.

Intel's SuiteTwois good example, not only of changing development momentum but foreshadowing what Web 2.0 is really about. While Web 2.0 talk mainly has been about free services consumed in browsers and subsidized by advertising, the real deal is how enterprises use browsers, widgets and other lighter applications to provide informational access to employees anytime, anywhere and on anything. How many of you reading this blog carry `round laptops or get e-mail on smartphones or Blackberries? According to an IDC report released about a year ago, the worldwide mobile workforce will exceed 850 million in 2009, up from 650 million two years ago. Which will come first, 7 billion people living on this planet or 1 billion of them working on the go?

Increasing mobility creates IT headaches, starting with lots of valuable information leaving the corporate confines on laptops and other portable devices. All that loose information exposes every company to potential privacy, security or regulatory liabilities. Laptop loss or theft, for example, is an increasingly common problem. Then there is changing behavior, where employees commingle data on personal and professional devices. Businesses need to reign in that information, while making it available anytime, anywhere and on anything. Web 2.0 is one starting point.

Intel's SuiteTwo is very much about business Web 2.0--communication and collaboration, using blogs, wikis and other online tools. The uses of the toolset aren't so different from objectives Microsoft is trying to achieve with Aggreg8, Port 25 or Channel 9. I couldn't attend this year's Web 2.0 Summit; the blogs coming out of the event (such as a post by Richard McManus) consistently speak of enterprise focus as being one of this year's differentiators.

Some of that enterprise focus shows adaption of early Web 2.0 products for businesses' unconnected needs, such as Zimbra plans for offering offline usage of its service. Zimbra is trying to address the other side of mobility, continuing to work when there is no Web access. Please, no one slap the approach with moniker Offline 2.0.

One of my favorite Web 2.0 operations is family-run, photo-sharing site SmugMug, which charges fees rather than subsidizes through advertising and offers great functionality using little more than a Web browser. On Friday, SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill blogged about his company using Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3). Amazon's S3 is another take on Web 2.0, with the retailer turning storage services into a utility, like electricity. From where I sit, Web 2.0 is very much about the utility concept, of flipping a switch anytime, anywhere and on anything to access relevant information, whether personal or professional.

Microsoft's challenge is keeping development focus on its platforms and solutions, even as interest draws to the Web platform. While seemingly little more than evangelism sites, Aggreg8 and Port 25 are community efforts in the spirit of Web 2.0. The approach is appropriate. Windows is another kind of utility, because of its dominance.