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Microsoft is known for it’s computing architectures that are closed to a lot of things that are Non-Microsoft. Open here doesn’t mean open source. It means open standards.

Photo Credit: j-e-m-s (dos chicas)

An Example. Suppose someone wants to use Microsoft Project Server. They purchase it. Can they use it without buying other Microsoft Products? NO! One needs to have Microsoft Server running on the computer, since Project Server only installs on that particular platform. Also, Project Server uses MS SQL as a backend database, which is also a Microsoft Product. You can’t use MySql, Sybase, Oracle, or any other Non-Microsoft Database.

So to use one Product, you need to use a who lot of other Microsoft products as well. That, promises Microsoft, may be changing. At the recent demo of Microsoft’s ‘Live Mesh’ service, Microsoft promises to connect all the different devices a user has via the Internet, into an abstract storage space called ‘The Cloud’, which will reside in Microsoft’s datacentres.

The best part is that even if you’re using a Mac, or Linux on one of your devices, you will be able to connect! George Moromisato, a software designer who is working on Live Mesh, promises that unless it’s open standard, people just don’t want to use it, and this is forcing Microsoft to change it’s stance, unless it wants to get booted out of the Internet services altogether. And Microsoft is not stupid enough to let then happen.