What's the point?
Asked why Microsoft has created Live Mesh, Clayton said: ‘We’re more and more connected to the web, while at the same time we’ve got increasing connectivity and we have more and more devices in our lives. We’re trying to bring together those worlds.’
‘I want to be able to take a photo, let’s say on my mobile phone, and upload it wirelessly straight away,’ said Clayton to illustrate how Live Mesh might be used by consumers. ‘A digital photo frame can be part of your mesh.’
Another use for it can be remote access to applications on another computer, although the constraints of bandwidth will limit how useful that will be. I asked Clayton if you can even do this with a PC that’s shut down. ‘It would be really great if we could have wake-on LAN support,’ said Clayton, indicating that the answer is no.
‘I shut down my PC when I’m not using it because I’m environmentally friendly,’ he added, showing a Microsoft veteran’s instinct for potential bad publicity. The greenies will never forgive Microsoft if Live Mesh encourages everyone to leave their PCs on the whole time, so they might want to sort that one out.
What's in it for the channel?
Live Mesh is still in a sufficiently early stage that Microsoft hasn’t started any kind of specific marketing, but when asked what interest there is for the channel in it, Clayton said: ‘The most obvious members of the channel that spring to mind are Microsoft’s ISV (independent software vendor) partners, who are already looking forward to creating consumer and business solutions out of it.’
Clayton stressed that Live Mesh is all built on open technology and that the browser-based manifestations of it work on Firefox and Safari as well as IE. Right now it’s only available to a few invited and mainly US-based beta-testers to play with.
This is an application that sits on top of a platform,’ said Clayton, when asked how things will progress from here. ‘Live Mesh, the platform, will be spoken about a lot more, later in the year.’
‘The professional developer conference in LA in late October will see a lot more. We will be inviting a lot more ISVs and developers into it then.’ Apparently there are seven million or so Microsoft developers worldwide.
In conclusion, Live Mesh is a project of almost limitless scope, but still at a pretty early stage. When I asked Clayton what other devices we can expect to be able to connect to ‘the mesh’ he just said: ‘let your imagination run wild.’
What is clear is that Microsoft has invested heavily in it and it’s here to stay. It will be fascinating to see how Live Mesh evolves and, with it supposedly being open, what third parties do with it. HEXUS.channel will stay close to the situation and update you as soon as there are any developments.
