Live Mesh - Mesh It Up with Microsoft

Next week, Microsoft is going to demonstrate the Live Mesh service. The Web 2.0 Expo scheduled to take place on April 22-25, 2008, in San Francisco, will be the stage for the initial introduction of Live Mesh. Built under the company's Live brand umbrella, Live Mesh was prefigured as early as MIX08 in Las Vegas at the debut of March. In this year's MIX Internet-centric conference, the opening keynote featured Ray Ozzie giving a taste of the company's vision of meshing. Ozzie took the title of Chief Software Architect from Chairman Bill Gates, and at MIX08 talked about the reconceptualization of Microsoft software in order to align with the software as service and software plus service strategies.

"We need to think of the Web as a hub, the hub of our social experiences, our social mesh, the hub of our technology experiences, our device mesh. Related to the social mesh, we believe that the interpersonal nature of the Web will ultimately impact everything we do, including the personal aspect of the PC. In scenarios ranging from productivity to media and entertainment, all applications - ours and yours - will incorporate the group-forming aspect of the Web: linking, sharing, ranking, tagging on the Web will become as familiar to all of us as file, edit, and view on the PC," Ozzie stated at that time.

As far as devices are concerned, with their verity, number and diversity in a continual expansion, centralization becomes just as critical a factor as interoperability. "At the principle level, we believe that the Web will be used across all our offerings as a hub to simplify your life in managing and using a world of devices," Ozzie added.

What Microsoft is essentially aiming for with Live Mesh is the first stage of a much larger strategy involving a total of five pillars, as Ozzie highlighted: connected productivity, connected devices, connected entertainment, connected business, and to top it off connected development. Despite the fact that it has its flagship products deeply rooted on the desktop, Microsoft is slowly moving into the cloud. Live Mesh is an integral part of this transition, and a project of Ray Ozzie.

Mary Jo Foley, revealed that Amit Mital, General Manager of Live Mesh product at Microsoft, previously, General Manager of Live Meeting and BizTalk Server, is scheduled to hold a keynote at Web 2.0 Expo on April 13, 2008, titled Get Mesh!. A part of the audience at MIX08 will be the first to test drive an early technology preview of Live Mesh, and Mital is expected to announce the delivery of the CTP next week.