He is only Microsoft's CEO. So he must know what he's talking about. The annual Gartner Symposium and IT Expo here on Oct. 10 was the stage where Steve Ballmer unveiled Microsoft revelation. The top priority over at the Redmond Company is the Windows Live platform. So much so that it's bigger than Windows Vista and the Office 2007 Suite, the company's main cash cows.

"The most important thing is the Live platform. The next level of consumerization is coming from Internet services and Internet delivery. We're in a transition to software that is live. It will be click to run, like a Web site. We believe in evolving to click to run," stated Ballmer.

Ballmer chose to emphasize that Microsoft focuses on the Windows Live platform in the context of the Vista and Office release dates closing in. The Redmond Company's initiatives with the Live platform are but an aspect of Microsoft intensive efforts to multitask and to diversify its core business that has been limited to the desktop. Microsoft's exploration of the online environment is synonymous with entering the territory of established household names like Google and Yahoo, but also that of surprising start-ups growing to market values of over a billion in just one year, see YouTube and MySpace.

But Microsoft is a mammoth. It thinks and it moves like a mammoth. The Windows Live services are an illustrative example. Microsoft is not adapting to the online ecosystem, it's trying to tailorfit the Internet to its platform. This is an explanation of the timid success experienced by Windows Live.