HailStorm of Microsoft Web services hits

REDMOND, WASH. - The first services Microsoft Corp. plans to deliver as part of its grand .Net initiative will be a "HailStorm," say company executives. But don't visualize balls of solid ice denting cars and ruining crops in the Midwest--Microsoft envisions a flow of consumer services designed to make it easier to navigate, search, and (especially) shop on the Net.

HailStorm is Microsoft's code name for a set of user-oriented Web services that the company plans to begin delivering by the end of June, starting with a greatly enhanced version of Microsoft's Passport user authentication technology. A second component, due out next year, will provide a "notification" capability that developers can use to provide users with many kinds of information in a timely manner.

Those and other services announced Monday will provide the "plumbing" for Microsoft's .Net service architecture aimed at providing users with software and other services over the Internet on a subscription basis. "This [HailStorm] is the most important of the .Net building blocks," said Bill Gates, chair and chief software architect, leading Monday's presentation here.

Perhaps most surprising in Microsoft's pronouncements were commitments by Gates and other company executives to support access to the HailStorm services from any device. They demonstrated those services running on a Palm PDA, a Pocket PC, and a RIM Blackberry handheld, as well as on a Sun Microsystems workstation running Sun's Solaris Unix and on a PC running Red Hat Linux.

A series of consumer-oriented scenarios gave a glimpse of how HailStorm services will let users access information, "any time, any place, and on any device." Executives from several companies, including American Express, online auctioneer EBay, and Microsoft's online travel agency Expedia, described how they'll use the technology.

For instance, in an American Express demo, an enhanced version of Microsoft's MSN Messenger software notifies a customer of the arrival of a book that he or she wants. When the user clicks on the book vendor's link in the notification message, the bookstore's Web page launches and the user is invited to purchase the book. Because the consumer's credit card number, mailing address, and other information would already be stored in the upgraded Passport, the transaction would be quick and require very few keystrokes.

"You should never have to enter information multiple times," Gates adds.

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