Earlier this year there was a buzz in the industry that for
little or no fee, OnLive, a hosting facility, would provide access to a virtual
Windows Desktop. I first learned about
the service in February as I overheard a hallway conversation where an
executive asked our network group to open a port to our firewall to allow
access to the service. I was not sure
whether or not a port in our firewall needed to be opened, but I did know that
the offer seemed a little extraordinary given the restrictions Microsoft has that
prohibits hosting facilities from providing Windows desktops on shared
servers. I immediately asked if I could
be involved and explained that I was concerned that while OnLive was the entity
providing this service, we could be the ones in violation of Microsoft’s
licensing rules.
My first action was to contact OnLive’s customer service and
ask them if they had a special agreement with Microsoft. After several attempts at getting an answer to
my question and getting a complete runaround, I decided to contact Microsoft to
see if they could confirm that OnLive was properly licensed. The answer was no, they could not confirm
that OnLive was properly licensed. Given
that I was going to need to tell an executive that we would not be able to
complete his request and that I wanted
to stay in the good graces of my employer, I asked that Microsoft put
their response in writing. The
representative was not willing to provide their response in writing, which
started to make me nervous. At that
point I did what I always do when I have a tough decision to make— I
research more. Hoping that I would find
some clue that would make the OnLive service seem legal, I looked at the
leaders of OnLive. This did not help my
cause any and to further confuse the issue OnLive’s leaderships’ biographies read like the who’s who of
technology. After continued research and
fretting, I finally just gave in and provided my write-up stating that I did
not feel comfortable that we would be in compliance with Microsoft’s licensing
if we allowed this service. Fortunately,
a few weeks after I wrote my statement, Joe Matz, Corporate Vice President of
Worldwide Licensing and Pricing for Microsoft issued a statement that Microsoft
was working with OnLive to ensure license compliance. The media immediately questioned how OnLive
could ever make such a mistake without checking the licensing first.
Ever since this incident, I have been puzzled by the actions
of OnLive. It seems to me that these
guys running OnLive must be far too smart to simply forget about the licensing
of third party software. I just do not
buy it. In the meantime, Microsoft has
continued to open up virtualization rights to their products that are covered
by Software Assurance, which started to get me thinking, “Maybe Microsoft is
about ready to put Windows desktops in the Cloud and change their licensing to
make it more feasible.” I have worked in
the direct marketing business which has an industry term, “dry test”, which is done
to gauge the market demand before the product is ready to be put on the
market. What if the whole OnLive event
earlier this year was a dry test for Windows Desktop as a Service? Do I have proof? No, but it would help to explain a pretty
bizarre event. Actually, this scenario may
be a complete fabrication of my mind but I do feel that Microsoft is
approaching the time when they will be providing DaaS. Over the next few blog posts I will be
examining why I believe Microsoft is about ready to make DaaS a viable
solution. The postings will provide:
·
A background of what Microsoft needs to put into
place before they can allow DaaS
·
Changes that have already occurred to
Microsoft’s products and licensing that could make virtualization and cloud
processing a reality
·
Finally, I will examine the upcoming product
changes that will allow Microsoft the ability to change their licensing to make
DaaS a possibility
During this effort I encourage feedback, in the event that I
am missing some key pieces of information.
No comments:
Post a Comment