Hail Storm Warning!

Shubhendu Parth



On May 11, 2001, exactly 53 days after its global launch–March 19, 2001 to be
precise–Microsoft India unleashed its latest set of user-centric, XML-based

cross platform Web services HailStorm. While the global launch included

prototypes and demos from MS partners American Express, Clickcomm-erce, eBay,

Expedia, and Groove, the Indian launch had a similar razzmatazz with its Indian

partners showcasing solutions that could address the needs of industry verticals

like education, stock market, health care, B2B exchanges and e-trading.

In fact, Infosys, Mastek, NIIT, Satyam, TCS and Wipro are amongst the first

in Asia to have built applications based on this new technology. However, there

is a difference though. Unlike in India where not many eyebrows are being raised

about the ‘real motive’ of Bill Gates & Co, world over, especially in

the US, HailStorm has lived true its name.

While Microsoft’s competitors, including AOL Time Warner (AOL TW) and Sun

Microsystems, allege that HailStorm and other pieces of the .Net initiative are

designed to limit their access to customers and further leverage Microsoft’s

dominant Windows market share, Gates haters have decried HailStorm for violating

user privacy. Some have even accused Microsoft of mounting yet another assault

on antitrust law.

Calling it mis-characterization by special-interest competitors of its

open-access, open-design process vision–unlike AOL’s walled-garden,

proprietary approach to instant messaging, Microsoft denies that anything in its

.Net plan is improper. Rather, the company argues that HailStorm product is not

limited to Windows and can be accessed by consumers running Linux, Apple’s

Macintosh operating system or even on a Palm handheld device. The company also

said HailStorm is built on open standards and is available for use by any Web

site, including AOL. However, Microsoft plans to charge consumers, developers

and participating Websites.

So where did the company falter in its first big move away from a PC-centric

world, or is it just another bout of hue and cry being raised by anti-Microsoft

lobby? The answers lie in understanding what HailStorm is all about and what

prompted the desktop king to come out with it.

What is HailStorm?



Shed of all jargons and flowery verbiage, the new Internet-based software is
a tool that will let people store and manage their personal records. The new

service makes the world’s largest software company’s product a central

repository for storing credit card numbers, financial records, appointment books

and other types of personal information. The company eventually will charge a

yet-to-be-decided monthly fee for the service.

The software will also enable people enter and change their information,

store it via the Internet, then selectively give the information away to

contacts, or hawk it when buying goods and subscribing to services online. Also,

the software is supposed to share information between home computers, work

computers, and handheld electronics. It can move contact information listed from

a work e-mail program with contacts stored in a cell phone.

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