Of course, not everyone buys that. "I understand the theory," says Scott Cosby, manager of IBM's e-business Technologies Marketing Team. "I'd love to see the technology that [works] in an equally robust way on Linux or on Windows 2000."
What Microsoft needs to do is open up .Net to Java so the two technologies interact smoothly, says Michael Crosno, chief executive of software maker Epicentric. "Otherwise, they will lose their head of steam."
That might not be Microsoft's priority, though. It has effectively abandoned its own version of Java and is promoting a new Java-like alternative language, called C# ("C sharp"). In its most pleasant dreams, Redmond sees Hailstorm as a Java killer. The promise of Sun's Java was that developers could write applications that would run on any platform: "write once, run anywhere." By committing to standards, Microsoft is essentially making the same promise of open communication between machines, without the need for Java.
No wonder Sun's McNealy is still spewing anti-Microsoft bile. Hailstorm is nothing less than an effort to eclipse competing Web services platforms from IBM, Sun, Oracle and smaller players like BEA Systems. The desktop isn't enough. Microsoft wants to own the Internet.
That means Microsoft needs not only developers, but big Internet partners. That's a bit tricky when your nickname is the Evil Empire. But in difficult times, Hailstorm offers companies an important opportunity for growth.
Prospective partners are not only high-profile dot-coms (eBay was the first to sign up with Hailstorm), but also enterprises from banks to automakers. American Express executives attended the Hailstorm launch. Other targets on Microsoft's list include Amazon.com, Disney, credit concern MBNA and United Parcel Service, according to a company source. Microsoft has to convince such businesses that their customers' data is safe in its data centers – no easy task given that the personal information of millions of users will be stored on Microsoft servers, which have caused the company numerous public embarrassments for its security holes.
