By Daisuke Wakabayashi
Microsoft's Silverlight technology and rival Adobe's Flash
format are currently locked in a race over who delivers the
world's online video, but the ultimate prize may be who powers
the next generation of Web software.
Using Silverlight, the NBC site offers a glimpse of what is
possible with future Web applications because viewers are able
to watch up to four videos at once or follow the action with an
online commentary that runs alongside the video.
More than 40 million U.S. viewers have gone to NBC's
Olympics site to watch some of the 2,200 hours of live footage
from the Beijing games. All those viewers need is a Silverlight
player on their browser if they do not have one already.
By building up Silverlight's user base, the world's largest
software maker is looking to win over developers who see Web
platforms such as Silverlight and Flash as a new way to deliver
powerful Web-linked programs incorporating rich graphics.
Currently, those platforms are mainly reserved for
multimedia applications such as Google Inc's popular YouTube
site, which runs on Adobe's Flash technology.
"It's quickly becoming a very popular way to build next
generation applications. There's a lot of interest in capturing
the hearts and minds of developers," said Jeffrey Hammond, an
analyst at Forrester Research. "It'll be a big business."
Microsoft, which said nearly half the visitors to NBC's
site did not have Silverlight, plans to expand its reach to
close the gap on Flash, which is already running on most of the
world's Web-connected computers and powers over 80 percent of
the video on the Internet.
For Microsoft, keeping outside developers loyal is
especially important at a time when there is a major shift in
how people buy software.
After years of selling licenses for software that runs on a
computer's hard drive, Microsoft is facing a new batch of
competitors providing software free as a service through the
Web browser in exchange for online advertising.
Like other Web applications, RIAs are cheaper to deploy and
maintain than traditional software, but they differ from more
simple Web programs by employing rich graphics, running faster
and creating a seamless experience that does not require the
application to constantly reload or refresh.
For example, a financial institution may use Flash or
Silverlight to build a program to instantly chart stock prices
or receive a steady stream of stock prices that do not require
a trader to repeatedly hit refresh on his browser.
But those applications have yet to gain momentum with large
corporate technology customers.
ADOBE VS. MICROSOFT
Gartner analyst Ray Valdes said 90 percent of the top
global 1,000 companies have yet to deploy any sort of RIA,
while 90 percent of the top 100 consumer Web sites have already
done so using the nonproprietary and more simple AJAX format.
That opportunity has Microsoft eyeing current leader Adobe
for business that extends beyond Silverlight and into the sale
of design tools along with server and database software to
enable these new applications.
Integrated Runtimeubiquitous Windows operating systemgroup product manager
(Editing by Andre Grenon)
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