MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—The software industry has a strong future regardless of whether its products are delivered as a service, as a component or in packaged form, Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, said April 30.
Mundie, delivering the lunch-time address at the New Software Industry conference here, said that whatever the delivery mechanism, the bottom line was that there will be an ongoing demand for software in the future.
Acknowledging that services have a role in this future, Mundie noted that current communication capabilities had reached the point where services could now be offered in the cloud to complement them. “So, clearly, there will be services in the future,” he said.
According to Mundie, the next generation of applications will include both local software and global services.
“But the word ‘service’ is a bit of an overloaded term. What is a service? It is going to be very important to tease these things apart in the future,” he said. “For me, this is software provided as a service through the network, which is a large part of what Microsoft is trying to do with its Live platform, where every one of our products will have a service component in the future,” he said.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Microsoft Sees Complex Future for Software
