The fog lifted just a little during the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in October as Microsoft presented for the first time details of their likely pricing model for Hailstorm (now called .NET My Services).

As you probably already know, Microsoft had been planning for some time to morph many parts of their business plan into a Web Service-based “we host it?you use it and pay us for it” pricing model. Well, the first emerging details show that they really do intend to build significant revenue streams from .NET My Services.

The big question is, “Can I, as a developer, afford to participate?” Of course, with anything as big as this may become, and desiring to stay on the cutting edge to satisfy customer demands, developers must ask themselves, “Can I afford not to participate?”

.NET My Services contains many interesting services that can be incorporated into applications without too much difficulty (based on the cool demos so far), but many of them will not be readily available for all developers and users for some time to come. As they do become available, users will pay Microsoft somehow for the use of them?either through subscription fees or bundled with other services, like MSN.

But, Microsoft does not stop there with fees for users. They also expect developers to cough up significant licensing fees for the privilege of incorporating these services into custom applications.

Crawl, walk, run

Some very large companies were already working with Microsoft prior to the PDC and showed some intriguing uses for these new technologies. Medium-sized developer shops will soon be able to develop with .NET My Services by paying $10,000 per year and $1,500 per application. But, unless they are willing to pay those kinds of fees, small developer companies are left waiting in the wings. The cutting edge, in this case, cuts pretty deeply into the “non-.NET my wallet.”

Sure, Microsoft also announced a less-expensive pricing model for the masses ($2,500 per year and $250 per application), but that level of service will not be available until the hosting infrastructure is built out and scaled up, and the major bugs worked out of the process. More than once at the PDC, I heard Microsoft people use the phrase, “Crawl, walk, run” to describe the roll-out of the massive hosting effort needed to serve .NET My Services to the masses of users and developers.

If you want to be in the first wave of early adopters, you will have to make a hefty financial contribution to the cause. That's not an unreasonable requirement, I guess, as it helps weed out the mildly-curious developers from the highly-committed ones and helps Microsoft manage the size and scale of the roll-out. You could “roll your own” version of the services, but you would face significant technological and financial barriers to make them universally available to your users. I guess we are left to hope that we really will “get what we pay for.”

What you get for free

To be fair, I must say that there are very compelling uses for the “big three” services that, at least initially, are offered to users by Microsoft free of charge. (It was not yet clear at press time how long these will be free to users or if developers will have to pay licensing fees for them.) These services are .NET Passport, for authentication; .NET Presence, which can keep track of how to best contact you at any given moment; and .NET Alerts, actually a developer-accessible version of instant messaging.

In combination, these three services open up many new opportunities for developers to add useful features to their applications. Think about what you could do if your application could instantly contact people, wherever they are, via whatever device they currently prefer, to send status updates or inform them of newly-arrived shipments of back-ordered items. Let your imagination run wild and I think you will find some very useful and creative possibilities.

Our staff grows as we welcome a new editor

It is my privilege to introduce to you Rod Paddock, the new Editor-In-Chief of Component Developer Magazine.�Rod possesses a unique combination of talents that qualify him for this position?a long history as a developer, a love for writing, and lots of in-depth technical knowledge in a variety of fields.

Rod's appointment as Editor comes as we are growing our staff and ramping up for the next phase of the magazine's development. Going into our third year of publication, we understand “crawl, walk, run” around here, and we're picking up speed pretty fast these days!

With the next issue, I assume the title of Associate Publisher, which will allow me to focus my attention on the many behind-the-scenes activities that are necessary for the magazine to achieve its ambitious goals for the coming year. I will still write a regular column and will continue to oversee the Developer's Life page.

We continue to be gratified by the wonderful response of the IT managers and developers who make up our ever-growing list of readers. We intend to reach many more during the coming year by introducing them to what we believe is the best developer resource in the market. Our slogan, “Microsoft technologies in-depth for IT managers and developers” says it all. Stay with us as we dig deep into all the new stuff, and I know you won't be disappointed.

As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions.

david@code-magazine.com