Skunkworks

Yesterday Microsoft launched Microsoft Surface which is a computer system with an interface similar with Jef Han multitouch presentation from TED 2005. If you want details about the system, you need to search for it in your favorite search engine. I will just say 2 things:

• The way the system talks with other devices other WIFI and Bluetooth is much more interesting then the innovative GUI paradigm.
• Is the first time in months when Windows Vista (the OS that this system uses) appears in all sorts of articles, and no one mentions the DRM in Vista and how bad is for the world . And this is happening because everybody is busy talking about something much more interesting then DRM. A new computing paradigm from Microsoft. A proof that the big giant is awakening and slowly moving towards new territories.

A sign of things to come

If you talk about web 2.0 sites (applications) from the point of view of an IT business related professional, these are the applications that are most used : Email, Instant Messaging, Calendar, Tasks, some sort of Project Management, a Document Management System, maybe a CRM and a sales funnel and a Dashboard. in the web 2.0 space there are a lot of application providers some big one like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and some small ones like 37 Signals, Zimbra, 30 Boxes, Devshop. I am not talking here about the infrastructure providers like IBM, Oracle, Sun which allows all the “front end” applications to be developed and hosted.

From a small business point of view, the are some issues that are stopping a wider spread adoption of these apps:

• lack of offline access
• lack of privacy
• too little or too many features
• missing single sign on
• common interface

If you take a look at all these applications you will see that all these sites offer a limited free version, and then a feature complete paying version. After I looked at all these sites I noticed that most of them are asking anywhere between 2 to 4 $ per user per month for the services that they are offering.

Assuming Firefox 3 will help alleviate the issue of off line access I am sure there is a big opportunity for a company to offer all these services under a single sign on and a common interface with a pricing scheme like this:

• no matter what you are using your encrypted remote hard drive the storage should cost you around 0.5$ per GB per user per month.
• basic services which will be used by individuals and companies like Email, Contacts, Instant Messaging, Calendar, Tasks, Information Organizer (something like Google notebook and docs), Photos, should cost you 1$ per service per user per month.
• advanced services like Project Management, Document Management, Clients management, Sales Funnel should cost you 2$ per service per user per month.
• the client should be able to buy credit in 10-20$ increments and then should be able to use the credit however he wants it, enabling and disabling services, increasing and decreasing the storage space according to his needs.

You could have let’s say Email, Calendar and Instant Messaging with 4 GB storage space for 5$ per month without the lack of privacy or adverts in or around your email. I know I would pay these amounts for this kind of services if I would be sure my data is private and encrypted at all times.

Waiting for your comments