CES is upon us, and Microsoft have apparently been busy and Bill Gates himself demonstrated a new product - Windows Home Server.
The idea behind Home Server is to provide a central location to allow sharing between all the Windows machines in a household and also to provide bridging functionality to other Microsoft products (like the Xbox 360 and the Zune), so that all of your Microsoft-equipped devices in the house can talk to each other.
It also has additional features such as backup capabilities and there is likely to be room for Microsoft to add new features to tightly integrate with Windows Vista (which, in case you’ve forgotten has a public launch on the 30th of January).
But Microsoft won’t be selling the Windows Home Server software - they’re going about it slightly differently. Hardware vendors are invited to build machines based on Microsoft’s reference design for Home Server, and then they can resell Home Server as OEM with their machines. It’s unlikely that the Home Server OS, a cut-down version of Windows Server 2003, will be sold separately - at least not for a while.
The Home Server can be administered via a web-based interface and a ‘Windows Home Server Console’ client application for Windows.
Leaving aside my personal opinions on Microsoft pushing towards domination in yet more spaces, this is an innovative idea and will provide features that maybe even non-geeky households might consider. I think now it’s up to Microsoft to ensure the success of this product by getting third-party software and hardware vendors warmed up to the idea, so they can make their products interoperate and share seamlessly with the presence of a Home Server. If you could bring home any new gadget and instantly connect to it by Wifi from all the computers in your house, then Home Server will become a very attractive package for anyone with a home network and sufficient machines to warrant one.
I have to say I both like this idea, and i don’t, I like the fact that it would integrate seamelessly with all of your other MS products, although if i wanted a “home server” then I would want to be able to buy the software, and run it on older hardware, the fact that it is MS means that if they were to release a installable version of it, then it would probably be a costly alternative to linux. When there already free OS’s out there which do similar things, such as http://www.freenas.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1. Admittedly it may not have the out-of-the-box functionality, but i would much rather have that serving up files to my network, than a paid for piece of software full of features i would never use
With wireless networking there has been a widespread adoption of home networks among ‘ordinary’ people (rather than techies who did it for fun). These people don’t know much about how to set things up, or about Linux, and so I think there’s definitely a gap in the market which Microsoft can exploit. They will enjoy all the extra functionality without having to get their hands dirty.