SAN FRANCISCO—Microsoft
formally introduced and demonstrated its new synchronization framework, Live
Mesh, at the Web 2.0 Expo here April 23.
In a brief keynote address, Amit Mital, Microsoft's general manager of Live
Mesh, gave a quick demonstration and played a video showing the Live Mesh
technology at work, prompting applause from the crowd.
"With Live Mesh, all your devices work together, your data and apps are
always available, your people are a click away, and you're always up to
date," Mital said.
Essentially, Live Mesh is Microsoft's software-plus-services platform to
enable users to sync their PCs and devices so that they are up to date with
everything else in an individual's "device mesh."
"Live Mesh addresses a set of challenges we all face in our daily
lives," he said. "We live in the world of the Web, where the Web is
the center of all things that we do, and the way we connect with the Web is
through devices."
Joe Wilcox writes why Live Mesh can save Microsoft. Read his blog.
Mital said that when he gets a new device, his life becomes more difficult
because he's had to become an IT administrator of sorts. With that in mind,
“two years ago we created a new team to look at the scenario." Mital said.
He said each device they looked at "was internet-connected at birth,
but not to each other. ... So we thought about unified device management and
unified data management, as well as the same for feed—unified feed sync and
unified file sync,” he said. "And what is critical for us is we made this
drop-dead simple. Live Mesh is a software-plus-services platform that enables your
PC and other devices to come alive and be aware of each other."
Mital played a video clip showing a mom taking a photo of a kid jumping into
the water for a swim. As she takes the photo on her phone, it automatically
syncs and appears on a remote PC, on a digital picture frame, on her husband's
screen as he waits for a flight at the airport and other places. The polished
video prompted at least one observer within earshot of this reporter to utter,
"Fantastic," although overall applause for the announcement was
somewhat cautious.
"Live Mesh provides an it-just-works experience that puts you at the
center," Mital said.
Prior to Mital’s talk, Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO
of O'Reilly Media, jokingly chided Microsoft about Live Mesh, saying, "IT
supports Windows devices only, so they don't get it."
However, Mital said that although Live Mesh currently only works on Windows
PCs, later it will support Macs and other devices.
Is Live Mesh a developer's dream? Read more here.
The introduction of Live Mesh, he said, is "just the tip of the iceberg"
because, as a platform company, Microsoft's goal is to empower others to build
on top of its platform.
"We are a platform team and a platform company," he said. "We
want to make it easy for developers to create compelling applications."
The Live Mesh platform provides open access to its underlying data model and
APIs, according to Mital.
"As a developer, I can choose the wire format to interact with Live
Mesh," he said. "We want to enable an environment where anybody can
interact with Live Mesh."
Architecture 
