It’s interesting to see an CommerceNet alum Bob Glushko in the news. The comment, though, is a telling one, since if anything CommerceNet is firmly on the same side as Halsey in its committment to open business service networks. On the other hand, a decentralized aspect of that vision is that you should always be able to run your “own” GrandCentral-like service, too.
Not to mention that we need to all work together to continue to evolve WS interoperability to include real-time, async events — the need for a two-way GrandCentral with notifications more powerful (& scriptable) than, say, email…
The New York Times > Technology > Is It Still Called a Venture Fund When You Use Your Own Money?
Moreover, there is a nagging question confronting Grand Central and every other company pursuing the on-demand model. Will large corporations ever feel comfortable with a solution that means placing valuable data outside their computer security systems, or will they stick with solutions that remains safely inside their networks and delivered on individual computers?
“The Grand Central hosting approach might appeal to small firms that need just a few services, but most big enterprises aren’t going to yield this control to a third party,” said Robert J. Glushko, an entrepreneur before taking a teaching post at the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California, Berkeley. “So there’s a business model there, but it may not be a very big one.”