Microsoft's Ozzie talks Vista, web 2.0 and SaaS

With Microsoft's Vista and Office 2007 released to manufacturing, the software giant is preparing to adapt the products for the web-dominated era, said chief software architect Ray Ozzie.

Ozzie spoke at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, where he said the company overall is making a transition to designing software that takes advantage of the PC - as it has historically done - as well as online services.

Responding to a question from an attendee, Ozzie described some of the product goals he envisions for the next editions of Windows and Office.

Specifically, he said Office can be better adapted for internet-connected mobile devices. And the next version of Windows should aid software developers in creating applications that run on machines with several processing "cores" on a chip.

He said: "On the Office side, the biggest opportunity is that it's a world where mobile devices... and smart phones are everywhere.

"The web is pervasive and I think there are scenarios that have tremendous opportunities to take advantage of the advent of different device types."

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For Windows, Ozzie foresees adjustments to PCs that have many cores, a shift right now that requires application developers to adjust their existing applications.

In addition, power management needs to be improved. The next Windows should also include features for "state separation", where individual applications are separated in terms of execution and settings, he said.

Finally, he said installing applications from a CD-ROM is a practice that should be replaced by web-delivered software.

Meanwhile, with Vista, Ozzie said that the software is "not perfect" but provides better reliability and safety for end users, something that has become more important since Windows XP was released in 2001. "The biggest thing that Vista can do is provide a safe environment for interaction on the web," he said.

Ozzie said the transition to integrate online services into Microsoft offerings has been a challenge but changes within the company are happening. Office Live, for example, complements the Office PC applications with online services for small and medium-size businesses.

But he dismissed the notion that PCs and operating systems are irrelevant in a time when more sophisticated applications are delivered via the web. "I don't see the right thing to do is to take the PC interface and functionality and put it on the web," Ozzie said. "I believe you have to look at what the web is really good at.

"What the PC is good at, the web doesn't have as its core strength, such as really fast UI [user interface] regardless of the connection speed and reliability."

Martin LaMonica writes for CNET News.com