Confused by Mesh? It’s Simple: Microsoft Just Changed the Game

There’s a lot of Live Mesh talk going on tonight, and I think I’ve just read just about every blog post about it so far. People are posting introductions, analysis, screenshots, videos, demos, opinions and so much more. But Live Mesh is really too big of a concept to get boiled down to one measly post. To really wrap your head around what Live Mesh is and why it’s important, you’ll have to read them all.

But in case you can’t do that, I’m hitting the highlights here.

What It Is

Here’s how Amit Mital, GM of Live Mesh describes it. Live Mesh has four components:

• Unified Device Management – your devices report into a common service for status, health, or to report their location
• Unified Data Management - transparent synchronization of files, folders, documents & media plus the bi-directional synchronization of arbitrary feeds of all kinds across your devices and the web
• Unified Application Management- centralized web-based deployment of apps across your devices
• Centralized Management – configure and personalize your devices and get remote access to them from anywhere

How It’s Made

• The Core of the Platform is Services. Core services, including some Live Services, can all be accessed using the Live Mesh API. Services include the following: 1) Storage – both online and offline, 2) Membership, 3) Sync, 4) Peer-to-Peer Communication and 5) Newsfeed.
• The API on Clients and in the Cloud is the Same. The API, or programming model, is the same for the cloud and all connected devices. This means a Live Mesh application works exactly the same whether it’s running in the cloud, in a browser, on a desktop, or on a mobile device.
• Open, Extendable Data Model  The basic data model is provided for the most common tasks needed for a Live Mesh application. Developers can also customize and extend the data model in any fashion that is needed for a specific application. In other words, developers can code for Mesh.
• Flexible Application Model. Developers can pick which application developer model best fits their needs. Believe me, they’ll like that.

Again, via dev.live.com

Who Built It?

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s CTO and also a team of 100 really smart people. As the Live Mesh Team blog says, it took "deep domain experts on distributed systems, scale data centers, web, Windows, Mac, mobile, networking, app protocols, file systems, databases, synchronization, peer to peer, security and more."

The Pieces

• Your Mesh: This includes 1) your device ring (a collection of devices you own), 2) your applications, and 3) your Live Desktop – all your same stuff, via a web OS type interface that you can get to from anywhere…like a kiosk PC. The Mesh Account service lets these things work together and gives you access to them.
• The Cloud: Across the cloud is where your data syncs. You don’t have to give up control of your stuff and store it entirely "in" the cloud.
• A Mesh Object: Sort of like a feed, it’s the building blocks of Mesh. Mesh objects are physically stored in a Live Mesh Storage Server and exposed as authenticated feeds. The Live Mesh storage server in the cloud is actually a bunch of P2P servers in the cloud.

Via the team blog

Some Stuff it Does/Will Do

• Add/Remove Devices from Mesh: just a little bit of software can Mesh-enable your PC. And soon your Mac, your mobile, and your whatever, too.
• Install to Mesh: "Customers will ultimately license applications to their mesh, as opposed to an instantiation of Windows, Mac or a mobile account or a web site.  Such applications will be seamlessly installed and run from their mesh and application settings persisted across their mesh." (via)
• Know What’s Going On: "The ability to subscribe (“tell me when it has changed”) to resources and publish (“I changed it”) notifications against resources." Right now it’s simple – e.g., who is “using” a Live Folder now -  but it can do more. Much more. (via)
• Share With People: Groups of people can be associated with a mesh object. You invite them via email. Or maybe they’re not people. You could invite a bot…like a spellchecker bot, for example. (via)
• Mesh is More than Devices: A FeedSync based sync infrastructure will let your own devices participate, but it can also support a "device" that’s a 3rd party web site, too. (Killer description of FeedSync is here). (via)
• Mesh Knows What You Need: I like how LiveSide describes it: "Live Mesh will know what computers I use, what files I need, who to share them with, what I’ve modified, what others have modified, and what I’ve shared in a number of complex ways."

OK, so maybe it’s a little confusing…it’s just so complex! But the end result will be easy for the end user: right-click and "add to mesh."

Tags: cloud, cloud computing, data, device ring, feedsync, live mesh, mesh, Microsoft