Update: Microsoft Launches New Windows Marketplace

Microsoft on Sunday will disclose its plans for a "Windows Marketplace" that will list and offer for sale a wide range of Windows-related hardware, software, and accessories. The online mart will be accessible via the ubiquitous Windows "Start button."

The vendor insists that in the Marketplace, all transactions -- including sales of its own software -- will be fulfilled via reseller partners. Executives also said the vendor will not be able to peek into what goes on there. "We will be transaction-neutral," said Allison Watson, vice president of Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Sales and Marketing Group.

The effort will be shown to several thousand Microsoft ISVs, solution providers and other partners in Toronto at Microsoft's annual worldwide partner conference. Attendees will be encouraged to list their offerings.

On Monday, Senior Vice President Will Poole, who oversees the company's Windows client business, will demonstrate an early version of the product -- slated to be accessible this fall -- at the show. The goal is to get ISVs and service providers to sign up and participate, said Dee Dee Walsh, director of partner and community for the Windows Client group at Microsoft.

The effort builds on the current Windows Catalog, found on the Microsoft Web site. That is a database of virtually every Windows-related product, hardware, software and component, Walsh said. While the catalog will continue to exist, the marketplace will be a customer-facing effort geared to boost volumes of products sold.

Walsh and her colleague Susanne Peterson, another director of the group, said resellers will play an integral part in order-taking and fulfillment but would not specify which partners will take part. "We're working with all the major online retailers, we're aggregating," Peterson said.

The full rollout of the service is expected to debut with the Longhorn client, Walsh said.

This is not Microsoft's first attempt at an online marketplace. In the late 1990s, it devised and launched an online store, code-named Nitro with a handful of reseller partners.

Even Microsoft insiders are unclear about the fate of that effort. Some say it evolved into the MSN Shopping, others say it petered out.

Besides the products themselves, the Windows Marketplace site will include relevant product information, specs and reviews from third parties, Microsoft said. Company research showed that customers, on average, go to 20 different sources when researching a technology purchase.

(In other Windows news, the company now expects the long-awaited Windows XP Service Pack 2 to be released to manufacture (RTM) in August. On Monday, executives will tell partners to prep themselves and customers by turning on the automatic update feature of their current XP implementation. That should ease the update when it comes available, a spokesman said.

With the RTM, Microsoft will also start deploying Windows Update Version 5 to ease the flow up downloads for customers with both narrowband and broadband Web connections, the spokesman said.)

For more news on the conference, see CRN

This story was updated Monday morning with Windows XP, SP 2 information.