2bStealthy - Although I have no hard evidence (or soft) to support my beliefs, I believe that Microsoft's .Net server solution has been a disaster (to-date) in the enterprise market, when measured against their expectations.
Microsoft leveraged the Windows Operating systems to capture the lions share of the Browser market, essentially knocking out the competition, and ensuring their stronghold on the consumer.
To me, the .Net server appears to be an obvious candidate for Microsoft to use with similar tactics for Attestation, Key-Management, etc. by leveraging the Longhorne release of Windows 2005. If their Windows software contains certain embedded rule-based permissions, utility-like services, and other checks-and-balances that require attestation to occur prior to full execution, why wouldn't it stand to reason that a .Net Attestation Server, key-distributor, and key-manager would provide Microsoft the same stronghold on the industry that it currently enjoys with its Windows OS?
I absolutely recognize that in the wake of recent government findings and rulings, that Microsoft would be foolish to attempt to pull this antitrust crap off again right in front of everyone, but let's look at some of the facts.
1) The Republicans came to Microsoft's rescue the minute they took office, and what was supposed to be a monumental punishment (split the company) simply went away. That doesn't happen without significant power. So support is there with enough money is the message there.
2) Microsoft doesn't care what everyone else thinks. Their tactics in the past has been to pre-emptively release hype as if it is theirs, and supposedly, use other people's IP (Intertrust example) as their own while the long law suits drag out, and by the time a ruling actually comes down, they've already captured the market they wanted to anyway.
3) The .Net solution is not winning in the marketplace. And, short of calling it a failure (which will never happen) Microsoft has to find a way to give it life.
4) Microsoft always hedges its bets, for reasons of leverage, and to give the perception that formidable competition exists. This Rainbow/Safenet scenario could be this in a nut shell. Not as good a solution (obviously), but with Microsoft's marketing and advertising engine, they could make it appear (through smoke and mirrors) that this is another alternative if the players they neeed to fall in line don't cooperate. FUD at its very best.
5) Microsoft is not interested in just retaining a market they already own. They're likely looking to own the web-services market, the distributed network market, and who knows, maybe even the secure storage market. I wouldn't put it past them.
Doesn't it suck that Microsoft has done so many questionable things in the past decade that I would even think this deviously?
The question then becomes, Will the other players in the industry let them get away with it?
Well, Intel and NSM will because they sell the motherboards and the chips for all of these platforms. IBM won't, which is why they have ATMEL and LINUX working constantly to incorporate the rest of their already robust software stack into an integrated trusted computing solution. HP won't allow it, because they need to catch up to, and then beat IBM at its own game, so to some extent TCG will definitely remain alive and well.
Anyway, to make a long post shorter, there's still a lot of suspicion in my mind. I can't yet tell where all of the lines in the sand have been drawn, whether Wave will remain ubiquitously and objectively supportive to all, or whether they too will need to pick sides somewhere down the road. For them to remain the latter, they'd either have to own attestation as an independent defender of open systems, or completely give it away (yet support it with services) to those that may be too proud to let them own it.
Well - I feel better that I got it out, at least.
Who knows what will really happen
