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Microsoft To Enter Hosting Business
TM84 writes "InformationWeek reports on Microsoft's latest revenue plan. Within one year the company plans to offer hosting implementations of Sharepoint as well as CRM and ERP applications." From the article: "One thing is certain: Microsoft is exploring myriad ways to deploy and charge for software, ranging from subscription models a la MSN to easier ways for companies to buy incremental products not in their current Enterprise Agreements. Some industry observers liken the hosting move to the 'turn on a dime' shift that Microsoft executed years back when it discovered the Internet. When asked which other products and services Microsoft would host, another Microsoft insider said, 'Everything. Hosted Office. Everything hosted.'"
Is it me or has Microsoft become highly reactionary? Google says they are going to start hosting things like databases and office applications on the web and *bam* suddenly Microsoft says the same thing. Mac OS uses the graphics processor and OpenGL to provide dazzling desktop effects and *bam* suddenly Microsoft says their next version of Windows will have the same thing. I'm sure there are probably many other examples. Can Microsoft not come up with useful new technologies on their own? Are they brain-dead followers blantanly copying everybody else's ideas?
Ouch! The truth hurts!
But then, we partners cant say "Hey, if we host you, we'll knock off 30% on that Open Licence Agreement". Thank you, Microsoft. If for anything, just for tossing a big FUD ball into the pool.
...with Hotmail and Groove (you can buy Groove services from them, rather than run your own servers). However, this does sound a little too much like its justified by "well, Google is doing it!", which isn't exactly true. Running hosted services is a difficult proposition, unless you can either quickly crank out SLAs or its all zero-admin. Its not something they've really done before, but I suppose it worth a try, since it will give them lots of experience in improving their admin interfaces for Windows Server 2k* as well as learning first hand the risks caused by the security holes in their products.
FINALLY
Its going to see how many companies keep hosting on Microsoft products. Do they really want to use their competitors product ? Especially a take no prisoners competitor like Microsoft ?
The situation should be comparable to when pepsi decided to get into the restaurant business and handed coke a great marketing tool. And it now seems, that the only fast food places that serve pepsi are owned by pepsico.
It seems as though MS is trying everything they can to enter new markets to make up for their lack of growth options with the OS and Office markets. From the sounds of it, they are going to try and proprietarize this venture and I dont see what the advantage would be for most customers. I can see small companies with 100% outsourced IT possible trying this, but not too much else.
Anyway, to sum up, this looks like another example of MS entering a market too late to make much impact. Just my 2cents.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
From what I hear, a lot of depts have trouble implementing these Sharepoint solutions and other things. If you could get actual Microsoft people to run these solutions for you, I think it would save people a lot of headaches.
Isn't this what a lot of other companies like IBM are doing anyway? "Heres your software. What you don't want to run it yourself? Thats fine, we've got this nice shiny datacenter here, we'll take care of it for you!"
Anyone else read that as everything hosed?
"Ozzie, the former chairman of Groove Networks, has been charged with leading Microsoft in this area." If only that was a criminal charge.
Elsewhere: "How much competitive advantage does e-mail give any company? Wouldn't those internal IT resources be better deployed elsewhere?" said one Microsoft source, who asked not to be named.
You mean, you won't need to buy email server software and support from MS?
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
When asked which other products and services Microsoft would host, another Microsoft insider said, 'Everything. Hosted Office. Everything hosted.
But isn't that insider a newly hired, "lower-level business person" who did not understand the company's obligations ?
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
From the MS POV, it is very difficult to pirate a hosted app and makes it easier to enforce EULA clauses along the lines of You may not use the Software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, or their products or services (FrontPage 2002).
Personally, I don't think that the company that allows "low level" employees to announce company-wide projects that violate anti-trust agreements without review by upper management can be trusted with confidential and sensitive documents that I create. But that's just me.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
Of course if MS can provide Hosted Windows then Google could provide hosted whatever (GLinux?) and things would get interesting.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
They get warm to it, then it goes cold for a while. Then they warm up again.
The reason? Some new exec ( I'm guessing ) dreams up a way of sustainable yearly revenue, only to find that people's network connections aren't good enough yet. Sure, in the redmond area I'm guessing their inet connections are as solid as t1s, but the rest of the country is severely lacking in even enough bandwidth to pull this off, nevermind the reliability of the line.
This is an idea before it's time, and quite frankly, the implementation would appear to leave much to be desired. Not only that, but are still a ton of security considerations to take into account.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
If they don't pay attention and become competitor in the "normal" hosting business, Windows by hosters could share the same fate as OS/2 on PCs: Companies don't like to put competitor's products on their products.
I like the idea of hosted apps alot. I like it most for small (1 employee) to medium size enterprises (250 employees). Now that Fiber to the Businesses start to get some steam it is a logical step. If you're running a small to medium size company like a law firm, consultancy, factory, shop etc. the IT department is not the core of the business if it exists at all. Where it exists it only comprises up to 10 percent of the workforce which means too small an amount of people to actually have a clue of all the different branches of IT. (How many people do you know that have in depth knowledge of CRM, ERP, security, internet applications, databases, hardware, switches, archiving etc etc. You do know such a person? a SME can't afford her) So if you need several of these apps, you're in serious staffing trouble.
Outsourcing seems the way to go. Let a knowledgeable company or group of companies run and maintain your apps for you. However, who would you trust to do that? For general programs like Office, probably Microsoft or Google would be a good choice as any. For specialised/customized programs, like CRM and ERP, I would go for a 'local' guy that is approachable. I would most definitely not opt for a company that is as huge as Microsoft to run my customized programs, because I'll end up in Helpdesk HELL.
In my ideal world I would go to a company that offered me a subscription like model to a whole range of desktop apps (photoshop, acrobat, office, visio etc etc) and a company that runs my serverside apps and specialized apps) It could save alot of money on IT-people and specialized rooms etc. (And probably get me into trouble some other way)
Use Adsense for Charity
I imagine their EULA for the hosted stuff would be just like their Hotmail one in that the user completely indemnifies them if they lose all the user's files like what happened to some Hotmail users a while back. Mmm... One of the biggest arguments they use against GPL/OSS is that there is no one to hold accountable for it if something goes wrong-What's the difference here? Oh, you are paying for someone to not be accountable.
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This is exactly how MS operates. If you actually pay attention from initial product announcement, through Alpha, Beta, RC, and Final, the backtracking is simply incredible. If you look at what MS first promises and then what they end up delivering it's a fair assessment to say that every OS and many products they have released are total failures based on what they were really supposed to be able to do. They promise the world and then upon Final delivery have a product that doesn't accomplish 75% of what you were initially promised. They hype up the next release as the be all end all, and then quietly yank feature after feature from the real release. I don't know of any company that is as bad as MS at announcing vaporware year after year after year. I also don't know any company that is as good as MS at pulling the wool over everyone's eyes year after year after year. Never mind that the products are usually buggy for several product revisions. Hell with 2000 out of the box you had to wait for hotfixes to even get features that were "officially" in the product when you bought it.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch