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.'"

Comments

MS Reactionaries - the next big thing

[yancey]

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?

Re:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing

[Iriel]

has become? Has always been. I'm honestly not trolling, but Microsoft is not smart in the innovative sense as much as they are at keeping an eye out for a good thing. Say what you want about whether or not MS will rape and pillage that good thing for the almighty dollar, but when they see something work, they know how to exploit that with their marketing to be 'good enough' to come out on top. At least, more often than not. Another great example is that they just joined Yahoo! with the Open Content Alliance, now that almost everyone is poo-pooing Google Print.

Re:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing

[Foofoobar]

Over promise... under deliver, remember? This is the Microsoft way. It's not plan well and then have a well structured launch. First they make promises and then they work on delivering. It's been this way with almost every single one of their products. They see someone making alot of money making a product and say 'me too! me too!' and then make loads of promises and lots of hype and then when it's delivered, the product only has half the features they mentioned and doesn't work well at all until at LEAST the third version. Did I just describe every Microsoft product? OOps.

Nothing new here.

Way to shaft your partners, Microsoft!

[LibertineR]

Oh, this is great. I look forward to calls from all my hosting clients asking me about this. "Will Microsoft be cheaper?" "Will they help me design my web parts, since I am just too stupid to do it right myself?" Oh, its a beautiful thing.

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.

Do hosting companies have a survival instinct ?

[Crashmarik]

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.

Re:Do hosting companies have a survival instinct ?

[azaris]

I doubt Microsoft want to put their enterprise hosting partners out of business, after all they are paying bundles in license fees, training, certification etc. I have a hunch that Microsoft are having difficulties finding partners willing to host certain products in a large enough scale and they decided it's just easier to do it themselves. I certainly wouldn't want to host Navision or Exchange for any reasonably large number of users.

Saturated Market

[Karzz1]

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.

Everything hosted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else read that as everything hosed?

From the article

[Dekortage]

"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?

Which insider ?

[alexhs]

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 ?

Just another step

[keraneuology]

While the (theoretical) advantages are clearly there, I'm not convinced that this is the best move for small businesses. The big boys of Ford, GM, Lucent and EDS would all love to be able to have internal office hosting for thin client terminals that make it a piece of cake to deploy new desktops, but for small 10-15 user offices with expensive and relatively slow network connections there just isn't enough value in putting your entire productivity in the hands of Ameritech, Comcast or shudder Qwest. In my office if the network goes down it is terribly inconvenient but I can still compose replies to emails that stack up in my inbox, examine reports, and engage in many other productive activities. If a construction crew digs up a network cable, if the DNS goes flewkey on me or if another Paris Hilton prawn video comes out and everybody for miles around clog up the bandwidth then I'm left high and dry with nothing to do.

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.

How about "Hosted Windows"

[G4from128k]

As a Macintosh owner I have occasionally really needed Windows. I've spent money on various emulators (e.g., SoftWindows) and even bought a Pentium laptop at a garage sale for $35. But I never used these things as much as I thought -- only 3 or 4 times in the last 20 years. Hosted Windows for $4.99/day would be a good way to use Windows once every 5 years or so.

Of course if MS can provide Hosted Windows then Google could provide hosted whatever (GLinux?) and things would get interesting.

This has sort of been an on/off thing with MS

[grasshoppa]

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.

Re:Cool

[$RANDOMLUSER]

>IT folks who specialize in M$ products aren't the sharpest tools in the shed.

How can you say that? They've got certifications and everything ;-)

Hosted EULA...

[TheIndifferentiate]

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.

+555555555 Insightful

[bogie]

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.