Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff » TAG: Software as a Service

April 23, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft reaches for the cloud

TAGS: Software as a Service

At a press briefing Tuesday, Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner put some meat on the bones of Microsoft's "software plus services" strategy to deliver cloud computing capabilities to customers. Turner reviewed Microsoft's current on-demand offerings -- mainly Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, plus hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint -- but also revealed that major new announcements would follow at the Microsoft Partner Conference in early July.

When asked whether Microsoft plans to offer a development platform in the cloud, Turner grinned and said pointedly: "We are not announcing anything today." Given the strength of Microsoft's developer base, and the recent announcement of Google App Engine as a cloud-based development platform, Microsoft has every incentive to launch a hosted platform for developing Web applications as soon as possible.

[As Microsoft and other vendors reveal new services, the platform lock-in game moves to the cloud, thereby bringing an entirely new set of risks for customers. But there's a right way -- and a wrong way -- to plan for such lock-in.]

Much talk was devoted to which enterprise servers and applications would be offered on demand either by Microsoft or its partners. Turner put special emphasis on SharePoint, which as a collaboration tool is well suited to deployment in the cloud, and as a portal platform offers the potential to wrap enterprise, desktop, and Web apps into a unified user interface.

And what of desktop virtualization, where Microsoft could host entire desktop environments for customers? "Most large customers would give us their desktops today and say, 'you go ahead and manage them,'" said Turner, who acknowledged that Microsoft already has desktop virtualization pilot programs in place with a few select customers. At this point, he said, Microsoft is gathering feedback and "looking hard" at this area, with no timeframe for commercial availability. He agreed, though, that Microsoft's combination of desktop and Dynamics enterprise apps puts the company in a unique position to provide fully integrated application environments to customers via desktop virtualization.

Tim O'Brien, Senior Director of Microsoft Platforms, provided additional detail, noting that Microsoft is looking at on-demand versions of a whole range of software, including identity management. If Microsoft plans to go down that road again, what had it learned from the Hailstorm debacle years ago? "We should have offered customers a choice of where they wanted to put data about themselves, instead of trying to maintain all of it."

Choice is the Microsoft mantra when it comes to software plus services. If customers want locally installed software, Microsoft will provide it as it always has. If they want a customized, on-demand suite of applications hosted by a Microsoft partner, they should have that choice, too. And if they want software-as-a-service hosted by Microsoft, the company is rearchitecting Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communications Server, and other software for multitenancy.

For the latter purpose, Microsoft is creating its own massive datacenter facilities "you can see from space," says O'Brien -- in Texas, Illinois, Ireland, and other locations. At long last, Microsoft's commitment to on-demand computing seems very real. "If you're going to go in, you'd better get all in," O'Brien said.

Posted by Eric Knorr on April 23, 2008 05:57 AM

October 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft's services: More marketing than meat

TAGS: Collaboration, Microsoft, Software as a Service, Web 2.0

It’s official: Microsoft wants you to know it’s serious about this whole hosted software thing. Today they will articulate a long-overdue roadmap for "software plus services" -- a hybrid approach that embraces both old-school boxed software and the flavor-of-the-month hosted services model.

The announcement itself has the trappings of a big deal. In fact, it's more a case of rearranging the furniture and adding a light coat of paint. Specifically, all MS services will be divided into two distinct families: Live (for consumers and SMB) and Online (for enterprises and business that require high availability, scalability, security, etc.).

So we're mostly talking about a rebranding here. The services now designated as part of Online -- Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft Office SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Communications Online -- already exist elsewhere in the MS hierarchy. As before, they're available as conventional software on premises or as a software-as-a-service offering hosted either by Microsoft or a Microsoft partner.

The Live family announcement is made a bit more exciting because it includes a new product: Office Live Workspace, a personal storage and collaborative environment in the cloud. You can store anything for free, but document collaboration works only with Office documents. Preregistration starts today at the Office Live site.

The company also announced Exchange Labs, an R&D effort that will supply Exchange as a hosted service to universities and other large facilities that want to innovate around Exchange. And they're launching a new version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM (code name Titan) to a limited number of customers. In keeping with Microsoft's strategy, Titan can be run on premise or hosted. Significantly, the next-gen Dynamics CRM is multitenanted, an architectural approach that is essential for real, robust SaaS. Many other Microsoft service offerings don't support multitenancy.

For all the elements in this announcement, it's hard to generate much enthusiasm. Microsoft's big splash feels more like a little ripple -- a dutiful set of launches and marketing moves designed mostly to prove that MS "gets it." Plus, Microsoft's insistence on keeping one foot firmly planted in the boxed software world (remember, it's "software plus services") indicates their embrace of Web 2.0 is fairly tepid.

Still, if Microsoft was slow to grasp the importance of the Internet, they'd like to prove they aren't asleep at the switch when it comes to SaaS and Web 2.0. Office Live Workspace may be a key piece of the puzzle here, but Microsoft is undoubtedly late to the party. Google has been making hay with its hosted suite, and other competitors are springing up all over the place.

Don't forget, though, that Microsoft has a built in advantage: a massive installed base of MS Office. A wholesale move to hosted services would undercut that still lucrative business. Despite the Web 2.0 enthusiasts and cockeyed optimists who are penning obituaries for conventional, non-browser-based software, Office isn't in any danger of going away anytime soon. Software plus services is really a play to hold the line and maintain the status quo, even as it seems Microsoft is embracing the newest software models. Smart, very smart.

Posted by Steve Fox on October 1, 2007 12:01 AM