Microsoft's Hosted Business Application Push, Should Exchange, SharePoint Hosts Worry?
- By Mathew Baldwin on February 22, 2007
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FacebookAn article on ZDNet posted this morning discloses some more information about Microsoft's possible future plans for hosted business-class services. It seems that Ballmer mentioned that Hosted Exchange, Hosted SharePoint, and Hosted OfficeCommunication Server are on the road-map, but that there is no clear timeline and that they would be testing with three to four customers.
From a hosting company's perspective, what does this mean? At the moment, not much, only that we might see some more competition and that there is still some uncertainty of what direction Microsoft will take; however, the fact that Microsoft will be focusing on large account customers seems to indicate that the customer-base that most hosts focus on is different than where Microsoft's focus would be. We focus on SMB, while MS focuses on the large, fortune 500 customers.
The best way to compete with Microsoft on this front is to offer differentiating features. For Hosted Exchange, this might be Good and BlackBerry services, a lower cost achiving service, a better anti-virus/anti-spam service; For SharePoint, this could be partnering with SharePoint ISVs to create add-on templates or services to the base Microsoft SharePoint stack. This also might be a good time for hosts to examine alternatives to Exchange, such as Zimbra which, according to TechCrunch, has around 6 million paid mailbox subscribers.
One thing that I can't help but remember is the amount of fear hosting companies have had with having Microsoft walk through their door. The announcement from Ballmer will most likely make the job of the Hosting Evangelists, those people responsible for convincing mostly Linux pure play hosts to launch Microsoft products, much harder.
And finally, what does the announcement of Google launching Google Apps Premier mean for Microsoft and the rest of the hosting community?
Mathew Baldwin has been working within the hosted services space for the last ten years. In the past he has held roles as architect, senior systems engineer and regular troubleshooter, consultant for Microsoft-based platforms with multiple hosted services companies. He was instrumental in bringing t... (Read full bio)
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Comment by Anonymous on Monday, February 26, 2007
Regarding this statement:
"For SharePoint, this could be partnering with SharePoint ISVs to create add-on templates or services to the base Microsoft SharePoint stack."
I couldn't agree more. Incumbent providers, especially broadband providers who are providing all of the underlying network infrastructure for Hosted Apps as a free lunch, need to look at moving up the stack. Innovation on SharePoint capitalizes on all the power of the Microsoft platform (like Office integration, mobility features, etc.).
For some real life examples:
For SMBLive (http://www.smblive.com) is an example of a SharePoint-based ISV specifically built for distribution via the incumbent broadband providers.
TELUS ePoint (http://www.telus.com/ePoint), BT Workspace (http://www.btworkspace.com) and BT Tradespace (http://www.bttradespace.com) are in-market examples of what's possible for an incumbent provider to build on SharePoint.
Comment by Anonymous on Wednesday, February 28, 2007
You may want to take a look at the buzz surrounding Open-Xchange. Recently announced a signed partnership with 1&1 Inrernet, as part of Open-Xchange's SaaS strategy to provide ISPs and web-hosting companies email and collaboration functionality to serve the SME market space.
Comment by Anonymous on Monday, March 05, 2007
Hi Tatiana:
I'm not completely sold on Open-Xchange. What I think will be interesting is to watch how the competition between Hosted Zimbra and Hosted Open-Xchange plays out. Right now, Zimbra has that young, exciting feel to it, while Open-Xchange seems to simply be a copy/replacement for Exchange. I would be interested in diving into it in more detail and exploring both in some capacity. It has been awhile since I last looked at Open-Xchange.
Hmm... maybe there should be a bake-off between the two. ;)
-matt
Comment by Anonymous on Monday, September 17, 2007
Here's a comparison table of Google Apps vs. Zimbra hosting: http://faqs.01.com/#33
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