More background on the hosted solution announcement Microsoft did yesterday.
… Microsoft is taking yet another step toward its vision of a software-plus-services world. Beginning today, online hosting companies will be able to offer their customers features of Microsoft’s most recent on-premise collaboration and communication tools, SharePoint Services 3.0 and Exchange Server 2007.
The Redmond, Wash.-based software vendor said that, by updating its two hosting packages, Hosted Messaging and Collaboration (HMC) and Windows Based Hosting (WBH), it is helping software providers improve their offerings to small and medium sized businesses (SMBs).
According to Michael van Dijken, lead marketing manager for hosted solutions in Microsoft’s communications sector group, hosted services are becoming commoditized. “Service providers need to be able to differentiate themselves and deepen their relationships with customers,” he told internetnews.com. …
…Van Dijken said that HMC will be upgraded again in the fall to support Office Communications Server 2007, which is expected to ship this summer. …
So also Unified Communications from ’the cloud’. It shows that Hosted solutions are implicit in the design of Communication and Collaboration products at Microsoft.
… Ultimately, predicted DeMichillie, Microsoft will even begin offering service-based enhancements to their on-premise SharePoint customers. “That will give them two bites at the apple… that’s undeniably the direction they want to be going to.” …
Seems very logical and totally in line with Forrester’s poll on Web 2.0 Solutions amongst 119 CIOs : these services should come from incumbent vendors.
Source: Internetnews.com
SharePoint’s original design was as an intranet product. The same goes for Microsoft’s UC products. LCS was not implicitly designed with Saas in mind and I do not believe OCS was “implicitly designed” to be hosted as well. Office Communicator was (and remains) designed for intranet use. On-premises software often can be used in a SaaS manner but often there are subtle nuances that cause difficulties.
So I’m puzzled as to a claim that Microsoft designs products with a hosted model in mind. I would agree that they are moving in that direction but it is somewhat misleading to claim that SaaS is an implicit design assumption without some context.
It is also not true that “Web 2.0” services should defacto come from large vendors. Organizations need to take into account their business requirements and make technology decisions that support those requirements. In the case of Microsoft, the blog and wiki support is no where near as good as specialized vendors. There is no tagging/bookmarking support from Microsoft and no server-side solution for XML syndication.
So unless people want to ignore business requirements -or pick technologies that simply make the life of IT groups easier – they should consider best of breed vendors in certain situations.
http://mikeg.typepad.com/perceptions/2007/03/cios_spurn_web_.html
Mike,
You are correct in a number of point regarding ‘implicit’ designs. Partly this is my lack of better words.
What I meant is that Microsoft is working hard on hosted versions of the core communication and collaboration products as of Office System 2003. Especially SharePoint and Exchange are delivered through a lot of different hosting providers already as is LCS 2005 in some cases.
Also SaaS as part of that design principal is too early maybe. DOn’t consider my comments as forward looking statements anyway as I am not ‘in the knowledge’ with regards to actual design of future version.
What I expect however is that Microsoft will continue to take Web 2.0 design principals and hosting for that matter into account and very likely in a couple of years will come with great propositions and solution for integrating the existing Microsoft platform in organsiations with Saas solution from Partners / ISVs and maybe Microsoft itsself
With regards to the point whether or not Web2.0 solution should come from large verndors. Ofcourse not. This is also not what the Forrester research piece is claiming. The desire for string integration however is good business sence as is the fact that bneing able to source these solutions through these same vendors.
Microsoft does not provide best of breed blog / wiki solutions. This is also not the sweetspot Microsoft is aiming for. Being able to leverage blogs and wiki’s in the the collaboration context is the objective. I am not sure what you mean Microsoft does not support server-side solution for XML syndication. Syndicating SharePoint libraries, Bolgs, WIki’s etc. from a server perspective *is* in place.