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On Monday, Microsoft leaped into the software-as-a-service pool, or as they call it, “software plus services.” They announced two families of service offerings-Microsoft Live and Microsoft Online.

Under the Microsoft Live family, Office Live Workspace is a free, secure online workspace, which can store up to 1,000 online documents created with Microsoft Office tools-Word, Excel and PowerPoint-and, apparently in some cases, using text editors. Users can access these files from anywhere via a web connection. They also can share with others password-protected access to these documents for collaboration purposes. Guests without access to Office applications can browse stored documents and leave comments.

Microsoft Online is initially geared toward enterprises with over 5,000 seats and offers online versions of Exchange, SharePoint and Office Communications Server. Online is offered through Microsoft or as a hosted service by partners who will also provide value-added services.

Other announcements included Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live, and Exchange Labs, an R&D program for testing next-generation messaging and unified communications capabilities.

All of this comes just a little over a week after IBM announced the availability of free document preparation tools-text, spreadsheet and presentation-called Lotus Symphony (the IBM announcement is covered in UC eWeekly, Issue 38, “Lotus in the Sphere“). There also has been considerable speculation that Microsoft’s announcements were at least partially in response to Google’s Document and Spreadsheets offerings.

What’s interesting is that each of these offerings is consistent with other larger strategies being championed by these companies. Microsoft, in its software-plus-services strategy, seeks to combine what it perceives as the benefits of software running on client PCs and premise-based servers with the power of the services available anywhere in the Internet cloud. Microsoft is emphasizing the free workspace aspects of its offer and, not surprisingly, providing better functionality to users who continue to use Office tools. Moreover, these announcements show Microsoft’s interests in hopping onto the collaboration surfboard. At the same time, some of this announcement and approach certainly seem to be designed to counter both IBM’s and Google’s approaches.

IBM seems convinced that open source and open document format is a key issue. And so Lotus Symphony provides free tools based on what is available in Notes 8 and champions ODF. Google seems to want to migrate as much functionality into the cloud as possible, and so it offers free Internet-accessible applications software.

The announcements also differ in terms of when each will become available. IBM’s Lotus Symphony was available on the day it was announced. In contrast, Microsoft will now let you sign up at http://www.officelive.com to become part of a beta trial which will start sometime in the fourth quarter; general availability languishes until the first half of 2008.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that Microsoft was diving into this SaaS pool while holding its nose. Parts of the announcement made it seem that way-a little rushed, and inconsistencies surfaced in the details from various sources about capabilities and timing. On the other hand, maybe Microsoft senses that with fall coming and the waters getting cooler with each passing day, it needed to take the plunge.

What do you think? Contact me at dvandoren@unicommconsulting.com or post your comments here in the VoiceCon Unified Communications eWeekly forum.

Don Van Doren is Principal of UniComm Consulting, an independent UC consulting firm, and a co-founder of UCStrategies.com. Don is also President of Vanguard Communications. Contact Don at dvandoren@unicommconsulting.com.

Posted in Applications, Don Van Doren, Market Trends |

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