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Microsoft does not rain clouds on small businesses – a comprehensive assessment of online services Microsoft

Microsoft will SAASy

Flashback

Used to be the undisputed leader in the early days of information technology, Microsoft has never been easier since the advent of the Internet. Whatever the hot new Internet technology, Microsoft has never taken by surprise. It has never been the innovator and continues to lag behind in terms of success. Google is broke and looking online advertising, to Yahoo instant messaging and e-consumers, Blogger, WordPress and Typepad are much better at blogging software, it has never appeared on the battlefield networks MySpace and Facebook social decision perch.

But there were some markets, especially markets business, where Microsoft has continued to have a strangle hold of, which has kept its cash registers jingle, and a furious pace to the. They were the market PC with Windows OS series, MS Office Office suites, and cows Prize – MS Exchange and MS Sharepoint enterprise messaging and collaboration.

Now, the above software are essential for any company, and 5-10 years ago, Microsoft has undoubtedly offer the solutions most reliable available. In those days, since everyone was eyeing the lucrative large enterprise segment, with their thousands of users and IT budgets full implementations crowded, it was for the public of these software packages have been developed. Thus, even if Exchange and Sharepoint servers need dedicated implementations and complex dedicated to man and maintain the system, nobody really mind, because these mega companies had money and personnel to spare.

Present

But there was a segment in mind, the company small and medium sized (SMEs), the segment that had neither the staff nor the resources nor the desire. Since not many alternatives are available, they had to carry the load, or without these technologies altogether. But recently, things began to change. Over the past 3 years a new approach has emerged, driven by improved technology and increased bandwidth – the software as a service approach. And its market Primary is the small segment of the business enterprises.

In a recent survey by Cutter Consortium SaaS, nearly three quarters (72%) of those who responded said they use Web-based solutions to meet unmet needs. More than quarter of respondents (28%) hope that these solutions to reduce their costs by 20% -30%.

It is true that there was some initial skepticism first on the viability of SaaS, as it involves letting go and allowing some control of the organization's critical data based on a third party provider SAAS servers. But the benefits of this approach have been so overwhelming, and due to providers like salesforce.com and HyperOffice SAAS effectively deliver solutions over the years, as organizations across the board, companies from small to very large, have been converted.

Microsoft plays catch

With the enterprise market saturated, Microsoft has also been looking small and relatively untapped market of midsize businesses in recent years. Given the success of Saas with this segment, Microsoft has put in place offers a series of software offered as a service, recently, under the banner of Microsoft Office Live. But the real success with this segment was "hosted Exchange" and "hosted Sharepoint" solutions offered by independent suppliers, many certified of them from Microsoft partners. First, a little refresher:

What is hosted Exchange (and how it differs Exchange Server)?

Every company needs dedicated business email to its employees, and some basic productivity solutions to lubricate daily work (task management, calendars, address books). To meet these universal needs, developed with Microsoft Exchange Server the main features consist of electronic mail, calendar, contacts and tasks. The front end client for Exchange that allows all employees access This information is usually Outlook, Exchange, but also supports mobile access and Web-based (called Outlook Web Access or OWA for short). But the implementation of Exchange is not easy, because it includes the establishment of a dedicated server, to undertake a complex implementation exchange, plus additional anti-spam and anti virus implementations for the secure server. In addition, dedicated staff must be hired to monitor the system and operate and manage a multitude of complexities that may arise, because Exchange is a very large solution.

Under Exchange hosted However, all aspects of the implementation and application maintenance are outsourced Exchange servers on a specialist "hosted services" provider. Customers always get the best features of Microsoft Exchange – email dedicated shared calendars / contacts / tasks, and premium features such as mobile and Internet access to information (usually a additional cost). But unlike an implementation house, where everyone has access to Exchange on the LAN, in this case, it is accessed Internet. This approach is particularly beneficial for small and medium enterprises which are registered the enormous costs of implementation in the home but have to pay a reasonable monthly subscription.

What is hosted Sharepoint (how it differs from SharePoint Server)?

Apart from basic messaging functions, companies also need the ability to manage the business information stored in documents and the ability of employees to work together on this information. It is SharePoint, collaboration based on Microsoft's browser and the platform document management does. It can be used to host a website and create a company that includes shared workspaces and documents, as well as specialized applications such as making lists, discussion forums, wikis and blogs. But the power of SharePoint is coupled to its complexity. This implementation is no less complex and more expensive to Exchange. In addition, there is no end user friendly. experts can not directly share their knowledge, they must always go through it, or intermediaries, or specialized training that consumes time and distracts attention skills. Knowledge is not dispersed freely throughout the organization, but it is stifled by having to go through the neck bottleneck information.

As with Hosted Exchange, Sharepoint allowed in all aspects of implementation of Sharepoint business and management are entrusted to outside suppliers. Customers can still access all the features of SharePoint on the Internet, but for a reasonable monthly fee.

Microsoft takes the Big Plunge Services

Until the market has not been allowed important, Microsoft has been content to sell Exchange and Sharepoint as software products, and let its partners and suppliers do independent accommodation. But given the burgeoning SaaS market lately, and its future prospects, coupled with strong competition from "alternative" collaboration and messaging offerings like Google Apps, Gmail and HyperOffice, MS, and in October 2007, Microsoft has finally made the move when he announced hosted Exchange and Sharepoint companies with more than 5,000 seats – called Exchange Online and SharePoint Online. In February 2008, he went further in opening its services to all organizations, regardless of their size.

The Current News – "Microsoft Hosted Service Bundles"

According to its rapid movement in recent years, on July 8, 2008, Microsoft has made another announcement, the introduction of a novel, if it is not controversial strategy. In addition to its hosted services into single offering, he announced that beginning in 2009, it would also offer that "lots", a combination of services at a reduced cost total.

Microsoft has set up two "packets" called the Deskless Suite workers and workers of private information. The following Deskless worker is priced at only $ 3 per user per month and includes the exchange of online services as well as read-only access to SharePoint Online service. This is supposed to be targeted at workers who generally spend a very small part of their day at the computer. The following information workers is priced at $ 15 per user per month and includes a wide range of offers, including Exchange Online, Share Online and Live Meeting, Microsoft's software Web Conferencing.

Assessment

Great Solution?

At first glance, it seems that Microsoft has released a great offer. All the best range of Microsoft business applications race, united in one, a very affordable price per month. Exchange Online for email, calendars, address books, task management and access on the Web and mobile Sharepoint online collaboration and personalized portals for the teams and partners, and LiveMeeting conduct audio and video conferencing with several participants, regardless of where they are. All available to customers in a single offering, an amount very soon reach 15.

A good opportunity to validate the parties – as in they have the right idea messagin, project collaboration, document management, sharing of Outlook, a couple of meetings with Online.

ThinkAgain

Every time something seems so perfect, it still makes sense to set up guards, and watch closer. The first sentence is again – "together in one" or "all in one." Does this mean that all the great Microsoft offerings have been integrated into a single, homogeneous, with all aspects of communicating with each other? Or does it mean something else.

Well, that's another thing. While a longer refers to "all in one price." The services remain exactly as they were, only They cost less when purchased together. Individually, Microsoft hosted Exchange Online sells for $ 10; SharePoint Online for $ 7.25; Office Communications Online for $ 2.50, and Office Live Meeting Online for $ 4.50. Thus, a joint pricing of $ 15 represents a saving of $ 9.50 per user per month.

In addition, even the different components of Microsoft's new offerings are bare bones solution, which requires the implementation and configuration, before a viable solution is implemented. It is the effort the smaller midsize companies are not equipped to do, they do not want to do. Although The prize packages from Microsoft can be very tempting, a major reason companies move to "hosted service" providers in the first place is that, in addition to their hosting also offer Managed Services. All aspects of configuration, integration and maintenance are their worries. If all the components – Exchange, SharePoint, LiveMeeting and Office Communications; must be integrated into a simple and uniform, which will require the implementation mass.

Thus, although Microsoft offers seems attractive from afar, there is little end to end, ready to use business solution really looking for. Microsoft offers all the pieces, but they remain separate parts that go together. Even the price of miserable workers following Deskless has attracted much criticism. The verdict was that he was addressing an imaginary class of workers who only needs access read-only information from the company. Although real-life workers in this industry do not have access to information systems the company as they often interact with the system critically. An example is a nurse who may need to keep stocks of medicines the updated hospital.

Hosted Services Provider Perspective

With Microsoft jumping into the fray, and at very competitive prices to the traditional suppliers (Microsoft Solution Providers) Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint hosting is certainly feel the heat. Setting up Microsoft infrastructure on their servers, and then sell it to a service offered them a source of stable and permanent. But Microsoft offering such services will certainly cut directly into their pockets as they can hardly hope to compete with the price of Microsoft.

Microsoft is well aware the latest announcement pinched hosted partners disservice, and do not intend to cut the picture completely, it was another ad designed to maintain their interest. Partners can resell Microsoft offers new services and hosted pocket a percentage of revenue. The partners will receive 12 percent per user per month, for a contract before the first year and 6 per cent per user per month subscription fee underway. Thus, in the first year, resellers of hosted services will receive 18 percent margins on the subscription amount, and 6 percent for subsequent years. But despite this core, the partners are still smarting because resale of Microsoft will not be nearly as profitable as to remove implementations premise.

Some vendors are worried that Microsoft puts them in the way of feast or famine to try to find the next project to generate consulting revenues instead of recurring revenues associated with hosting and SharePoint servers running Exhange.

There Hope

While hosted service providers who provide hosted Microsoft bare bones will feel the competition of new offerings Microsoft, but there are just suppliers who do. An essential part of what these companies do has always been a value added offering integration, consulting and management services on top of the base they host Microsoft products for their customers. And this need for integration, management and Consultation is because Microsoft will only offer basic hosting its products, while end users need ready products without the hassle of implementing and managing demand.

Thus, these companies may continue to do what they have done throughout and attract more customers – host Exchange and SharePoint on their servers, and build solutions on top of it and to offer its customers services. Alternatively they can resell Microsoft hosted services by adding value added services on top of that, and attract a surcharge. Example could be providing support for email on the iPhone and Blackberry that stripped hosted Exchange does not work. Or a company capable of integrating all components of the bundle of Microsoft – Sharepoint, Exchange, LiveMeeting and Communications Office, in a simple and uniform with a centralized console.

The Search for Truth "complete" solutions

Although with this announcement, Microsoft did not completely is to offer what appeared to provide the need that has sought to address is still very relevant. Need a true end to end, integrated messaging, collaboration and web conferencing solution, with each component connection seamlessly across and communicate with other components. Solutions that require no hardware, downloads or maintenance and are ready employment from day one. Solutions that come at a very affordable monthly subscription.

So, customers must wait until the end for a couple years before anyone else had this challenge? The answer is a resounding "definitely not!". Although Microsoft may believe that was the first to answer this pressing need (not that it really did meet the need), it was for the precise reason for the pressure of competing products that Microsoft "supplied accommodation" plunge. Google to offer credible alternatives to many Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint with Google Apps, Google Pages, Gmail and all. But even the star products of Google are fragmentary, and it did not arrive until a truly integrated end to end solution. In addition, he has no web conferencing solution for all, which is crucial in a solution completely full.

But there is another category of solution providers, which may not be as big as Google and Microsoft, or get that kind of time Antenna busy, but they have proposed solutions for years very convincing small and medium size companies. Many of these solutions would put to shame the biggies, and are in intimate contact with the real needs of small medium enterprises segment. To present my case, I will discuss the HyperOffice Web application. HyperOffice has been exploited in the exchange "and SharePoint Alternative" field for years, and they built their background solution in place, based on experience. It would be wrong to say that they have done for years that Microsoft has promised to do earlier, and did not even do that.

Now, to evaluate HyperOffice on the basis of the parameters we have defined for a truly end end solution.

Exchange Features

HyperOffice includes e-mail company, shared management contacts, shared calendars and shared management tasks. It also includes integrating Outlook and can be used to power Outlook accounts of your employees if Exchange were running in the background, but only that its not. Users can access their accounts on their computers using Outlook or online using any browser Mac or PC and all information is automatically kept in sync. In addition, users can also access and sync their accounts from mobile devices like the iPhone, Blackberry, etc.

Features SharePoint

As an alternative to Sharepoint, HyperOffice includes a tool for the editor that can be used to establish dedicated intranet and extranet spaces for employees, departments, partners or customers. The editor allows you to customize thoroughly workspaces according to the needs of users. Users can manage fine appearance, layout, pages, the interconnection of these workspaces. In addition, they can choose from a range of collaboration tools add to each workspace – document management, calendars, address books, task lists, task management, forums, chat, polls, etc.

HyperOffice also includes an online tool for managing rich documents. It allows the storage Easy Online and organization of all file types and allows people to collaborate on documents using features such as versioning, notifications, blocking, protection against crushing, etc.

Web Conferencing

According to rising prices and increased Travel businesses to remain open to Web conferencing as a mode of communication, HyperOffice recently introduced HyperMeeting, its web conferencing tool. There is as robust as any web conferencing solution, with the ability to conference with up to 125 participants, distribution of files, presentations, application and desktop sharing, whiteboard, etc.

Integratedness

The best thing about a solution like HyperOffice is that all pieces fit perfectly to the whole. This makes sense because even in a company, all parties are always interacting with each other, and so it must be with a collaborative solution. Consider the following scenario – A conference on the Web must be established. As it is a meeting invite should be sent to all participants. Thus, an automatic tool of invitation will be involved. Tool invitation needed to talk to address books so that recipients are selected right. In addition, to ensure that participants did not strike schedules, timetables should be compared. Before the meeting started some documents may be required to distribute to participants, and has collaborated at. Thus, the document management tool would be involved. The conference may be related to a milestone in a project. Thus, the management tool project would cause. This is just a situation in which we can explore different parts of the system having to interact with each other; there may be a myriad of other situations. The synergies that will be had in such a system are enormous.

With HyperOffice, different elements system to meet simply, logically and efficiently. No wonder he was nominated for several awards in the "design" category. The solution allows users to create workspaces for people with tools such as email, personal documents libraries, books addresses, calendars, lists, links, reminders etc. workspaces second level can be set up for groups like the management documents and collaboration, shared calendars, shared address books, group tasks, Web conferencing, forums, polls, chat, etc. It an excellent example of the meeting messaging, collaboration and web conferencing.

In addition, HyperOffice includes a host of other features which can only come after years of experience working with clients. It is the ability to integrate the solution with Outlook, access Mobile devices like the iPhone and Blackberry, and the ability to manage documents and drag and drop upload documents directly from office.

Another important aspect of an administrative standpoint, is the ability to manage everything from a central console. All aspects of collaboration are contained in HyperOffice and users do not have to look in different directions and discover a multitude of software for different uses.

Tailored to SMEs

Big names such as Microsoft and Google still the eye of big customers the range of about 5,000 seats due to the press to obtain profits from these customers. Thus, products and services around these products take shape with this segment in mind. Small businesses like HyperOffice, but have been developed specifically for small businesses of medium size segment, and refined through years of experience. The burden of proof on the development of products ready for use with push button "easy" functionality.

HyperOffice just need a list and can be put in place almost instantly. It is a tool user Finally, as everyone can get around the system and publish information or use tools. No technical expertise is necessary to implement or use. In addition, they also offer free training and support services help businesses en route. If a customer chooses, they can easily reduce the solution, and choose a subset of tools available according to his needs and comfort level, rather than any more.

Conclusion

In conclusion, although Microsoft has opened its hosted solutions to all, they are still appropriate for organizations that are large enough if it is not great. Sellers can also sell bundles of Microsoft by launching the integration and management, but then they ask for a surcharge and the price tags will not stay down. Frankly, even in their hosted avatar, Microsoft tools are not yet suitable for small businesses because they were never developed for this segment, and the effect will always try to squeeze a large foot in a shoe small size.

Clearly, the lesson for organizations more and more is that even if Microsoft and other big names have got a bit late on the small "for midsize businesses" bandwagon, you must cut through the hype, and look in all directions for the best solution. And most often, the most compelling solutions will come from elsewhere.

About the Author

The author has 5 years experience working with web based technologies. His expertise lies especially in collaboration applications for the SMB segment.

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