Comments on: Open-Xchange: Disrupting Hosted Microsoft Exchange?

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:00:08 +0000

Sekar: I have been highly critical of Microsoft in certain areas, particularly the botched Windows Vista strategy and launch. But on the point of SaaS, I fully agree with you.

Microsoft has been extremely loyal to partners and the channel for more than two decades. Now, Microsoft — like everyone else — must somehow balance SaaS with channel partnerships. I think Microsoft will make numerous mistakes with its SaaS strategy over the next two years.

That isn’t a criticism of Microsoft. Instead, I think the mistakes will occur because Microsoft and everyone else is in uncharted territory. So, Microsoft and its partners will feel some pain because of trial and error. But Microsoft remains committed to partners, OEMs and ISVs. Eventually, the company’s SaaS strategy will catch on because the company has soooo many applications and soooo many partners.

It won’t be an easy transition. But I do think Microsoft will find its way.

By: Sekar Vembu

Sekar Vembu — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 05:02:49 +0000

I disagree with the view that just because Microsoft directly sells hosted applications to customers, the partners will look for alternatives. This may be true for pure resellers. But the way IT has emerged during the internet era is that there is less and less room for pure resellers who just push products without any associated support or services. That is the reason many VARs are transitioning to managed service providers where they use their proximity to and relationships with their customers and offer full IT solutions rather than merely pushing products. So as MSPs, they make their margins on support and services rather than the product. That would mean MSPs will choose the best product or solution that will get the job done for them in the most efficient manner. It really does not matter how the IT solution is delivered to their end customers. If they find that if it is more efficient to host an open source product themselves and deliver a service they would do that. And if they find that using Microsoft’s or any other vendor’s hosted applications for delivering services is more efficient they would go with that. It is all driven by economics of delivering the service. Depending upon the scale required different solution will fit different MSPs. For some it is best to use a vendor’s hosted offering, for some it is best to license a vendor’s product (open source or otherwise) and host it themselves and offer the service.

There is no point blaming Microsoft to provide all these options to partners. That is the essence of their software plus services strategy. MSPs will choose based on what works best and what is most efficient for them in terms of delivering a service to customers at the lowest cost for them. And the good thing is that there is room for many vendors to compete with Microsoft to capture MSPs’ attention. I believe the old age phenomenon of vendor-channel conflict is an obsolete concept in this new age phenomenon of MSP driven IT services delivery.

Sekar
Vembu Technologies

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:01:41 +0000

Kent: Are you a Microsoft partner? Curious to know why you dislike Microsoft’s SaaS strategy so much. Thanks for reading MSPmentor.

By: Kent

Kent — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:48:00 +0000

I don’t know anything about open source but microsoft’s decision to sell hosted applications directly to customers will inspire more and more partners to evaluate alternative paths. Whether it’s open source or closed (Lotus Notes), Microsoft opened the door to more competition in the SaaS world because of its sales tactics and confusing agent sales programs.