Microsoft Further Embraces Cloud Computing With Online SharePoint, Exchange
Microsoft's announcement that it would offer online versions of SharePoint and Exchange to all its customers further validates the industry's gravitation towards Web-based applications and cloud computing. But Microsoft insists the desktop will be a viable platform for a long time.
During the presentation, an executive from one such partner, called ThoughtBridge, talked about this shift and admitted it had weighed heavily on some employees.
"I was a little nervous at first," says Tim Tisdale, the company's chief technology officer. "We have guys who install SharePoint. Some of the skeptics said we won't be installing SharePoint anymore."
Assuming the amount of on-premise installs decreases during the coming years, ThoughtBridge (and organizations like it) will focus more in the coming years on customizing SharePoint and designing applications on top of it to meet their customers' specific business needs.
Mentioned briefly at the launch was the future of an online Microsoft Office, the package of productivity applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Repeating a late October announcement, Elop said Office Online won't be available until late 2009.
With Google launching Google Apps back in February 2007, such a launch date of an online Office will be more than two years late to market. CIO asked Elop why the company decided to wait so long.
"We want to make sure it's in line with what our customers expect," he says. "We're held to a certain standard. If one of our competitors issues a press release that says, 'hey we have bolding or underlinining now,' that for whatever reason gets a lot of press. With Office in a cloud environment, what [customers] expect is that the user experience hangs together [with the original Office]."
Elop, while he didn't mention the company by name, most likely meant Google. But for all the rhetoric of Microsoft's software plus services strategy and how it differs from that of Google and Salesforce.com, the message from Microsoft couldn't have been more clear.
"This is full on: we're embracing this," Elop says. "I believe all great companies, when those moments come of the next generation, have to make the really hard decisions and go for it, and make that big leap forward. So I'm sure years ago, people said the Web-browser will kill Microsoft. Well, Microsoft has done well over the last few years."
