Microsoft has announced its first cloud offering, Microsoft Office 365, a “productivity suite.” This is a good thing for more than just Microsoft. As well-known organizations such as Microsoft or IBM make related announcements, everyone benefits. It reminds me of a friend who owns a few local coffee shops. He says his favorite thing to see is Starbucks coming to the neighborhood. His business always goes up because seeing Starbucks makes people automatically think of having a cup of coffee, but not everyone likes Starbucks, so they go to his locally-owned and branded coffee shop instead.
Similarly, when well-known, mainstream companies announce they will have a cloud offering, they are making it a legitimate option. The reality is if they only go as far as an announcement and actually do very little, to mainstream consumers and conservative enterprises the fact that they made the announcement means it must be important.
What’s interesting about Microsoft’s announcement are some of the real reasons behind it. We can all see that Microsoft is late to the party and is only offering a cloud-based version of its previous offerings. It is at best mostly a cloud version of Microsoft Office. At worst, this is a desperate “me too” attempt to combat decreasing sales.
This was also the right move for Microsoft. It will cost around $72USD annually for individual users and is likely to attract people less technically savvy who are used to paying for basic word processing software. In other words, Microsoft is likely to carry many of its current customers as they begin to look for a cloud-based solution. They won’t care about paying a starting price of $72 because they are getting the Microsoft name. I find it more than a little hard to believe that Microsoft will pick up a significant amount of Lync’s users as Kurt DelBene, president of Microsoft’s Office division, claims. The kindest thing I could say is that I believe he is mistaken. Someone with a little less tact may say he’s delusional.
The wild card in Office 365 is the integration of Skype. If Office 365 happens to be the only way to access Skype - I haven’t seen a clear answer on this – it could drive more adoption than would otherwise have come. At the same time, it could drive Skype users into the open and waiting arms of other options such as Google Talk.
Either way, I thoroughly welcome Office 365 into the marketplace, even if I never use it. In the end, it will be good for all of us in the larger cloud marketplace.
