This morning during the keynote at the Microsoft Partner Conference in Houston, Texas, head of the business division Stephen Elop announced a new program and suite of hosted online services. The new service offerings include hosted Exchange, Sharepoint, Communication Server and Dynamics CRM - all hosted by Microsoft as part of the new online services platform. The new offerings compete directly with existing partners that offer hosted exchange and sharepoint, as well as the free offerings from Google and others.
The simple ‘deskless suite’ plan starts at $3 per user per month, and includes web-based access to an Exchange mailbox through Outlook Web Access Lite along with read-only Sharepoint access. At the full service plan, which starts at $15 per month - consists of full featured hosted versions of Exchange, Sharepoint, Communication Server, live meeting and more. The capabilities of the standard service plan at $15 per user per month are similar to those of the standard editions of each of these applications.
The full service suite thus costs $180 per user per annum, and includes a gigayte of storage which can be expanded at a cost of 35 cents per gigabye per month. The different components that make up the suite can be added and removed, so for instance without the communication server it is $3.50 per user per month cheaper - and pricing can be further customized on an implementation basis.
Microsoft offering hosted services competes directly with some of their largest partners and revenue providers - so the partner conference was used as the venue to also announce the affiliate and partner program as part of the online platform. Partners who refer customers to the online services platform will earn a 12% commission on the first year of revenues, and from then on a 6% commission on all revenues from that customer. At 12% of $180 per year, it is more than a partner earns on the resale of a standard CAL for Exchange and Sharepoint, so the hope that with a solid revenue sharing model partners will drive growth in adoption of the new online model.
There have already been a number of large-scale customers who have switched over from either competing products, or from old self-hosted Exchange onto the new hosted platform. Companies already running large-scale instances on Microsoft Online include Nokia (who migrated from Notes), Coca Cola, Blockbuster, Energizer and many more. Microsoft have been pushing the online hosted platform and a large number of their larger integration partners are also already working with moving their customers onto the platform as part of the new partner model.
The partner model for the online services platform seems just as, if not more, appealing than existing partnership agreements with software licensing. With an easy-to-use admin interface, and direct integration between hosted active directory and local active directory, rolling out and migrating to the hosted platform is easy. Organizations are able to take single divisions or departments, or just a few mailboxes, and try moving them to the online platform without having to conduct a large-scale migration.
With online services Microsoft are looking to put a stop to the leak of companies heading towards the Google App solution suite. Exchange and Sharepoint are products that operate at a whole different level to the Google online tools, and Microsoft are hoping that a combination of their reputation in the space, their existing market penetration and an easy to use online suite will see them prevail in the market as it shifts to becoming hosted and online.
[...] have this morning announced the availability of hosted Exchange, Sharepoint, collaboration and communication as part of the [...]
So do we know if this service will be web platform agnostic? It seems like they have a compelling offering for many small businesses, etc. but if full functionality is restricted to I.E., they’ll continue to shoot themselves in the foot.
[...] has announced this morning the availability of hosted Exchange, Sharepoint, collaboration and communication as part of the [...]
Although going SaaS is always a smart thing to do if you ask me, Microsoft keeps doing thing the wrong way. The right thing for them would have been to offer SaaS exchange and open it up to developers through an API that will let them extend exchange to places the smart people in Redmond can’t even imagine.
Also, As you mentioned, Exchange is very strong in the enterprise, but I am still not convinced that the largest companies in the world are ready to have all their emails sitting in the cloud. Imagine being able to intercept the Coca-Cola secret ingredient because one of the engineers forgot that this is a hosted application and you REALLY have to pay attention to security issues… But we shouldn’t worry about that, should we??
Nitin: yep - works across IE, FF, Windows, OS X etc. etc. its just the same apps but up in the cloud. The web interface is richer with IE, but it is still great in FF
@4. I asked them about API access to hosted objects or data containers, and so far its just Exchange itself. They hinted its heading that way (especially around Dynamics)
Re: post#2
The top of the product page here http://www.microsoft.com/online/ has a link for downloading SilverLight..
We are non profit organization and currently using third party POP email and looking out for low cost fully functional exchange 2007 provider. We have looked at one of the MS Gold partner name 123hosting and we have not signed up any contract yet but in the stage of making some decision on it.
Google Apps offers special prize and free offer to Non profit organization but we are looking for fully functional exchange 2007 along with shared calendar functionality or so and like to know of Microsoft has any special prize or free deal for Qualified Nonprofit organization. We are 5013c.
If not we like to know if there is any special prize with this news. We are about 25 users and we have received quote for about $300\month which is about $20 per user per month.
Your reply will be appreciated.
Thanks,
Nimit Shah
Are you sure you have your information correct? I read nearly everything on microsoft.com/online and couldn’t find this information.
ERP Guru - you’re right that many large companies are concerned about having their important corporate data - either in email or hosted on Sharepoint sites - up ‘in the cloud.’ The nice thing for MSFT is that they can offer their customers a choice - hosted or on-premises. Contrast that with Google… Also, Microsoft has been doing enterprise business for a long time. They have many many enterprise customers who trust them as a key business partner. My guess is that some companies may be willing to have Microsoft host their mail and Sharepoint sites but would be leery of Google given Google’s busieness model is all about data mining. Just speculation on my part.
@Mark: great point - the hosting / premsis mix here is very interesting in the way it works and the technology they have wrapped around it so that admin is easy. Not only that, but Exchange is just a much much better product, Google are probably 5% of the way there, if that
@Ashutosh: you can trial it now, but it is going live in Q4 of this year.
@Nimit: you are probably better off talking to one of the current providers and asking them about a charity discount
[...] マイクロソフトは本日（米国時間7/8）、Microsoft Onlineの一環として、ホスティング版のExchangeとシェアポイント、その他コラボレーションおよびコミュニケーションツールが利用できるようになったとアナウンスした。ホスティング版としての機能提供は、Googleのアプリケーションプラットフォームと直接に競合するものだ。Googleのアプリケーションプラットフォームは無料ないし最高でも年間50ドルで提供されている。 [...]
how good the product is will unfold only over the next few months as people test it and review it. this is certainly not new though, companies like http://www.hyperoffice.com have been offering the exact same set of services for years - exchange alternative + sharepoint alternative + web conferencing. their product i know works across Mac, Pc and mobile browsers.
[...] has announced this morning the availability of hosted Exchange, Sharepoint, collaboration and communication as part of the [...]
[...] has announced this morning the availability of hosted Exchange, Sharepoint, collaboration and communication as part of the [...]
[...] Microsoft Announces Hosted Exchange and Sharepoint Deals The new service offerings include hosted Exchange, Sharepoint, Communication Server and Dynamics CRM - all hosted by Microsoft as part of the new online services platform. The new offerings compete directly with existing partners that offer hosted exchang (Stichworte: microsoft) [...]
[...] has announced this morning the availability of hosted Exchange, Sharepoint, collaboration and communication as part of the [...]
[...] are out-sourcing a lot of your IT costs. That’s the pitch anyway. Last Month Microsoft announced hosted Exchange services. Microsoft also has LiveMesh . Microsoft is building huge server farms to support it’s cloud [...]