Microsoft Finally Wakes up to the SMB Call – Lets See How it Goes

Monday, 07 April 2008 16:09

Microsoft finally took a full blooded step into the hosted services arena - Exchange & Sharepoint are finally available as hosted services to small and mid sized businesses. Called Exchange Online and Sharepoint Online, these offering were earlier available only to businesses with more than 5000 employees, but this minimum limit has now been removed. This is obviously intended to get a part of the burgeoning SAAS market and the lucrative SMB segment. Some say it is in response to the heat produced by Google’s recent launches of business focused online services like Google Apps, Google Sites etc.

It is a limited beta as of now, and according to Bill Gates, general availability of the service is expected by the end of the year “if all goes well”.

Where do Microsoft’s current hosting partners and resellers go? Microsoft’s position is that these resellers should get out of base level hosting and start offering value added services, or sink. That was always the case, with the intense competition in the hosted service arena.