The SaaS juggernaut did pretty well revenue-wise, but an acquisition spooked
investors a bit and
sent
the company's stock tumbling this week.
And while we're on the topic of SaaS, David writes from Australia that Google's
recent blip is nothing to worry about:
"SaaS is here to stay, and will take over the world. A little outage
like that can happen to anyone that has not spent a fortune on IT. Of the
2 million businesses in Australia, there would only be a couple hundred who
could claim this would never happen to them with in-house servers. This is
still a five-9s standard and will suit 99.999 percent of business users."
Thanks, David. We agree that SaaS is here to stay. Will it take over the world?
Maybe...eventually. For now, though, there are still some psychological (and
maybe a few practical) barriers that folks face before adopting it. It's all
about control, really -- control of data and control of the situation when a
system does go down. Some IT folks like to have both, even if it costs more.
Still, we're bullish on SaaS. Don't get us wrong on that front.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 21, 20080 comments
There's more bad news for Microsoft regarding Vista, if you can believe that.
This week, a company called Devil Mountain Software that tracks such things
said that 35 percent of PCs
end
up with "downgrades" from Vista to XP.
Downgrade, of course, is a relative term in this case. But for Microsoft -- and,
to a lesser extent, its partners -- the failure of Vista to catch on with
users represents a break in a rock-solid business model that has helped Redmond
rocket to the top of the software world in recent decades.
Oh, sure, in the short term, the XP downgrades aren't such a bad thing. Users,
after all, generally pay for a Vista license and then pay for XP downgrade rights.
So Microsoft sells Vista no matter what and then gets a little kick from the
XP downgrade. Great, right? For Microsoft, maybe -- for now.
But in the long term, we might look back on Vista as a turning point in Microsoft's
history. After all, this is the first time we can remember that users have rejected
in such large numbers a major -- "major" being a key word here, as
Windows ME and Windows Bob weren't really in that category -- Windows update.
Maybe that doesn't matter in the long run. After all, users can't go on squeezing
the last drops out of XP forever; they'll have to upgrade at some point, even
if it's to Windows 7. And although Mac and Linux offerings might be picking
up some momentum as a result of Vista's failures, those competitors still can't
do much to seriously challenge Microsoft's market share, especially in the enterprise.
No, the real questions here concern how much damage Vista is doing to users'
(and partners') confidence in Microsoft. And they're not just about whether
folks will migrate to a different OS. Will Vista's problems lead users to look
more closely at cloud computing -- a category Microsoft is desperately trying
to get into -- which de-emphasizes the OS? Will Microsoft's insistence on
forcing Vista on customers (and partners, for that matter) prompt enterprise
users to think twice before they make investments in other Microsoft technologies...such
as servers, where Linux actually has a bit of a foothold?
Microsoft's model for Vista (read: force users into upgrading by killing the
previous OS) isn't new, and it has always worked in the past. But it's not working
now. XP won't go away, and that makes the future for Windows in particular and
Microsoft in general look a lot cloudier than it has in the past.
We're planning on running your Vista e-mails in tomorrow's RCPU...so contribute
now to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on August 20, 20088 comments
It sort of sounds like a tag line you'd expect to hear in an underwear ad,
but Microsoft is now
touting
"ultimate" support through its Microsoft Services Premier Ultimate
offering.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 20, 20080 comments
Taiwan -- or Chinese Taipei for Olympic purposes -- is
all
over antitrust proceedings regarding Vista and XP, apparently. But what's
really funny to us is that the rumored
Chinese
antitrust investigation of Microsoft (Office, specifically) might be on
after all.
China, one of the world's more repressive governments, investigating an American
corporation for antitrust issues? There has to be some irony there...right?
Posted by Lee Pender on August 19, 20080 comments
We're contractually obligated -- OK, we don't have contracts here at RCPU,
but if we did we'd be obligated -- to mention the Olympics this time of year,
so here you go: Microsoft's Office Open XML format, for which we
previously
used a sports metaphor to discuss, finally got its gold medal late last
week, sweeping away the last few desperate appeals and becoming -- for sure,
this time -- an
ISO
standard.
Oh, sure, the medal ceremony was delayed. In fact, it hasn't even happened
yet. The ISO will publish OOXML as a standard in the next few weeks, it says,
as long as there aren't any other appeals against it. At this point, further
appeals look unlikely, as far as we can tell. So Microsoft should have another
medal in its trophy case very soon.
Beyond that, Redmond will have a legitimate claim to "openness,"
a theme it's been harping on almost as much as NBC has been pushing the (amazing,
we must say) Michael Phelps story. Well, the "openness" claim will
be as legitimate as any that a proprietary software vendor that still has an
awkward relationship with the open source world can make...but OOXML's ultimate
acceptance by the ISO will serve as a reference point nonetheless.
We still see this whole episode as a show of might on Microsoft's part in an
industry that, with Vista sinking and Software-as-a-Service on the rise, looks
less and less like the old-school, Microsoft-dominated world of recent decades
almost by the day. Score this one (finally) as a victory for Redmond -- the
old war horse that still has some kick left in it yet. (And for the purposes
of our Olympic theme, let's just consider that last metaphor to be a reference
to the equestrian events. Deal? Great.)
Are you pleased or disgruntled about OOXML apparently clearing its last hurdle?
(Hey, there's another Olympic reference!) Sound off at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on August 19, 20082 comments
Microsoft would really love for you to buy Vista and all...but, hey, if you're
really into Windows, the next version
has
its own blog. We've heard partners tell us that Microsoft's promotion of
Windows 7 has hurt Vista's prospects for becoming the next XP. And we do sense
a real mixed message from Microsoft here: On one hand, Steve Ballmer and company
really pushed the forlorn OS at the Worldwide Partner Conference...but, on the
other hand, Windows 7 sure is getting a lot of advance publicity from Redmond.
Now, a new
report suggests that more than a third of "enterprise class" users
are downgrading (if it can really be called that in this case) Vista licenses
back to XP, and PC makers still aren't being shy about offering XP as an option
to businesses. None of this can be good news for Vista, which looks destined
to go down as a flop no matter how much Microsoft improves it or dresses up
its marketing.
We still want to know whether you or your customers are planning to hang on
to XP until Windows 7 comes out and, if so, what challenges you think you might
face in stretching the incumbent OS' tenure for almost a decade. Répondez,
s'il vous plaît, at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on August 19, 20083 comments
Vista is eating up U.K. market share -- or, more specifically, taking it away
from XP -- not because customers like it but because
they
can't avoid it.
By the way, we're still taking e-mails on whether you're going to try to stretch
XP until Windows 7 arrives. We'll run your responses next week. Sound off at
[email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on August 14, 20080 comments
Nobody's perfect, right? Not even Google, which has suffered some
well-publicized
service outages recently and finally felt
compelled
to apologize for at least one of them.
Hey, Google, love means never having to say you're sorry. And we still love
you -- don't we? After all, you're the revolution, the flag bearer for Software-as-a-Service,
the company that's going to have us using nothing but free-ish applications
in our browser before too long and chucking that clunky old Microsoft software
in the same bin where Corel WordPerfect now resides. Right?
Well, maybe not. It might not be a big deal to most of us -- and your editor
does have a personal Gmail account -- that Gmail went down for a couple of
hours on a weekday afternoon, but it was probably a pretty big deal for people
who are trying to run their businesses on Gmail and Google Apps.
Beyond that, and more to the point for the channel and users alike, the mighty
Google's stumble was an unpleasant reminder that SaaS as a model still isn't
as ready for prime time as many folks would like it to be...despite all
the SaaS hype that some media organizations (including this one) have spread
recently.
OK, so Gmail going out for a couple hours isn't the end of the world for most
companies, although e-mail outages can be a major problem. But what about enterprise
applications? What happens when CRM goes kaput for a couple of hours on a Monday?
What about -- heaven forbid -- ERP applications?
It's no wonder that hosted ERP is the last
frontier for the SaaS model. Really, really critical stuff -- like the software
that runs companies -- just can't be subject to significant downtime. Oh, sure,
on-premises stuff has its problems -- huge, costly problems in some cases --
but at least companies have staff members or helpful Microsoft partners who
can take care of issues in-house. When somebody else's datacenter goes down,
what do you do? Sit and wait for somebody far away to fix it.
The real crux of this story is that we're talking about Google here. If Google,
which is betting much of its business model on SaaS and pouring millions of
dollars into datacenters, can suffer fairly nerve-jangling outages, what about
smaller hosting companies with fewer datacenters? What about other vendors that
don't specialize in hosting but are just dipping their toes into the SaaS waters
(we're looking at you, Microsoft)? This sort of thing doesn't do much for users'
confidence.
Partners need to have some sort of SaaS story for their customers. But they
also need to know how to answer the inevitable questions about the model's Achilles
heel. And they need those answers to be specific and meaningful, not just empty
guarantees or platitudes about point-nines of uptime. It's one thing for customers
to rationally know that SaaS comes with the risk of downtime; it's quite another
for them to actually experience an outage.
It's something to think about now that the leader of the SaaS revolution has
racked up a little bad publicity for itself and the model and turned a little
bit of SaaS love into apprehension. After all, nobody's perfect -- but it's
dealing with imperfection that makes some companies great and causes others
to fizzle. Google is big enough and experienced enough to be great in the long-run.
Not everybody else, though, will end up in that category.
What's your take on SaaS and the risk of downtime? Do incidents like the Gmail
outage make you think twice about moving key enterprise apps to a hosted model?
Have your say at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on August 14, 20080 comments
It's a week for apologies, and VMware is so
sorry
about a botched update that left some of its wares lifeless. Somewhere,
Diane Greene must be having a bit of a chuckle.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 14, 20080 comments