Yup – this is the conclusion and finalization of a series of articles on the path Microsoft took to attach its own hosting channel. Let me just summarise:
Many years ago, in countries not far away from here, Microsoft helped and pushed a segment of its technical partners into what was to be known as “hosting partners”. Business models evolved and as ASP’s become SaaS providers, the hosting providers became service providers (although not many offers a service…). Business grew, new ventures was funded and the market for the hosting providers was not about competition, but harvesting the green fields of customers in need for outsourced services and “IT on tap”, untill…
1 of 5 – Microsoft to deliver Online Services
“Dear partners, to help grow the opportunities and market of hosted services, Microsoft is launching a commoditized solution for Online Exchange, Sharepoint, CRM and Unified Communications”. Microsoft’s field rushed towards their partner channel to calm them down as the message was: “There is plenty of room for us all, and we will help you combine Online Services with ISV based service”. Great! Online Services is just a part of the solution, we can still grow margins on secondary offerings.
2 of 5 – Microsoft to launch Azure!
“Dear partners, Microsoft is launching Azure to help of the next generation of ISV’s built Facebook-a-like applications; we wish to target ISV’s”. Well, didn’t you just tell us to target ISV as this was our opportunity to compete against BPOS? The message was changed. But rest a sure – a solution was to the channel conflict was launched. “Partners! Built dynamic data centers as this will help run business applications and legacy applications, that doesn’t fit with Azure. Virtualization is at its peak – this is a great opportunity and ERP applications form Microsoft will never live in the cloud”.
3 of 4 – Azure VM Role
“Partners, we have listen to customer demand, and customers want’s VM type environments to bridge the gap between now and the future of ho sting platforms.”. This time partners didn’t ask for a solution. Three strikes and you usually are out! But wait a minute! Corporate managers just recently announced that Dynamics ERP products is not to fit with the Azure and Cloud based business model. So maybe, we have a opportunity to drive these products in our costly datacenters? A new business opportunity…
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