Today Microsoft launched a hosted Exchange solution to counter Google Apps. Is this a slow and steady response to the Google threat?
When the world’s biggest company launches a subscription based online/offline software of it’s core product you that Subscription based software and Software as a Service has arrived into the mainstream. Microsoft today launched a subscription based service of Microsoft Office Home and Student edition. It will be available starting Mid-July and is mainly targeted towards the lower end of the consumer spectrum. Clearly Microsoft still wants it’s enterprise customers locked into it’s desktop software. Understandably so, enterprise customers will be more apprehensive about sending their data into the ‘cloud’ without secure and reliable storage channels.
However with this new service Microsoft is clearly targeting the SOHO and casual users community which might be looking at Google Docs or Zoho type of services for their daily word processing and spreadsheet needs. It remains to be seen whether this experiment by Microsoft will succeed and if they will ultimately port the Professional edition also onto the SaaS platform.
