Who needs Yahoo!?
The majority of the stories coming out of Microsoft in the past few months have concerned its clear desire to become a bigger player online. Its apparently abortive attempt to buy Yahoo! has grabbed most of the headlines but Microsoft’s own R&D has been pretty busy too.
The whole initiative has been dubbed Software Plus Services (S+S) by Microsoft, apparently in an attempt to distinguish it from the existing Software as a Service (SaaS) model and to allow for a combination of desktop installed and browser accessed products.
Back in April we saw the unveiling of Microsoft’s cloud computing play: Live Mesh. Then in early May it launched an online productivity suite for consumers called Equipt. Most recently, at its worldwide partner conference, it revealed the Microsoft Online Business Productivity Suite.
This collection of online productivity applications is available for $15 per user per month and a ‘lite’ version, called Deskless Suite, is available for $3 per user per month. The cool bit for the channel is that resellers get a piece of the initial fee and the on-going subscription fees.
With all this online activity from Microsoft we thought it was time we got some insight into the grand plan, so we spoke to its director of communications for unified communications and Microsoft Online, Clint Patterson.
“Software Plus Services addresses questions around the service delivery and the subscription economic models,” Patterson told us. “The aim is to create more predictability in a company’s IT spend, especially when it comes to deployment and roll-out. It flattens out the payment spike and simplifies the deploying and upgrading process.”
Patterson explained that Microsoft sub-divides its S+S into two brands: “Live” for consumers and “Online” for businesses. As his job title implies, Patterson deals with the business side of things.
