The rivalry between Microsoft and Google has only accentuated in the past years, with the software company climbing into the Cloud and expanding its territory on the search market, and with the search giant producing operating systems to compete with Windows client and Windows mobile platforms. Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer believes that the Redmond company has beaten Google at its own game, that of web services, and that it is providing customers with
superior Cloud offerings.
While delivering the Open Door Keynote in Saudi Arabia on November 2nd, 2010, Ballmer revealed that in Microsoft’s vision competition with Google is in two areas, consumers and businesses.
“When it comes to consumer cloud services, I think the work that we're doing we've got good competition, we've got competition primarily in the form of Google,” he said.
“But, if you look at what we're doing with Bing, if you look at the way we're partnering and working with companies like Twitter and Facebook, that Google is not, if you look at the work that we're doing to push forward the kinds of things people want to do for personal e-mail, photos, collaboration, I think we're really stretching and pushing some advantage, clear advantages versus Google.”
However, while the Mountain View- based search giant is close to Microsoft in terms of the consumer market, in Ballmer’s perspective, not the same can be said when it comes down to businesses.
Microsoft recently won some great new customers, inking Cloud adoption agreements in
Los Angeles and in
New York.
Google in fact ended up suing the government and accusing it of favoring Microsoft for the LA agreement, while it did not even participate in the bid.
“If you go to the business side of the cloud, there really are two components. There's what we've got with our Office 365 cloud service, where frankly the competition is probably Google, but they're not close,” Ballmer added.
“They don't have the experience we do. They don't have the number of customers we do. They don't have the capabilities we do. They don't have the security that we do. You can look at it, but I feel pretty confident that we're way ahead.”
There’s also additional competition in the Cloud beyond Google, but Ballmer downplayed the relevance of players such as Amazon, IBM, VMware, Saleforce.com.
In this space Microsoft is offering customers the Windows Azure platform, allowing them to either migrate to the Cloud, but also for additional scenarios including hybrid hosted and on-premise deployments.
“All of our competitors will either tell you to just do the private cloud, or just do the public cloud. And the truth of the matter is, the best strategies, the strategies that are really going to help you build applications with greater agility, and yet still be able to have when you need it the privacy of the private cloud, you need to have a model that fits in both,” Ballmer said.
“VMware and IBM will tell you they can help you build from scratch a private cloud. We'll sell you a private cloud in a box.
“Google, Salesforce, Amazon, they'll tell you everything has got to go in the public cloud, which I just think is a non-starter, not just for government customers, but for a number of our private customers, commercial customers, with their important mission-critical data.”
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