14 DAY TRIAL // Service providers must keep up with the evolution of customer needs and start providing them with comprehensive IT as a service offerings that span beyond their current portfolio of solutions. Inherent characteristics such as flexibility and adaptability make small and midsize business (SMBs) the perfect candidates in the race for the Cloud. Microsoft noted in a range of situations that moving to the Cloud is only a matter of “when” rather than of “if.” And a recent study from Microsoft’s global SMB IT and Hosted IT Index 2010, SMBs are increasingly warming up to the Cloud.
At the core of the hosted IT tools leveraged by businesses are email (95.6%) and backup solutions (92.4%), and there is still much room for growth, Microsoft reveals. Data from approximately 3,200 SMBs surveyed in no less than 14 countries, reveals that 65% of respondents were already relying hosted software to some extent. The vast majority of the companies that weren’t yet, some 73%, have started considering hosted offerings as alternatives to on-premise deployments. The reasons why SMBs opt for the Cloud are the same as those applauded by Microsoft and other Cloud providers, boosted productivity, reduced costs, cutting the need for complex management of IT, etc.
Of course, Microsoft’s Cloud offerings are diversified and complex. But the company is really pointing to two in particular, as far as hosting and communications service providers interested in delivering IT as a service to SMBs are concerned. One of them is BPOS, the company’s Business Productivity Online Standard Suite. Customers get Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting, and Office Communications Online starting from 10$ per user per month.
And the best thing about it is the level of satisfaction among customers taking advantage of BPOS, an aspect evident in the reduced churn level. Whereas the subscriber churn for service providers has been on the increase, and is now exceeding 20%, only half of SMB customers choose to jump ship when they’re running BPOS, compared to those relying on basic POP or webmail. The data comes from a study commissioned by Microsoft which involved no less than 695 SMB executives and technology decision-makers in the United States and Europe.
The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2010 brought with it the launch of the Release Candidate (RC) of Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0, the evolution of the Microsoft Dynamic Data Center Toolkit. Via the Dynamic Data Center Alliance, service providers can take their offerings to the next level by leveraging Microsoft technologies such as Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center. Microsoft offered NetApp as an illustrative example, with a disaster recovery solution made possible through the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit.
“Microsoft sees service providers becoming more important as the cloud becomes more predominant. Given their experience in deploying and selling infrastructure and software as a service, businesses will depend on them for IT as a service,” said John Zanni, general manager of Worldwide Hosting for the Communications Sector at Microsoft. “The next step for service providers is to look beyond their current hosted offerings to become full-service IT providers and trusted advisors to businesses.”
When I spoke with Zanni over the phone earlier this week, I specifically asked whether rival companies can match what Microsoft has to offer. While not referring to any rival offerings in particular, the Worldwide Hosting for the Communications Sector GM did underline that Microsoft is the only company capable of covering the entire spectrum of needs for customers looking to embrace the Cloud. This simply because Microsoft’s software, services and programs are designed to melt together in an end-to-end solution.
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