November 2nd, 2009

Microsoft chops prices of its hosted enterprise cloud offerings

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 3:28 pm

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, Exchange Server, Office, Office Live, Resellers, SharePoint Server, Speech, Systems integrators, Telecommunications, Utility/cloud computing, VOIP, Web conferencing

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Office, Cloud Computing, Tools & Techniques, Office Suites, Software, Management, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft is cutting prices of its Microsoft-hosted Exchange, as well as its suite of business services (known as the Business Productivity Online Suite, or BPOS), and is refunding the difference to existing hosting customers.

Microsoft is cutting its Exchange Online pricing from $10 per user per month to $5 per user per month. It also is cutting the price of the BPOS bundle — which includes SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Communications Online and Live Meeting — from $15 per user per month, to $10 per user per month.

Microsoft is leaving the pricing for its Deskless Worker versions of its hosted Online offerings the same. Exchange Online Deskless Worker and SharePoint Online Deskless Worker remain $2 per user per month. The bundle of the two Deskless Worker offerings stays at $3 per user per month.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft officials didn’t attribute the price cut to competition from Google Apps or other hosted offerings. Instead, they attributed the cuts to “rapid customer adoption, global scale and improved efficiencies from new software such as Exchange Server 2010″ (according to the press release).

Microsoft is making BPOs available in 15 new countries before the end of the year. Later this week, BPOS will be commercially available in Singapore; trials are slated to begin in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania and Taiwan. Commercial availability in India is also expected later this year, officials said.

Microsoft officials are now claiming to have more than 1 million paying users for Microsoft’s Online family of services (not counting Live Meeting, for which there are many more paying customers, according to company officials). Newly signed BPOS customers include Hofstra University, Lions Gate Entertainment, McDonald’s Corporation, Rexel Group, Swedish Red Cross and Tyco Flow Control.

Microsoft will be adding a paid, Microsoft-hosted version of Office Web Apps — the Webified versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote– to its Online stable next year. Company officials have said that paid offering will also be available to Microsoft volume-license customers so that they can host Office Web Apps themselves, on-premises, instead of or in addition to allowing Microsoft to host it for them. There will be additional (and, as yet, still unannounce) features that will be part of the paid Office Web Apps offering that aren’t part of the free, ad-funded version.

Microsoft is currently rolling out refreshes to its Online family of services every 90 days or so, according to Ron Markezich, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Online. Some of the new features the company is rolling out to its on-premises software — such as Exchange 2010 — are debuting in the hosted, Online offerings before they are available to customers as server-based products. (The final Exchange 2010 software bits are slated to go to customers starting next week.)

I’m sure Microsoft customers will be upbeat about the price cuts for Microsoft’s hosted offerings. But I’d think Redmond’s partners who are trying to make money from selling Microsoft’s hosted services (if not their own hosted version of Microsoft’s wares) might be less enthusiastic…

October 19th, 2009

Microsoft says 'steady progress' continues in Sidekick data recovery

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:18 am

Categories: Azure, Channel, Code names, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), OEMs, Speech, Telecommunications, Utility/cloud computing, VOIP, Windows Mobile

Tags: Team, Data Recovery, Microsoft Corp., Team Management, Manufacturing, Management, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft officials promised last week to provide an update this weekend on its ongoing attempt to recover the customer data and information lost during its ongoing Sidekick outage. On October 18, the company provided that update, which didn’t contain much new information.

The Microsoft/Danger team apologized for the amount of time they are taking to restore contacts, photos, e-mail and other Sidekick services to which users lost access at the start of the month. The team said they were taking their time “to make sure we are doing everything possible to maintain the integrity of your data.”

The team still is not committing to an exact recovery timetable, but is saying restoration should begin this week. From the October 18 update:

“We continue to make steady progress, and we hope to be able to begin restoring personal contacts for affected users this week, with the remainder of the content (photographs, notes, to-do-lists, marketplace data, and high scores) shortly thereafter.”

After telling users that they likely had lost all of their personal data, the Microsoft/Danger team then said they expected to be able to recover some of their data. Mid-weeklast week, they said they expected to recover “most if not all” of the missing user data.

Microsoft officials still have not provided many details about what caused the outage, other than to say it was a core system failure. The failure is unrelated to Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure and/or Microsoft’s Azure datacenters, as the company has continued to run the Sidekick back-end on the same infrastructure it has been running on before Microsoft acquired the company in 2008.

A number of members of the Sidekick team Microsoft acquired have been working on Microsoft’s Pink premium mobile services and phones for the past year.

October 15th, 2009

Microsoft adds POP e-mail, better Mac support to its hosted business applications

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 7:13 am

Categories: Azure, Corporate strategy, Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, Speech, Telecommunications, Utility/cloud computing, VOIP, Web conferencing

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Business Application, Microsoft Corp., E-mail, Desktops, Hardware, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft is rolling out a number of new feature additions to its Microsoft-hosted family of “Online” services, including POP e-mail compatibility and better support for Mac clients.

Microsoft’s Online family currently includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Communications Online, Live Meeting and the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). All of these services are hosted by Microsoft (but not currently running on its Azure cloud operating system).

Microsoft is in the midst of rolling out the October update of Microsoft Online Services. The rollout should be complete and available to all Microsoft Online customers by the end of October, according to an October 14 blog post on the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog.

With the October Service Update, Exchange Online users get support for POP-based clients. Previously, Exchange Online supported only Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and 2007, the Online Services blog post acknowledged.

This month’s update also includes “several enhancements that will provide a more efficient communication and collaboration experience for organizations with Mac users,” according to the post. These include a new single sign-in client for Mac OS users running Safari and the auto-configuration of Office for Mac applications. The update also adds support for Entourage 2008 Exchange Web Services (Microsoft’s stop-gap solution until it replaces Entourage with Outlook in next year’s Office for Mac release); Global Address List support for Entourage 2004 and 2008; SharePoint Online support for Document Connection for Mac; and improved Firefox and Safari support for “My Company Portal.”

Microsoft is making the sign-in client for Mac available for download from the Microsoft Download Center in early November, officials said.

Other new features in the October Online Services rollup:

• The addition of PowerShell commandlets to enable bulk activation of users
• A new version of the Microsoft Online Services Transporter Tool supporting these commandlets
• Online Services Administration Center adds support for up to 30,000 users (up from the previous 10,000 limit)

October 15th, 2009

Microsoft recovers 'most, if not all' Sidekick users' data

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 4:26 am

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), Speech, Telecommunications, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Channel Management, Storage Area Networks (SAN), Storage, Marketing, Hardware, Mary Jo Foley

On October 15, Microsoft reversed itself, claiming now that instead of losing all of the personal data of Sidekick users, it has recovered “most, if not all” of it.

(Over the past few days, Microsoft has moved from saying all data was lost, to some, to possibly none.)

From a note on the company’s Web site signed by Roz Ho, the Corporate Vice President of Premium Mobile Experiences:

“We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage. We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.”

Microsoft isn’t explaining beyond that what went wrong, starting in early October, that knocked out the hundreds of thousands of Sidekick users. There’s been lots of speculation, ranging from sabotage, to an attempt by Microsoft to move Sidekick’s back-end infrastructure from its current platform to a Windows-based one. (Danger, which Microsoft acquired in 2008, is still running the back-end infrastructure for the Sidekick.)

One of my Microsoft sources told me

“(T)he data loss issue was caused by a hardware update on the existing Danger service that had NOT been ported over to a Microsoft platform and the issue was NOT part of a transition to an MS back end. It was an Oracle dB and Sun SAN solution that got a bad firmware update and the backup failed.”

Since then, I’ve heard from others that this scenario seems likely and that yes, Hitachi Data Systems was the company actually doing the maintenance/update for Microsoft. I’ve also heard that foul play has not been ruled out because the failure was so catastrophic and seemingly deliberate. Microsoft is supposedly continuing to do a full investigation.

Microsoft officials are declining to comment beyond the statement they posted to the Web on October 15. They are promising another update on the situation by this Saturday at the latest.

Meanwhile, lawsuits are beginning to pile up as a result of the Sidekick outage, though a full restoration of data may take the bite out of some of them, I’d think.

October 13th, 2009

Sidekick outage says more about the future of 'Pink' than Microsoft's cloud

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:48 am

Categories: Azure, Channel, Code names, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), OEMs, Speech, Telecommunications, Utility/cloud computing, VOIP, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Corp., Outage, Pink, Sidekick, Manufacturing, Mary Jo Foley

I was (trying to) unplug most of the long holiday weekend, but couldn’t help but read all the headlines about how the Sidekick outage spells trouble for Microsoft’s cloud strategy.

I’m not downplaying in the least how serious this outage is or letting Microsoft’s Danger subsidiary  — and/or any other companies involved in the loss of users’ data — off the hook. (The latest: The Danger team is now saying that “some” user data might be recoverable, after all.)

But Sidekicks aren’t running from/on “the Microsoft cloud.” In fact, there is no such thing as a single Microsoft cloud. Microsoft has lots of different remote servers in different data centers running lots of different services.

The Microsoft Azure cloud is what many Microsoft watchers think of these days when someone says “the Microsoft cloud.” But the Azure environment provides the underpinning for very few Microsoft services so far. The Sidekick services don’t run on Azure. Microsoft’s My Phone doesn’t run on Azure. Hotmail, Xbox Live,  Microsoft-hosted Exchange — nope, nope and nope. None of these are running on Azure yet.

The Sidekick outage, to me, says more about Microsoft’s Pink than it does about Azure.

The Danger team, which Microsoft acquired in 2008, is largely responsible for the Pink “premium mobile experience” (PMX) software/services on which Microsoft has been working on secretly. There have been a few recent reports that Microsoft has decided against launching the Pink phone(s) that were going to run these services, but I haven’t heard from any of my sources whether this is true. Sharp supposedly is the manufacturer of the Microsoft-branded/co-branded Pink phones, which Microsoft is said to be planning to market primarily to teens and 20-somethings.

(Microsoft officials have denied repeatedly assertions that Microsoft is making its own smartphone. They have not denied that Microsoft is working with a hardware partner to build Microsoft-branded or co-branded phones.)

What was Microsoft doing to the back-end Danger services that resulted in such a catastrophic outage? Microsoft isn’t talking. There are rumors the problem stemmed from a storage-area-networking debacle but Microsoft isn’t confirming that, either.

The services at the core of Danger’s current offering — contact management, calendaring, instant messaging, e-mail — are all running on a back-end platform that Danger doesn’t describe publicly. Here’s the platform diagram it does provide (click on it to enlarge):

Because Microsoft hasn’t yet launched Pink, company officials have refused to talk at all about which premium services it will encompass and what kind of back-end platform they’ll run on. Is Microsoft designing the Pink services to run on its own servers? Is/was Microsoft intending to allow the Pink services to remain hosted on the existing Danger back-end? Did this past week’s Sidekick outage result from Microsoft (or Hitachi Data Services, or whoever) attempting to move the Danger back-end off the existing servers and onto Microsoft’s own servers? Microsoft officials won’t say.

Now that more everyday users know that Sidekick is connected to Danger and Danger to Microsoft, this week’s outage will cast a shadow over any kind of Pink phone and/or Pink premium services launch Microsoft may be planning.

October 5th, 2009

Flash 10.1 beta coming to Windows Mobile 6.5 phones by year-end

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:06 am

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, Google, Linux, Network service providers, OEMs, Silverlight (wpf/e), Telecommunications, Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Windows client

Tags: Phone, Microsoft Silverlight, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Mobile, Microsoft Corp., Beta, Microsoft Windows, Mobile Operating Systems, Operating Systems, Mobile Applications

On October 5, Adobe did what Microsoft’s own Silverlight team still has yet to do: Pin a date on when it will bring its ad/video-display plug-in to Windows Mobile.

Adobe officials said a public developer beta of the browser-based runtime of Flash 10.1 is expected to be available for Windows Mobile — as well as Palm’s WebOs and Windows, Mac OS and Linux — before the end of the year. A developer’s beta for Google’s Android and the Symbian OS are expected to be available in early 2010. The final version of Flash 10.1 should be out for Windows Mobile in the first half of 2010, according to Adobe’s latest time table.

Adobe’s press release didn’t mention which version(s) of Windows Mobile will be getting full-fledged Flash. PCMag.com said it will be Windows Mobile 6.5, which Microsoft is rolling out officially with its phone-maker and carrier partners tomorrow, October 6. “Lower-tier” devices, meaning older Windows Mobile phones, will be Flash-enabled but not run full-fledged Flash, PCMag.com added.

Adobe announced its intentions to bring Flash to ARM-based phones a year ago, in November 2008, with the first devices supporting it available in mid-2009.

I’m betting we’ll get dates and details from Microsoft about exactly when Silverlight will be coming to Windows Mobile (and possibly other non-Windows-Mobile OS phones) in the next day or so, just in time for the Windows Mobile 6.5 launch. Will Microsoft be making the already-shipping Silverlight 3 on these devices, or will developers and users have to wait for Silverlight 4, which so far, doesn’t have a public release date? Guess we’ll find out soon.

MIcrosoft recently released to manufacturing a new version of Windows Embedded CE, which is the core platform upon which Windows Mobile phones are based, that includes Silverlight support. But officials said availability of that release (Windows Embedded CE6.0 R3) has no bearing on when Microsoft will bring Silverlight support to WIndows Mobile.

Microsoft also recently announced it is porting Silverlight to Moblin-Linux-based mobile devices. That port will be available by early 2010, according to Microsoft.

Update (October 6): I was wrong. Microsoft doesn’t have an update, re: Silverlight’s availability on Windows Mobile, to share today. Company officials said that Microsoft isn’t going to support Silverlight on Windows Mobile 6.5, which launches today on new phones. The official line is users will get Silverlight on Windows Mobile 7.  Windows Mobile 7 phones aren’t currently expected to debut before the end of 2010. I asked if Microsoft might make it available on WM phones before WM 7 and was told no comment.

September 11th, 2009

Microsoft: Windows Mobile 7 not on the PDC docket

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 2:25 pm

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), Network service providers, OEMs, PDC 2009, Resellers, Speech, Telecommunications, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Windows Mobile, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Mobile Operating Systems, Operating Systems, Mobile Applications, Handhelds, Wireless And Mobility, Software, Hardware

I (and others) have been wondering and speculating whether Microsoft might be holding its Windows Mobile 7 cards close to the vest and be planning to show, or at least talk about, Windows Mobile 7 at this year’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in mid-November.

The answer is no, a company spokeswoman definitively told me on September 11. If Microsoft does talk mobile at its developer conference, Windows Mobile 6.5 — and not even the rumored interim 6.5 update designed to get Win Mobile working on capacative touch screen devices– is the only content on the docket.

Here is the e-mail from the spokesperson:

“As I’m sure you know, Microsoft and its partners are squarely focused on introducing the Windows phone brand through the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5 in October [October 6], which includes working closely with ISVs and developers to add even greater value to the Windows Mobile platform and new business opportunities for its mobile channel ecosystem. To properly set your expectations, wanted to let you know that Microsoft is not planning any sessions for PDC that look past the Windows Mobile OS in market at that time.”

I followed up and asked whether Microsoft might be privately showing anything post Win Mobile 6.5, or maybe talking/showing new bits in the keynotes or hallways at the conference, which kicks off November 16. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that Windows Mobile 7.0 was still expected to go to phone makers in November 2009 and show up on phones in the first part of 2010….

The answer came back again as no. The spokesperson reiterated that Microsoft would not be doing anything related to Windows Mobile 7 at the PDC.

I guess this could mean one of two things:

• Windows Mobile 7 really isn’t going to debut before the end of 2010, after all. If Windows Mobile 7 phones were coming out in the first part of 2010, as originally expected, wouldn’t Microsoft be working now with developers to help them write apps for the new mobile-phone operating system?
• Microsoft is not planning to use the PDC to communicate with the Win Mobile developer community but could be holding some other public/private conference where it will share more on Win Mobile 7.

What will be on the PDC 2009 docket? So far, there are sessions for those interested in/working with Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, .Net 4.0, Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010 and Windows 7. Those are the primary topics planned for the PDC, which is slated from November 16 to 19 in Los Angeles.

There were a couple of other interesting Windows Mobile tidbits this week. Long Zheng over on istartedsomething.com got Microsoft officials to acknowledge that the company is attempting to speed up the delivery of new Windows Mobile releases by working toward allowing updates to be downloaded directly to users’ phones (some time in the future), rather than requiring OEMs to preload the new bits.

And IT Pro UK managed to get Microsoft to confirm what I had heard months ago: That the Mobile team’s plan is to work more closely with fewer handset makers by providing them with chassis specs to which they can build. One such chassis spec: The Windows Mobile 7 one that a source provided me a few months back.

September 9th, 2009

I don't want an MP3 player/camera/ebook reader/gaming device. Do you?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 2:27 pm

Categories: Advertising, Apple, Corporate strategy, Gaming, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), Speech, Telecommunications, VOIP, Windows Mobile, Xbox, Zune

Tags: Phone, MP3 Player, Microsoft Zune, MP3, Camera, Media Players, Digital Music, Digital Media, Telecom & Utilities, Consumer Electronics

Common wisdom says we’re hurtling toward a world where a single portable device will be all you need to handle a wide variety of consumerish tasks.

But the further we approach that end goal, the less I want to end up there. Today’s Apple music announcements reminded me of that fact.

I am not an iPod/iPhone/iMac user. I have a Sony Walkman MP3 player, an LG (non Windows Mobile) phone and a Windows PC. I also have an Amazon Kindle and a Panasonic camera. I carry a big bag which usually contains at least two or three of these devices at any given time.

I’m willing to cart all this stuff around because I want my phone to be a good phone. I don’t care if it can browse the Web or hold hundreds of pictures that I can flick through at a moment’s notice. If it’s not good at making and receiving calls, it’s not worth having. I want my camera to be a decent camera. I don’t care about capturing video clips on it. I want my ebook reader to allow me to purchase and read books. Even though it has built-in wireless and a browser, I have used it to check the Web once in four months or so.

I thought I might be in the minority in my views about device convergence — until I asked folks on Twitter if they were fans of the single device ideal. Most who replied were not. Some cited battery-life issues as the reason they weren’t keen on the single-device-does-all idea. Others said they weren’t interested in devices that were OK at lots of tasks but great at none of them. I don’t need a camera that posts to Twitter, one of my Tweet-buddies quipped.

I’ve been playing lately with the Zune subscription service. (Hey, I never claimed to be an early adopter; in fact, I’m typically a “wait for at least the third version” one.) With the Zune Pass, for $15 a month, you can download a lot of music and keep 10 tracks a month. The Zune Pass service works nicely with my Sony player — not surprising given Microsoft’s growing emphasis on Zune as software and a service and deemphasis of it as a standalone MP3 player. Yes, there are new and much improved Zune players coming on September 15, but I’m far more interested in the non-hardware-specific components than the Zune HDs themselves, especially given my Sony MP3 player is still working well two years after I bought it.

Maybe those of us who would feel more affinity with a portable rotary phone (thanks for the link, Jake) than an all-in-one multi-touch phone/videocam/ebook reader/gaming/photo display/browsing  pedometer/voice-recording device should stop focusing so much on the next cool gadget and pay more attention to the software/services that make them tick.

(Update: As one reader noted, an all-in-one MP3 player/camera/ebook reader/gaming device also could be called a PC. In fact, Apple almost seemed to be repositioning the iPod Touch as a rival to a full-fledged PC as part of its September 9 announcements.)

August 13th, 2009

Microsoft Exchange 2010 buzz grows louder

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 1:57 pm

Categories: Apple, Channel, Corporate strategy, Exchange Server, Telecommunications, Utility/cloud computing, Windows Server 2008 R2 /("Windows 7 Server")

Tags: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Corp., Exchange Team, Exchange 2010, Microsoft Outlook, Groupware, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows Server 2008, E-mail

The release-to-manufacturing (RTM) buzz around Microsoft Exchange 2010 is starting to grow louder. I’m hearing from various partners and customers it could be finalized any time now, maybe even before this month is up.

Update (August 16): Microsoft watcher Steven Bink says Microsoft has plans to issue a public Release Candidate 1 of Exchange 2010 before it goes final. I also heard that Microsoft is just now rolling out Exchange 2010 inside the company to dogfood it before it goes final — and to work out the bugs in the product that are showing up when it is scaled up to a large number of mailboxes.

Exchange Server is directly and indirectly at the crux of a number of new and recently announced products from Microsoft. The company’s Mac Business Unit announced on August 13 that the 2010 version of Mac Office will include Outlook, rather than Entourage, as its new e-mail client. The next Mac Office release also will feature improved Exchange and Exchange Online connectivity, the Softies said.  (Microsoft Mac Office customers who need better Exchange connectivity now can use the just-finalized Entourage Web Services, Microsoft officials said.)

Additionally, Exchange ActiveSync licensees Nokia and Apple are both expected to tout the ability of users to sync with their corporate mail systems as part of their forthcoming  Nokia Mobile Office and Apple Snow Leopard releases.

As many as 1 million testers have been test-driving the public beta version of Microsoft’s on-premise Exchange Server 2010 product since April of this year. Another 5 million or so testers have been working with the cloud-based complement in the form of Outlook Live, which is a slightly modified version of the Exchange Online product.

The Exchange team has said to expect the product to RTM before the end of 2009. More recently, company officials said to expect Microsoft to “launch” Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 and Exchange 2010 together via a series of “business launch” events, which kick off in the U.S. on November 9.

The Exchange 2010 release includes new, integrated e-mail archive functionality; the ability to see text previews of voice mail; a new “Conversation View” feature; customizable call-routing menus; and a “MailTips” feature designed to help stamp out e-mail “faux pas.”

More than a few testers report having been impressed with the Outlook Web Access (OWA) improvements that Microsoft has made as part of the 2010 release. The new and more robust OWA supports Firefox and Safari.

Exchange 2010 is a 64-bit-only release. Other caveats: Users who want to run Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 together must upgrade to Exchange 2007 Service Pack (SP) 2. And Exchange 2007 also won’t work at all on Windows Server 2008 R2, so users who want to run Exchange on the latest and greatest Windows Server release have no choice but to upgrade to Exchange 2010. In-place upgrades from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010 seemingly are prohibited.

I asked Microsoft officials whether Exchange 2010 is ready to get the RTM designation real soon now. A corporate spokesperson replied: “We have said that Exchange 2010 will become available in the second half of 2009. There’s nothing additional to share at this point.”

August 3rd, 2009

What's Microsoft's next billion-dollar business? (Hint: it's not search)

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 12:37 pm

Categories: Azure, Channel, Corporate strategy, Database, Exchange Server, Financial Analyst Meeting, Management tools, Office, SQL Server, Search, Security, SharePoint Server, Support, System Center, System Center, Telecommunications, Utility/cloud computing, Virtualization, Windows Server 2008 R2 /("Windows 7 Server"), Windows server

Tags: Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Corp., System Center, Online Desktop Manager, Microsoft Windows, Collaboration, Content Management, Groupware, Sales Strategy, Enterprise Software

While many company watchers continue to fret over what Microsoft will and won’t do to make money in the search/online advertising space, there are other less sexy Microsoft business units plodding successfully along with relatively little public notice.

Until fairly recently, SharePoint was one of those businesses. But now that Microsoft’s SharePoint sales have passed the $1 billion barrier (they were $1.3 billion for fiscal 2009, which ended for Microsoft on June 30), what’s Microsoft’s next big thing? What products is the company betting on to become the next big, near-term hits?

At Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) last week, company officials shared a few tidbits about one of those businesses: Microsoft System Center.  System Center encompasses a variety of system-management tools that Microsoft sells to IT professionals who want to manage their Windows — and Linux/Unix — clients, servers, hypervisors and more.

CEO Steve Ballmer told Wall Street analysts that System Center already has passed the billion-dollar mark. It’s growing at a rate of 30 percent year-over-year, according to Microsoft officials.

System Center is one of a handful of server-side product families that Microsoft is planning to push more in its coming fiscal year. (The others: Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2, the forthcoming Forefront Protection Suite, SharePoint 2010, Exchange 2010 and Office Communications Server 2010 — about which Microsoft has said very little to date.)

Microsoft officials mentioned in passing last week that System Center Online Desktop Manager (SCODM) is likely to be a big revenue generator for the company in the near-term. The Online Desktop Manager is one of Microsoft’s own hosted “Online” services that it is touting as a way for cash-strapped customers to save money. Microsoft’s pitch: By having Microsoft manage your users’ desktops and provide the anti-malware, desktop configuration, remote assistance and IT asset-management for them, IT pros won’t have to shell out for on-premise products and people to provide these services.

Microsoft SCODM, which is built on top of Silverlight, is in private testing with select customers now and is expected to be released in final form in 2010.

Beyond 2010 — but before search and online advertising move in any noticeable and serious way from being in the red, to in the black — what else is Ballmer betting on?

Read the rest of this entry »