The Digital Dilemma

Oh my word, if I hear “in the cloud” one more time, I might explode. You can polish this rock all day long, but it’s still the same old rock. Outsourcing is outsourcing, and it has its use and place in your portfolio of services delivered to your organization. Just be advised when you do this: 

1. Vendors can shirk their duties
2. They can poach your data, customer lists, or intellectual property.
3. When they have you hooked, they can renegotiate and change terms of service. Don’t assume free today is free tomorrow.

People caught up in the latest rehash or variant of outsourcing have been duped by the generic marketing machine and people positioning themselves as futurists, visionaries, and other variants on guru like predictive thinkers. Over the last 15 years, I have heard “time sharing”, “application service provider”, “software as a service”, “cloud computing”, “outsourcing”, and many other variants on this theme. Pervasively connected computers and high speed networks does not obviate the need to maintain some degree of custody. Just be thoughtful before you rush out and buy.

With that said, I am an optimist. This blog, my use of Microsoft Live in teaching, my reliance on Google and Microsoft Live services are a daily part of my life. I think we are entering a new age, and Microsoft has a vision and the research depth ($8 billion for the next 2009 fiscal year) that can make many of these ideas a reality. It’s hard to pirate online services, and it’s easy to keep people on an annuity stream.  

• Do you have the desire to hire the skills, house the equipment, and pay the people and occupancy costs with maintaining a rich collaboration platform?
  
• Do you need to maintain custody of your data for security, integrity, or other reasons?

Start with those questions and then begin to think through why you might consider different ways to get your IT needs met. According to Microsoft, $169 billion spent on software and $638 billion spent on hardware, staff, and maintenance means that you can spend more proportionally on the things you want to spend on — like your core business. Old argument … new package. Just be cautious!

Microsoft has 800 partners that provide services like Exchange or Sharepoint. They are also jumping into the hosting game themselves:  

Azure Cloud computing: http://www.microsoft.com/azure/default.mspx

Exchange Online Messaging and Collaboration: http://www.microsoft.com/online/exchange-online.mspx

Consumers or small business: Office Live Small Business or any Live product

Online In general: http://www.microsoft.com/online/default.mspx

  Screen clipping taken: 10/30/2008, 11:16 AM 

1. Did you know that 40% of employees world wide have no email?
2. Did you know that Exchange Hosted processes 100 billion emails per month?
3. Live @ EDU serves 2000 institutions with 10 million mail accounts
4. Greater than 1 million small businesses on Office Live

Microsoft brings huge economy of scale to the table. Man, these folks are such a different group than the people I first introduced myself to the firm in the 1990s at Tech-Ed.