InfoWorld published an article featuring some comments made by Jeff Raikes in his keynote at Convergence. I think that the article takes things a bit out of context; it makes Microsoft look defensive in a way. Microsoft should have no reason to be defensive over the Software + Services model it has introduced. Microsoft has created an asset over the last decade which it leverages in a very good way; it protects clients' investements in software and hardware and allows them to gradually take advatage of SaaS solutions.
Like Jeff Raikes said many other vendors are introducing or expanding solutions that create offline / rich client capabilities which indicates that not many client take a leap of faith to fully "cloud based" solutions ...
... top Microsoft executive defended desktop application software, the source of the company's revenue for three decades, arguing on Tuesday that even services-based companies such as Google still need it.
The comments by Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft's business applications division, come as Microsoft is trying to position itself as a company capable of delivering applications over the Internet as well as on PCs, its traditional distribution model.
"It's interesting some our competitors who like to espouse the idea that software is dead," said Raikes said. "I think they're worried that actually people like a lot of what they have at their fingertips, and the real success is to use a combination."
Microsoft has come under increasing pressure from companies such as Salesforce.com, which specializes in Web-based CRM applications and Google, whose Docs suite is an online alternative to Microsoft's Office suite. Web-based applications tend to be cheaper, easier to update, and require little installation since applications are delivered through a Web browser.
Raikes claimed during a keynote to about 3,300 customers and partners at its Convergence conference that only Microsoft can deliver "the best of the traditional software model in combination with software as a service."
Later, Raikes said Google realized its Web-based applications need further enhancement on the desktop by introducing Google Gears, a set of open source tools to build applications that can run offline and then sync when a computer comes back online.
"It's fascinating to me to see that even some of those companies now are trying to backtrack on what we've been saying and to offer things like Gears in order to be able to be offline and or take advantage of global computing power," Raikes said. ...
Source : InforWorld.com
... Het leukste van mijn bezoek aan de Onderwijs & ICT beurs vandaag (waarover later meer) vond ik wel het feit dat ik de mensen van Edupaper en G-Company met elkaar in contact kon brengen. Ze stonden allebei met een stand op de beurs maar kenden elkaar en elkaars producten niet. Zo breng ik het matchen van trends in de praktijk...
