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Microsoft and the Cloud
by Norman 
Although Microsoft announced its Business Productivity Online Suite – dedicated (BPOS-D) in October 2008 as available worldwide, it has taken a little longer to achieve this.
It has taken time to make the agreements with partners that will be delivering the package. One of the most recent is T-Systems (http://www.t-systems.com), Deutsche Telekom’s corporate customer arm.
BPOS-D forms part of Microsoft’s Software-plus-Services computing model. (http://www.microsoft.com/online/default.mspx) Microsoft scarcely mentions ‘Cloud’ (maybe it regards the term as too resonant of IBM aspirations) but defines this model as using “the reach of the Internet with the power of local software applications”.
BPOS-D is a package including Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online and Office Live Meeting. It is aimed at customers of at least 5000 seats, giving them the capability to run services online for a fixed monthly fee per workstation. T-Systems, with its telecom background, can enhance the package by adding in the network infrastructure, storage and bandwidth.
T-Systems has been a Large Account Reseller for Microsoft products since 2003 and in Germany supported the launch of Vista (why boast about it!), Exchange, Biz Talk, Unified Communications, Business Intelligence and SharePoint. T-Systems has developed mobile solutions based on Microsoft technology. It is a big player with revenues around EUR 9.3 billion in the 2008.
Strangely, while BPOS-D has been rolled out worldwide, the regular issue BPOS, named imaginatively as Business Productivity Online Suite Standard, is only available in the US. We suspect this may be something to do with inadequacies of, or lack of development in, Microsoft’s distribution channel outside the Homeland.
20/10/09 03:16:35 pm, 
9 comments
Although the distribution channel is big issue for Microsoft (as you have rightly pointed in the blog) but I think the main problem is Microsoft's inability to scale in terms of hosted infrastructure. Its similar to the IT services Global Delivery Model (GDM). Some service providers became master of GDM by effectively leveraging near-shore, off-shore, on-shore resources and continuously refining their processes to be more agile in service delivery. That became the greatest differentiator between the tier-1 service providers and others. Similarly Google has mastered the art of delivering cloud apps by investing in large server farms, developing its proprietary clustered file systems (GFS), relational database (BigTable) etc. Even though Microsoft adds more telco partners (such as T-systems) it will be hard to match the scale, flexibility of Google.