Is SharePoint Services Microsoft’s Defense Against the "Cloud"?

Recently, Microsoft announced that it is forecasting revenues from its SharePoint initiative will hit $1 billion in 2008.

This is a huge number considering that it wasn’t until recently that SharePoint was any sort of focus at Microsoft.

The Great Wall of Microsoft?

This summer’s blockbuster releases from Google including the new browser Google Chrome, its speedier Java VM, V8, and most recently its Android operating system for mobile devices indicate that the boys in the Googleplex are fighting hard to shift the balance of power away from Microsoft and the desktop, and out into "the cloud."

Microsoft’s main strategy of tweaking its own desktop based products to be a little bit more accessible remotely, including via the Internet, suggest that Redmond’s opinion is that Google is bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Still, there is clearly much at risk, and just in case it has misjudged the moment, Microsoft’s SharePoint services represent an enormous defense against the move toward cloud based computing.

Microsoft ships the main basis of SharePoint as a free add-on for its Windows Server line. SharePoint is not technically a cloud computing platform, competing more directly with IBM/Lotus, but it offers many of the same advantages including remote access and collaboration.

The Windows SharePoint Services uses both IIS and SQL Server for data storage and retrieval while Microsoft Office SharePoint Server sits on top of the Windows SharePoint Services. The end result is three-fold.

First, with SharePoint Services, developers get a bunch of the up-front work for application building done for them. For example, developers don’t have to actually have to write any of the store procedures for the databases. This is very important in corporate America where most application development has a deadline of "now."

Second, with SharePoint Services being built upon common enterprise applications, development has a similar feel to other Microsoft based technologies meaning that a company’s or department’s current developers are probably up to the task.

Third, and perhaps most critically to Microsoft, using SharePoint Services tightens tentacles that reach into businesses. If a firm needs IIS and SQL Server for SharePoint, it stands to reason that they would look there first for other needs instead of purchasing a different product line. And, even more is coming with Microsoft having announced that it will include tools for SharePoint in the next release of Visual Studio.

As Business Goes, So Goes the Customer

The first version of SharePoint, released in 2001, was not well received. Companies were not yet sold on the value of "collaborative" applications and there was little reason to add another layer in the enterprise.

In 2003, SharePoint was included as part of Windows Server 2003. This led to developers testing the software and using it for small or pet projects as a way to get them up and off the ground quickly.

With this developer acceptance, came business acceptance. Still, the adoption rate was a trickle. This year, though, SharePoint licenses have exploded, with Bill Gates saying in March that there were over 1 million licensees.

The main road block is — as always it seems with Microsoft’s new systems — scalability, but Redmond is working hard to eliminate those issues in the next release. Until then, corporate developers are finding more and more power in a way that is easier to get to than on other platforms.

So, while the average IT professional or high-end computer user may love the various open-source or Google offered systems and platforms, it is SharePoint that is filling up the corporate datacenters.

In the end, that is what matters, because no matter how great something is, in the development world there is just no money to be made without the deep pockets of American business.

 

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• Azure Services Platform Officially Announced
• SharePoint Server 2007 Training Videos Have Arrived!
• 5 Cool, Must-Know Things About SharePoint
• Save $50 on SharePoint Server 2007 Training … Available Now!

 

4 Responses to “Is SharePoint Services Microsoft’s Defense Against the "Cloud"?”

• David Lawlor Says:

  October 13th, 2008 at 1:52 pm

  I don’t think necessarily MS is looking for a shield against the cloud. Ballmer said the following just a few weeks ago:

  Within a month, Microsoft will unveil what Ballmer called “Windows Cloud.” The operating system, which will likely have a different name, is intended for developers writing cloud-computing applications, said Ballmer, who spoke to an auditorium of IT managers at a Microsoft-sponsored conference in London.

  That along with Live Mesh would squarely put them in the cloud computing arena and a player at that. With increased talk of selling on-demand services such as Exchange and SQL through their own service and taking those servers out of the Enterprise if it makes sense, could be a bundle of continuing revenue stream for MS in the cloud.

  Microsoft is hardly sitting on the “strategy of tweaking its own desktop based products to be a little bit more accessible remotely”, as a month doesn’t go by where I don’t hear of MS going into beta on any number of cloud related services. It is something that if tied correctly to their future desktop strategy will propel them ahead of others in the space.

• Brian Says:

  October 13th, 2008 at 10:05 pm

  David,
  I read that article too. I would raise the following two points for thought.

  First, in any kind of competitive environment (business would most definitely qualify) one never reveals their full strategy. Mike Shanahan might say that the Broncos plan is to run the ball and use up the clock, but he would never say that the Broncos hope to exploit a perceived weakness in the linebackers on the left side by using backfield motion in order to cause them to over-pursue before being blocked off the point of attack by a pulling guard. This would make the game plan very easy to prepare for. Likewise, I doubt Mr. Ballmer is in the habit of revealing all of his strategic cards.

  Second, when I look at the moves made in the last year or two by Microsoft I see what reminds me of a castle surrounded by inner and outer walls. Microsoft’s first choice is for cloud based computing to never be anything more than a small sideline business. It’s strategy for making that happen is to marginalize cloud computing by giving people some of the advantages of cloud computing without anyone actually moving to cloud computing. For example, one of the frequently touted advantages of cloud computing is the ability to collaborate. SharePoint gives companies the same collaborating ability without having to actually adopt the cloud model and thus, is in my mind, the outer wall. The inner wall then is where Microsoft hopes to not fight this battle. Here I see products like Windows Live which is developing the infrastructure, talent, and code base with which to offer their own cloud products should they choose to do so. There are plenty of cool Windows Live services, but not a word processor despite the fact that Google and others offer them.

  Indeed, Microsoft is not tweaking their desktop products. They don’t want to. They generate much more revenue as they are. Instead, Microsoft will nibble around the edges so that the desktop applications are always better, faster, and more powerful, while the online services are just close enough to the competition to avoid a mass migration to them.

  Thanks for reading and for commenting.

• krid Says:

  June 20th, 2009 at 6:28 am

  Hope you don’t mind a comment that’s after a few months of the original post.

  What I see happening has a longer historical perspective. It looks like
  Google is about to do to Microsoft what Microsoft did to IBM. In the 80s, it
  was IBM being the king of business computing with their mainframe. Then little
  old MS snuck in with this new PC. MS did this, in large part, by making the PC
  the tool of the masses, the consumer market. It took a while, many MIS departments
  in the corporate world resisted, but there was an irresistible force of a new wave
  of technology which took over. And it wasn’t that the PC and DOS was necessarily
  the best, heck IBM took a shot at this with the PC/2, and there were lots of
  other contenders in the PC market (like Apple or for that matter Xerox). This was followed in the 90s
  by networking, LANs and then the Internet, which MS was able to adapt to quickly
  enough. You might recall Bill’s about face shift on whether the Internet was important
  circa ‘94 and all of as sudden we have IE and IIS. ASP was a great innovation.
  Actually, the world of PCs was contemplated for many years in Computer Science and the predecessors to CS, going way back to the late ’40s. In a real sense, MS was the one to figure out how to bring it to market and make a business out of it. They adapted to the new technology, which as a truly disruptive technology, and didn’t rest on the laurels of what had come before.

  Fast forward to the 00’s, the web has been around for a while and we see all sorts of mom and pop ISPs. In the debris of the dot.com bust, cutting edge developers start playing around with the so-called web 2.0, which would typically get paired with an hosted web application. Web based email pops up, with Yahoo and MS jumping in, this was the promise of anytime/anywhere come to life. This thing called Utility computing
  starts coming up, was we are seeing lots of servers, any one server being relatively cheap, and there’s lots of unused capacity. Out of this primordial stew comes the notion of cloud computing. Just like the internet is often represented as a cloud, folks started realizing you could take this up a level on the technology stack and do your applications that way too. Anytime/anywhere/any device. 7×365, it’s global in nature where just like the British Empire, the sun will never set and you can’t ever have downtime to do an upgrade. This is also about volume, as the winners in this global cloud game will figure out how to do it in volume and you’ll see orders of magnitude changes in the costs. It’s the Holy Land of Utility computing. Now, this is the classic big market situation, where it’s going to be 1,2,3 and everyone else in terms of market share. Coke, Pepsi, and Royal Crown. GM, Chrysler, and Ford. CBS, NBC, ABC. Best Buy and Circuit City. Walmart and Target. Ebay and Amazon. Toyota, Honda and Fiat (that’s a real time update :-). All the smart folks agree that cloud computing is possible (see http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/index.html), it’s now a matter of how this plays out in the market. The race is ON! Right now it’s looks like Google and Amazon have the lead. Will MS get in this race, right now it looks like there’s
  some big hesitation on their part, as this is competing with existing desktop and local data center products. Others could jump in too, who is big enough to do this? Maybe Oracle or IBM. Or a big media outfit, like Rubert Murdock or Disney. Or a telcom, like AT&T. Or someone out of China, India, or Russia.

  What Google is doing with Google Apps is going after the consumerish market. Easy to use, it’s like an appliance you buy. And they clearly have a clue about usability, what’s there is there for a purpose and it’s 0 training. Sort of like DOS compared to a mainframe. What’s different from the MS PC/DOS era, is that Google started with an API approach from the ground up, and unlike the IBM/MS eras, it’s pretty open in terms of how the APIs work and who can use them. Which is has been important for Google so far, as they are using lots of open source (commodity) components, where you have to have well defined APIs to make it work. There is a conscious strategy of cheap and lightweight computers in their cloud, this part is NOT a consumer market. Small reductions in cost will have a big impact. Whoever succeeds in the global cloud market will need to have a strategy of this nature, need not be open source like Google is doing.

  If MS is to succeed in a global cloud offering, they will have to deal with how they get
  their servers costs down. The infrastructure that’s cost effective within an enterprise
  is not likely to be the best choice in a cloud, there’s lots of engineering tradeoffs that play out differently. Building a cathedral is not the same as building a single family home, nor is building a 100 story building. MS has lots of smart people who already
  understand this, but will they be allowed to have a real shot at this. IBM had lots
  of smart people in the 80s too.

• Brian Says:

  July 13th, 2009 at 4:39 pm

  Krid,
  I think most of your points are on the money.

  What I find particularly interesting these days with all of the talk of “the cloud” and now Google OS is that this is all a reversion to those very same IBM days you were talking about when the device on your desk (a terminal) had zero power and everything was done for you on the back end (mainframe).

  Does netbook (or cellphone) = terminal and cloud=mainframe?

  If so, wasn’t there a reason we abandoned that paradigm the first time around?

  Brian

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