There are a lot of great hosted productivity tools aimed at the small business marketplace right now. We’ve been tracking and in some cases using them for years. One thing that has become very clear over the last several months is that these tools are going to have an effect on those of us providing managed IT services to small businesses.
A lot of the work that happens in our industry today is due to the gazillion lines of code that sit on the desktop, compliments of Microsoft, and how those lines of code interact (or don’t!) with the other gazillion lines of code on servers, also compliments of Microsoft.
Obviously Microsoft has every incentive in the world to make sure that their servers and applications continue to get sold, but they’ve got some seriously stiff competition out there right now!
If you haven’t used Google Docs in a while, you should definitely check it out. It is really nice, and really easy to use. You may be less familiar with Zoho and BlueTie, but these are two companies that have been racking up wins in the marketplace.
So as I contemplate the future of my business, I ask myself two questions:
- Why do I need Exchange, Sharepoint, or Office to run my business? What value do they add beyond the free or nearly free applications I can now find online?
- If I make my living off of providing services largely centered around Microsoft products, what does that mean for my business if all of the other business owners in the world are asking themselves question #1 above?!
I can tell you that one year ago my answer to question #1 above was pretty easy: Microsoft’s products have more features, integrate more easily with other applications I use, etc. But I’m having a much harder time making that argument today. Google, Zoho and BlueTie are good…really good.
Can Microsoft’s $X billion dollar R&D budget can come up with a few features that the other guys can’t match? It will be an interesting challenge for Microsoft, and there will certainly be some interesting challenges for our industry.
MRC
