By Jo Best, 2 March 2009 16:33
NEWS
Â…April with licences from five seats.
Microsoft's archrival Google's hosted productivity suite, Google Apps, has already notched up 10 million users across one million business, including to both the Guardian Media Group and The Telegraph Media Group.
Google Apps users were left stranded last week following an outage that saw Gmail taken offline for more than two hours, prompting some commentators to question the suitability of cloud software for business critical applications.
There is, however, compensation for those caught out by outages: both Microsoft and Google will pay back a portion of the subscription costs if online services go dark.
"I figured out if we got a roughly 48-second outage in one day we'd get £800 back. It's really [Microsoft] putting it on the line and it's one of the things that convinced my finance manager," Lee-Bourke said.
As well as the issue of outages, companies opting for hosted rather than on-premises software will also find themselves with less functionality - voice capabilities are different, for example, and organisations on the 'standard' BPOS suite will have a more-stripped down collaboration environment.
Feature parity between cloud and on-premises software could be introduced from the launch of Office 14, according to Microsoft.
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1. Mark Adams
We welcome the move by Microsoft to rollout their volume offering across the globe. This validates the model that leading service providers have been architecting for several years and will take the online services market beyond the traditional early adopters that have been the only takers until now.
But, while Microsoft and Google are slogging it out on price, established Service Providers like Cobweb will continue to do what they do best - focus on the customer need, offer a wide-range of services, deliver great customer service with personal support, and ensure our resellers get what they really want - decent margin and customer ownership.
Read more detailed thoughts on the Cobweb Blog, including more on the "Power of Choice" and how we're part of this offering as a Microsoft Gold Partner for Hosted Solutions