Why it makes sense for Microsoft to buy Skype - and why they'll have a very hard time making it their own (Andrew's Blog 05/12/2011)

A very nice synopsis on the VoIP technology and why Skype works so well.

From a tech perspective, if you start by agreeing that voice and video over the internet is going to be important over the next decade, you're halfway there.

Andrew's bits at the end are very insightful:

What this means for Microsoft

With Skype, Microsoft gets the ONLY successful VoIP alternative that users have accepted, that works through firwewalls, and that can be purchased. Nobody can "own" SIP or h.323. IAX2 solves many of the problems with those other protocols but it's open source. Open source presents many problems for Microsoft because they can't just change it the way they want without sharing their changes and they can't keep competitors from duplicating their work.

Where Microsoft will get into trouble with Skype

While Skype works amazingly well from an end user perspective, that very connectivity presents problems for Corporate firewalls. First, Skype is very hard to block. ...Second, Skype's communication is a kind of peer-to-peer hybrid model. ... If you're using skype, your own system becomes part of the routing network for the global Skype data. Corporations, with their very fast (and expensive) network connections, can accidentally become "Supernodes" on the Skype network ...This kind of connectivity works extremely well in an open and free client for end users, but once Microsoft is behind it, the game changes. ... End users at home are going to resent carrying data for other people in corporations. Changing the connectivity protocols in Skype would be messing with the very thing that makes it successful.

I agree with "but once Microsoft is behind it, the game changes" comment and it will be interesting to see just how that game changes. Breaking out two Skype networks (consumer and corporate) could disrupt the efficiency of Skype today, since corporate "supernodes" are clearly a benefit. How will corporations get behind purchasing a service that uses the customer's network for other customers? Compliance and risk issues come to mind here.

While I "get" that owning all the proprietary, really-good, successful technology is a good thing for Microsoft I'm still curious how Microsoft will take a technology that is based on methodologies and architectures that are the antithesis to the design of most of its corporate technology. Of course there is the Online division, which fits better, but my brain cramp there is that Microsoft spent the last decade streamlining its platforms so they would be ubiquitous in the cloud or on-premise. If Skype only landed in Online then we get an anomaly (let alone the Lync challenge). That's smacks of an IBM Lotus acquisition. Then again, there is the Entertainment division, which I see Skype fitting into nicely.

Why it makes sense for Microsoft to buy Skype - and why they'll have a very hard time making it their own (Andrew's Blog 05/12/2011)

The Business of Online Ads and Browsers

The Wall Street Journal recently published a few articles on Online Privacy issues. In "Microsoft Quashed Effort to Boost Online Privacy," the article points out that today's browser business is primarily in support of advertising sales:

As online advertising grows more sophisticated, companies playing prominent roles in consumers' online experiences have discovered they have access to a valuable trove of information. In addition to Microsoft, such companies include search-engine giant Google Inc., iPhone maker Apple Inc., and Adobe Systems Inc., whose Flash software makes much of the Internet's video, gaming and animation possible. These companies now have a big say in how much information can be collected about individual users.

The article details the internal struggle at vendors who are in the business of producing browsers and online advertising solutions. Big stakes for all, basically putting the consumer in charge of their privacy. As if we had a clue. This was the topic of a conversation I was having with Diana Kelley at SecurityCurve this morning; consumers have little to no idea what's being tracked or how. We trust the vendors and the providers that they have our best interests in mind when in fact they have their own best interests in mind. That usually involves making as much money as they can giving away free stuff to consumers.

For more insight on what is tracked and by whom, check out WSJ's article "What They Know."

Microsoft shares (officially) its future BPOS plans | ZDNet

Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet brings us the latest BPOS roadmap announced at Mictosoft's Worldwide Partner Conference last week. The emphasis on selling SaaS is gaining ground at Microsoft, including free BPOS for partners, and more likely good deals for customers:

Microsoft showcased at the show this week a number of its partners who’ve already jumped on the BPOS bandwagon. To encourage others to start selling the suite, Microsoft announced that it will offer partners 250 BPOS seats for their own use.

Microsoft shares (officially) its future BPOS plans | ZDNet:

Cisco Raises Its Bid for Tandberg of Norway - NYTimes.com

Cisco going big on video for the UC as collaboration market. That was evident from John Chambers keynote last week (see my post).

The network equipment maker Cisco on Monday raised its bid for Norwegian videoconferencing equipment maker Tandberg. The increase was backed by holders of more than 40 percent of Tandberg’s shares, few of whom had warmed to Cisco’s previous bid.

I am reminded of Mike Gotta's work a couple years ago on different approaches IBM and Microsoft are taking to the UC market*; IBM being more partner-friendly, focusing on the software side of UC and working well on other's equipment, versus Microsoft's more all-or-nothing approach to building UC solutions including soft-PBXs and equipment (e.g., Roundtable). Cisco's approach takes a network- and video-centric approach to UC, preferring to rely on its strong network roots as the the backbone to delivering high quality communications and collaboration. It's all a matter of perspective.


Cisco Raises Its Bid for Tandberg of Norway - NYTimes.com

*Logically each vendor's approach has evolved over the last couple years, with Microsoft taking on partnerships of convenience and IBM's subtle movements toward its own PBX server (Sametime Unified Telephony) as a less aggressive market play (or market safety net) while telephony vendors begin to struggle to stay alive.

Design Criteria Defaults: SaaS

Yesterday I wrote about vendors making mobility a primary design criteria when developing collaboration platform interfaces, today I want to focus on the SaaS.

Still in it's 20o9 rage, the Cloud continues to pose issues for customers and vendors alike. Since late 2006 we've seen traditional software vendors, including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Cisco, throw their hat and products into the Cloud and offering SaaS-based delivery of many of their popular solutions. Spurred on by Google's ambitions in the the enterprise market, each vendor has come up with their own approach to SaaS and the Cloud. Some have made it out of beta to deliver ready for prime time offerings (Microsoft Online, LotusLive), some have pulled back to only providing private offerings (Oracle), others are emerging through building on top of consumer-based acquisitions (IBM Lotus and Cisco), and others are working on configuring the right architecture (Cicso).

Bottom line, updating existing products and systems and building a hosting operation is not simple. It's not easy to transform an installed, on-premise system - like e-mail or collaboration - into a multi-tenant, scalable, and secure SaaS offering. The migration of back-end servers to support larger loads and parsing out multiple domains can take time. Once that's in place modifying other supporting services like Directory or Search to support the complex security and permissions also takes time. Finally, designing the presentation layer to provide secure functionality also requires a change in attitude and development assumptions.

As with mobility, vendors need to consider hosting capabilities as an primary design criteria for all new system software. Microsoft has done well in coming closer to this goal in its SharePoint and Office 2010 designs, but still some of their forthcoming BI servers are still treating the hosting part as a follow-on job. IBM Lotus on the other hand appears to be approaching things differently, developing on-premise solutions separately from it's LotusLive offerings, many of which consist of acquired hosted products like Outblaze's e-mail or the Unyte hosted meetings.

It's not a foregone conclusion that all on-premise platforms need to be retro-fitted or upgraded for SaaS delivery. Designing for hosting will likely help in the integration department and make hybrid on-premise/Cloud delivery easier for both the vendor and the customer.

Microsoft's software pipeline set to burst - Microsoft, sharepoint, TechEd, Windows 7 - Computerworld

Nice take-away from TechEd 2009 from Network World's John Fontana.

If there was one revelation at this week's Microsoft TechEd conference it was that the company's product pipeline is stuffed with new software timed for release in the next seven to 12 months that will force corporate IT to deftly plan and strategize how it wants to deal with the onslaught.

Read the full article for more of his thoughts on how this may impact customers.

Disclosure: I'm quoted in the article.

Microsoft's software pipeline set to burst - Microsoft, sharepoint, TechEd, Windows 7 - Computerworld

Sizing up the Exchange 2010 Integrated Archives

A couple weeks ago I posted information on Microsoft's Exchange 2010 beta announcement. Since this is Microsoft's first foray into email archiving as a product, let alone an integrated feature of Exchange, I was curious about the implementation and what customers could expect. I've now got some more answers and it looks like the new service falls somewhere between a local personal archive and an centralized email archival and records management system.

Bottom line, the Exchange 2010 integrated archiving is a feature of the mailbox server role and builds email archives on the same server as the live mailbox. The archive is stored in centrally managed Exchange message store that allows administrative access to archived message content and ediscovery capabilities. The end user experience in the mailbox is a separate folder for the archived messages. The archive does not support SIS or stubbing, and there is no tiered storage management or records management for archive disposition other than the global mailbox purge, retention and hold features introduced in Exchange 2007. As far as existing local personal archive PSTs, users can drag and drop existing archives to the server based store from their desktops (probably requires Outlook).

So far Microsoft is looking at the beta program to gain more insight on how this new feature will impact server performance and number of mailboxes the server can support. Exchange 2007 brought economies of scale by increasing the number of mailboxes supported by a single server and I'm curious how the increased archiving might impact that performance. I suppose this is more of a storage issue than a messaging service issue; storage will likely need to be increased on mailbox servers to support the archives.

One of the questions I have is how disruptive the integrated archiving will be on the current email archiving market and whether it will put partners out of business. In general, if customers need more robust archiving and records management the Exchange 2010 archiving will not be sufficient, but for remedying problems associated with personal archives and errant PST files the solution will likely be popular. At this point, customers that require heavy lifting with storage and records management they will continue to look to third parties that offer more control over the archives.

Microsoft Unveils Exchange 2010 With Public Beta

Microsoft releases Exchange 2010 for public beta today. From the press release:

A public beta of the server is available for download starting today at http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010...Exchange Server 2010 will become available in the second half of 2009. Microsoft Office 2010 and related products will enter technical preview in the third quarter of 2009 and become available in the first half of 2010.

Information Week provides some more details on the release, including some hints at Outlook Web Access upgrades:

Outlook Web Access -- and likely the other versions of Outlook, though Microsoft wouldn't confirm -- will include an instant messaging client compatible with Microsoft Office Communications Server and Live Messenger. Microsoft will offer APIs to allow other third-party IM clients to work in Outlook Web Access.

To me the big news is the integrated e-mail archiving, which finally gets Microsoft into the e-mail archiving market. Some are concerned about it being a disruption to the existing e-mail archiving vendors, however I think it's about time that there is more seamless integration of archiving into messaging platforms with centralized controls. I'm still unsure how it's implemented, which is all the difference if this is disruptive or not. My specific questions include where are the archives stored, what are the archive file formats, do the archives support stubbing/re-stubbing or single instance store, and does the archive system provide record disposition or tiered storage management?