Outlook, Exchange, the whole paradigm is out of date. Email was the cloud, before there was a cloud. The first “killer app” of ubiquitous TCP/IP.

We are just seeing the beginning of the innovation – catch up – if you will. Imagine where all of these technologies are going to be a year from now. Companies who make the right bets early on cloud will have substantial savings, be more nimble, and positioned well vs. competitors when a recovery eventually starts.

(Your original comment made me giggle, so this is my lame attempt to contribute. )

1. People who decide which software to buy, who hate Microsoft (and for some WEIRD reason, prefer IBM software…)
2. People who actually *use* the software, who would pray to the god(s) of your choice to be using Microsoft (or anything other than this IBM garbage…)

They don’t want to go directly after the Company’s with 1000+ users and replace their Exchange setups. But more so go after the ones with 10 to a few hundred users who need an exchange solution and can not afford to build and maintain said exchange solution. Someone mentioned zimbra which is a great solution all in itself however you still need to employ someone savvy enough to manage and maintain this solution.

Google has taken this back into their Apps cloud vs. the other ISV’s that assume a silo or hosted sale.

There are specific Outlook/Exchange features that have no direct mapping (from a user perspective) in either an ISV or Google Apps substitute. example: public folders, etc.

The limitations on these connectors is that a published list of “issues” and “known bugs” are the only things that prevent a en masse migration from Exchange. Oddly enough, these specific features that are lacking are often used the least in an organization.

So much for “lock in”.

story has entered the popular today section on popurls.com…

At the moment, and for quite a while, Microsoft is in that position. While Hotmail had a unique USP when it started, Microsoft didn’t innovate and didn’t know how to handle it. I lost my account – without flinching, Microsoft took away my account because I had not logged in for three months. For all that time, I was still using a variety of Microsoft products – its just that I hadn’t logged into my account. 2 years of my important emails were confiscated and dumped in cold storage somewhere. Worse, so many emails went to the new account holder, who like Microsoft did not have the good sense to warn the senders. I would have expected a market ‘leader’ to tar it into a tape for me for a charge. In the least, a real leader would do that.

Hotmail was worst because they never increased storage, and they did not allow large attachments. Shouldn’t Microsoft, the market leader hace known what its users want? It probably did, but Microsoft never cares until it is threatened. And then, it makes hodge-podge efforts making you madder as hell.

Anyone who thinks Hotmail is better than gmail is not credible. You would have to ignore a lot of trends and historic data to bestow the crown on Hotmail.

And look at Outlook. Microsoft product managers, thinking they own the market forever, make so many versions. Anyone knows that an Express User has similar needs to a person using Enterprise Outlook version. In fact, the same person would end up using 2 different versions of Outlook in the same day depending on whether he/she is at work or at home or at their small business.

The Segmentation of the market into umpteen different and artificially disjoint segments is absurd. Look at versions of Vista: Home, Premium..Ultimate. Aren’t people mobile? Is it a surprise that they go from networking environment to networking environment?

The whole idea that lan-based networking capability in Vista is worth $150 more than a non-networked version is arrogant and egregious.

Why can’t we just have one version of everything? Do we have the time to titillate ourselves with the minutia of Windows versions?

Windows is just like the Tax code in terms of complexity.

Look at the beauty of the open source community. Look at architecture of Firefox and its wonderful extensions.

What I am really mad about is that many other software vendors who were cry-babies pointing a finger at Microsoft, ended up doing similar corrupt or defunct business practices.

And where was Scott McNeally and his whiz-bang techs? They had great opportunities to right the world for decades but instead languished in the wind and settled for more bark than bite.

So, thank you Google for kicking really butt! Carry on!!

Bill Gates is a great humanistic role model, but Microsoft is not.