“The battle for Cloud dominance is heating up, with the release of Office 365, it will be very interesting to see where the next big play comes from.”

The Cloud has been around for a little while now. The development of the cloud has taken place over the last few years, led in the most part by Google’s innovations in Email, Document storage Cloud Apps and their SharePoint Alternative in Google Sites.

The competition has been growing with more and more Cloud providers flooding the market in various guises. There is a simple reason for this – The Cloud is the method through which systems and software is going to be delivered to companies in the future – resistance to this is the equivalent of insisting that you will only communicate with clients via fax (or telegram!) rather than email.
Microsoft’s cloud has three guises BPOS (soon to be Office 365), Azure and Windows Server Hyper V. The most relevant of these as far as most businesses are concerned is BPOS/Office 365.

As the infographic shows, Google Apps currently has a strong hold in the marketplace but any betting man would be a fool to think that was going to last with Microsoft having a £10 million UK TV advertising campaign in the pipeline. They are due to launch their ‘Cloud Power’ campaign in the US this week – with the UK not lagging far behind.

Think the launch of Windows 95 all over again but this time aimed directly at business.
Advertising is something that Microsoft is very good at: think about the Windows 7 party campaign – whilst possibly the worst concept of all time – the buzz it generated was enormous. All social media sites were packed with mocking posts and videos. The goal of reaching their target market was reached easily and mostly through the work of techies who had put together their own – highly entertaining – content.

‘Cloud Power’ is targeted differently as it is aimed directly at business rather than at individuals who like to stay up to date with their software. It is also a concept rather than a simple and understood product. Many of us have been trying to bring home the message that companies should be moving to The Cloud but few of us have the experience, not to mention the financial clout of Microsoft.

To say Microsoft Office 365 is going to be a game changer is an understatement – despite what many ideological commentators may think. The ability to continue using familiar programmes in a powerful, rich, fully integrated environment with enterprise grade security on a pay as you use basis is going to be attractive not only to big business but importantly smaller companies, for whom issues like user training are a big concern.

Moving to Office 365 will mean that companies don’t have to worry about compatibility issues which exist with Google Docs as the vast majority of users open files with MS Office anyway. You won’t need user training or have the big hit of software upgrades – costs will be regular and manageable which in these hard economic times will be a major positive for the market.

What such an advertising campaign does spell out though is the shift in emphasis onto the smaller business market rather than relying on a trickle down from corporates. Using TV advertising for Business means that Microsoft is aiming The Cloud directly at the 4 million small businesses operating in the UK today – similar to the Citrix scheme of its (rather strange)TV marketing campaign for Gotomeeting.

With the game changing on the Microsoft front though – others are sure to respond. It’s going to be a very interesting period in the on-going battle for technical dominance. If ever you needed Cloud Hypermarket’s help, now is the time.

Cloud Hypermarket was established by Andrew Gradwell and Daniel Scarfe in order to help businesses transition to the cloud as easily as possible. If you’d like more information or would like to schedule an interview with Andrew Gradwell please call +44 845 388 6012.

New cloud technology is here. Microsoft is ‘all in,’ Google always has been and what remains of IBM is plowed into cloud services through LotusLive. Independents like Cobweb and Rackspace (who provide 1.7 million business users with cloud email and storage) have been making large amounts out of this for a while. The cloud means massive savings for all businesses on hardware and software. Some of the biggest companies are taking these savings and putting them into more (expensive) technology such as iPads for employees so they are always on the same hub. Companies like Outsourcery provide these solutions for big business, and the solutions come at a premium. Large details of this nature make a lot of money for providers like Outsourcery.

Unfortunately, this means smaller businesses (not necessarily financially but based on number of employees) are left behind as such companies believe there is not enough profit in providing them with cloud systems. The existing support companies for smaller businesses are adverse to the idea of providing cloud services because they will decrease their profit margins in the way they are currently set up. In part this is due to the price war going on between Microsoft and Google; prices for base packages are very low. IT companies providing for small business make a lot of money out of selling software and hardware. They currently have to overcompensate and sell companies more than they need, so if and when such companies grow, the IT structure can cope with it. They also make a lot of money out of maintenance when these systems fail.

Cloud systems basically remove these factors and thus a large amount of charges small business providers can justify. The cloud systems are based on massive, backed up infrastructure, meaning if there are any errors then systems are automatically rerouted and email, shared drive storage and collaboration tools will not go down. Microsoft and Google guarantee a 99.9 percent uptime which equates to eight hours and 46 minutes a year downtime (24/7), and any business will tell you that this is a vast improvement on in-house systems. Also, if your system were to go down in the middle of the night or on a weekend, it will be fixed before you even find out, rather than discovering the problem when you are due to start work and then having to wait for it to be fixed. Security en masse is better too. If someone wants to hack your in-house system they will find it a lot easier to do than hacking Microsoft, then finding your system within the cloud (a needle in a haystack), then hacking that.

All other independent providers (such as Cobweb, Rackspace and 1&1) are providing their own systems based on Google or Microsoft offerings. With no clear definitions yet in place, it is a minefield for anybody who is not an expert to know which service provides what, with endless technical jargon specific to each provider.

Cloud Hypermarket has grouped such technical jargon into specific fields so companies can compare and contrast the features offered by each one. You can buy direct services with Google and Microsoft or go to an independent vendor — they provide a gateway to any of these services. They offer telephone advice as they may still have questions regarding each service. One of their important selling points is that they are completely impartial — comparing Microsoft and Google services, as well as services of independent resellers such as Cobweb, Rackspace and 1&1.

The biggest stumbling block so far has been the amount of confusion surrounding the ‘Internet cloud.’ Most people have heard of it but are not sure exactly what it is and why it is to their advantage to use it. During recent user testing, several testers stated that they were IT savvy and knew about the cloud — but they came up with some extremely variable definitions. Reports from certain providers and reports suggest that around 60 percent of small businesses have not heard of the cloud, or have no idea what it is.

Put simply, cloud computing will save companies money, provide unlimited scalability, provide better security and better availability. If your in house server or email goes down, then there’s nothing you can do about it until it is fixed. If your Internet connection goes down, then you cannot send email from your in house system as it has no way of communicating. With a cloud system, you can still access your email, share drives and send email by using another connection via 3G, mobile phone or local wireless connections. It is no longer a question of ‘Will all companies move their systems to the cloud?’ It is a question of how long it will take them to do it.

Sharepoint is the big giant in the enterprise collaboration space. Salesforce.com is now in the market with Salesforce Chatter, a service that embraces Facebook, Twitter and the applications within Force.com.

MindTouch has the potential to compete with the large market players. Today they are announcing MindTouch Cloud, an open-source, SaaS service that integrates business data from any number of sources, including Oracle, Sugar CRM and Salesforce.com.

MindTouch Cloud is meant for a business community to create their own dashboards. It allows users to collaborate with a familiar wiki environment with the capabilities of an enterprise platform.

It’s also another example of how enterprise technologies are increasingly designed so the average business user may perform tasks that have traditionally been the domain of the IT department.

What differentiates MindTouch from Sharepoint and other services is its emphasis on the data. Users may collaborate across multiple enterprise systems and web applications.

MindTouch Cloud is an enterprise mashup service. Business critical information can be exported from enterprise systems and mashed up to create reports and build applications. It has the requirements for the enterprise, including authentication using LDAP, single-sign on security. Role management is built into the service with the capability to create new users, roles and groups.

Compare that to Salesforce Chatter and you see some similarities in how applications can be integrated to create an intelligent dashboard environment that fits into an enterprise environment.

MindTouch does need some work on its user interface. But it has all the features that can make it a valuable service for a business looking to build dashboards that can mashup enterprise data and external applications.

This is MindTouch’s first cloud computing effort. Pricing starts at $7 per user per month.

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