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Paul McDougall reports at InformationWeek that the government of the State of California is examining a move to hosted email and calendaring for state employees and it’s a Google vs Microsoft faceoff for the business:
California is looking at moving its e-mail, messaging, and calendaring systems to a hosted service … and the contract could land in the lap of either Google (NSDQ: GOOG) or Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), InformationWeek has learned.
It’s a choice that could affect a quarter of a million state workers and create a multimillion dollar revenue windfall for one of two major technology vendors. The state already has formed a working group to weigh the possibility of shifting to an online software service and how that would be handled either by Google or Microsoft.
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Documents generated by the working group show that California would expect to pay Google about $4.17 per user, per month, for basic e-mail hosting, messaging, and calendaring services with no setup fees. Exchange Online, by contrast, would cost the state a one-time setup fee of $17.65 per user, and an ongoing, per-user fee of $8.59 per month.
Ellison called the figures “ballpark” numbers. “We haven’t done any serious negotiating yet” with Google or Microsoft, he said, noting that about 250,000 California state workers are regular e-mail users. “We’d expect very competitive prices if we go forward,” said Ellison.
John Ellison, technology officer for the California Resources Agency and chairman of the working group also indicated that the current in-house Microsoft Exchange systems are comparable in cost to the hosted Microsoft Exchange offering, but inferior is some ways.
There will inevitably be jousting over features, but I think it is clear that Microsoft will not be able to maintain a price differential like that described as more and more of these head to head competitions with Google crop up. That means that Microsoft’s server software revenues just sprang a slow leak. And, of course, once Google gets its nose in the tent can Google Docs and a Microsoft Office revenue hit be far behind?
Microsoft has a fundamental problem competing with the online office application offerings like Google Docs in that they want to avoid cannibalizing their considerable Microsoft Office revenues. Therefore they have to try to emulate the desirable features of the online offerings while still requiring that the users have a fully paid up copy of Microsoft Office. That’s just what they did today when they announced “Microsoft Office Live Workspace, a new Web-based feature of Microsoft Office that lets people access their documents online and share their work with others.”
Microsoft today staged a rolling launch of Windows Vista, Office 2007, Exchange 2007 , and associated products starting in Sydney, Australia and wrapping around the world through Asia and Europe to Steve Ballmer in New York who is still speaking as I write. The launch event so far has been as devoid of excitement as expected, but the important thing is that Microsoft at long last got Vista out the door.
Update: For the sake of completeness, according to the press release linked above, the full set of products launched today was:
Products Released
An * below indicates the product is available now.Client upgrades
• Windows Vista Business *
• Office Professional 2007 *
• Office Project Professional 2007 *
• Office Visio Professional 2007 *
• Office InfoPath 2007 *
• Office OneNote 2007 *
• Office Communicator 2007Client enterprise editions
• Windows Vista Enterprise *
• Office Enterprise 2007 *Server upgrades
• Exchange Server 2007 *
• Office SharePoint Server 2007*
• Office Project Server 2007 *
• Forefront Security for Exchange Server *
• Forefront Security for SharePoint *
• System Center Configuration Manager 2007Server Enterprise editions
• Windows Rights Management Services *
• System Center Operations Manager Enterprise 2007
• Unified Messaging Services for Exchange *
• Excel and Forms Services for SharePoint *New products
• Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance
• Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 *
• Office Forms Server 2007 *
• Office SharePoint Designer 2007*
• Office Communications Server 2007
• “Voice Call Management” for Office Communication Server 2007
• Office PerformancePoint Server 2007
• Forefront Client Security
• Office Sharepoint Server for Search 2007 *
• SQL Server 2005 Data Mining Add-ins for Office 2007
• System Center “Desktop”
• Office Groove Server 2007*
• Office Groove 2007 *
• Exchange Hosted Services*
Some new Microsoft betas this week (so far):
Microsoft Launches Forefront Security for SharePoint Beta:
Microsoft Corp. today (Sept. 28) is launching the public beta of Forefront Security for SharePoint® (http://www.microsoft.com/forefront). This latest release of Microsoft® Forefront security products for businesses is based on Antigen for SharePoint Server, the multi-engine security solution acquired by Microsoft as part of the acquisition of Sybari Software Inc. in 2005.
Forefront Security for SharePoint is optimized to provide advanced protection for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows® SharePoint Services 3.0. Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies facilitate easy collaboration across an organization, connecting people, processes and systems within and beyond organizational boundaries. Forefront Security for SharePoint uses the combined power of multiple antivirus engines from leading security providers to protect against viruses, unwanted files and inappropriate content.
While we’re on the subject, Microsoft was also touting Gartner’s glowing assessment of their email security offerings including including Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services and Forefront Security for Exchange Server.
Windows Mobile Device Center Beta Coming Soon. It’s the replacement in Vista of ActiveSynch for synching up mobile devices with a Vista machine. It was AWOL in Vista RC1.
Windows PowerShell Release Candidate 2 was released. The scripting tool (codenamed “Monad”) for system administration tasks is expected to ship in the 4th quarter and/or embedded in Exchange 2007 when it ships.
The Windows Live Writer blogging tool beta got an update which fixed a number of problems in the original beta released in August.
Windows Live Expo started a limited beta in the UK.
Microsoft Releases First Broad Beta Developer Kit for .NET Micro Framework:
Microsoft Corp. today (Sept. 26) released a beta developer kit for the Microsoft® .NET Micro Framework, a new development platform for use with devices that are typically constrained by cost, memory, processor and/or power consumption. Announced at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston, the .NET Micro Framework broad beta extends the advantages of .NET and the Visual Studio® toolset into a class of the smallest of devices.
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The .NET Micro Framework grew out of the Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT) initiative at Microsoft.
The framework currently provides the software platform for all Smart Watches for MSN Direct. Additionally, the company plans to include it in Windows Vista SideShow displays and in an upcoming version of Microsoft TV Foundation Edition, the statements say.
