OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/20001/Microsoft_Sets_Pricing_Fee_Sharing_For_Services Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:10:40 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com not a smart move http://osnews.com/thread?321926 http://osnews.com/thread?321926 Way to go Microsoft... Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AnXa) Comments Well, bully for them. http://osnews.com/thread?321938 http://osnews.com/thread?321938 Of course, once the genius CIO who okayed a subscription such as this for the entire company has a little talk with the CFO over such small matters as not having any depreciation for a subscription service and the effect of a baseball bat colliding with said CIO's head, things will probably look less rosy... ;) Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Moocha) Comments Great for small companies http://osnews.com/thread?321942 http://osnews.com/thread?321942 I think this is great. The price? A little steep if you ask. Say you have a 10 000 person company. That's 180 * 10000 = 1.8 million dollars a year.

I'm sure some companies are going to cost that out in terms of equipment, tech support, installation... and maybe find it is cheaper to do it in house.

They should drop it down to at least Google's level of 50 dollar a year.

That's 500K a year total for a 10K company. Heck the costs are probably justified just for the IT teams salary ;) Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Yamin) Comments Welcome http://osnews.com/thread?321944 http://osnews.com/thread?321944 ...to the 21 century guys. Only question now is if this particular IT utility concept will actually prove profitable.

Software as a service is already working great for IBM, but they have a total solution approach which includes hardware and services. Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (SReilly) Comments Comment by satan666 http://osnews.com/thread?321951 http://osnews.com/thread?321951 How do you think Bill got to be one of the richest man in the world and Steve the only CEO in the world that became billionaire?
My only regret is that the price is not in the range of $15 per second per typing fingers. Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (satan666) Comments RE: Great for small companies http://osnews.com/thread?321963 http://osnews.com/thread?321963 A company with 10k users are not going to be looking into a service like this. My company is 1500, at most and staffs an IT department. Not a very large one, but enough that we get the job done, complete with an SAP helpdesk and developer staff.

This is meant for the under 500 user companies. Ideal for the 20 to 30 employee ma and pa shop that employs no one with any IT experience (like a machine shop).

By the by, I believe Google's domain and infrastructure hosting services are still cheaper, and probably more effective. Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Phloptical) Comments RE: Welcome http://osnews.com/thread?321982 http://osnews.com/thread?321982 Indeed. The only thing shocking here is the fact they didn't do it sooner. Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (orestes) Comments divide and conquer http://osnews.com/thread?321984 http://osnews.com/thread?321984 a suite of "hosted" software, which includes e-mail, Web meeting, collaboration and messaging applications

Strip and sell, strip and sell...

By the way shouldn't one ask wether the OS itself isn't enough? Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (netpython) Comments RE: Great for small companies http://osnews.com/thread?321987 http://osnews.com/thread?321987
I think this is great. The price? A little steep if you ask. Say you have a 10 000 person company. That's 180 * 10000 = 1.8 million dollars a year. I'm sure some companies are going to cost that out in terms of equipment, tech support, installation... and maybe find it is cheaper to do it in house. They should drop it down to at least Google's level of 50 dollar a year. That's 500K a year total for a 10K company. Heck the costs are probably justified just for the IT teams salary ;)


Large companies aren't the target market for this service. It's all about providing IT infrastructure (servers, doc and mail hosting, etc) for smaller companies that can't afford it. My understanding is that Microsoft is providing hosted access to the MS Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc). Everything lives in the cloud and is accessible via TS. When you compare $15 per seat to the cost of maintaining IT infrastructure, it seems that it's not as expensive as you'd think. It probably doesn't scale to a 10K person company but, then again, a company of that size already has IT infrastructure and doesn't need this level of service.Edited 2008-07-08 18:55 UTC Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tomcat) Comments MobileMe and now this http://osnews.com/thread?322006 http://osnews.com/thread?322006 People are complaining about Apple's price, and this one is even more, per year. Just classic. Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tyrione) Comments RE: MobileMe and now this http://osnews.com/thread?322022 http://osnews.com/thread?322022 If blizzard can convince people to pay $15 a month for WOW i don't think MS is on a bad idea here.

There will always be a niche for pay as you go. Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (stabbyjones) Comments RE[2]: Great for small companies http://osnews.com/thread?322026 http://osnews.com/thread?322026
By the by, I believe Google's domain and infrastructure hosting services are still cheaper, and probably more effective.


I dunno about that. Google still has a VERY hard sell to convince customers to pay for Google Office. Google might be willing to drop the price REALLY low (eg. ad-funded) to pick off the low-hanging fruit, but it remains to be seen whether they can grab many MS Office customers. This is a pretty smart move by MS, in my opinion. It seems to blunt the impact of Google Office/Apps.Edited 2008-07-08 23:34 UTC Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tomcat) Comments RE: Comment by satan666 http://osnews.com/thread?322094 http://osnews.com/thread?322094 Ah, so you're saying that because someone has a history of success we should take for granted they'll never make any mistakes?
Tell that to Napoleon. Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Soulbender) Comments Subscription Software http://osnews.com/thread?322134 http://osnews.com/thread?322134 Microsoft would much rather sell a subscription to use their products, rather than trying to convince Joe Public to upgrade to the newest versions of Windows, Office, etc.

This is where Microsoft has wanted to go for a long time, and in fact they have been incrementally moving in this direction. In some ways, the biggest corporate customers are already on a form of subscription-based software. Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jon Dough) Comments RE[3]: Great for small companies http://osnews.com/thread?322231 http://osnews.com/thread?322231 Yeah, I agree about the office app thing. I was speaking more to the domain/email hosting functions that Google offer users. Chances are, the PCs these people will run will be bundled with Office anyway. Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Phloptical) Comments RE: Subscription Software http://osnews.com/thread?322232 http://osnews.com/thread?322232 Welcome to the 21st century, where your life is spent one monthly bill at a time. Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Phloptical) Comments