Hi all,

Few days ago I had to speak with someone who knows a lot of architecture and services orientation (an architect… yes I was brave but it doesn’t matter the bravery only if you won in the end) about Software plus Services and my talk wasn’t as good as I liked it to be. Because I don’t lose a “battle” two times in a row I started to make a deeper study about Software plus Services. In this matter, by the way, I don’t have the knowledge needed… YET!!! Hope someday I’ll have it… I’ll work for it, that’s for sure…

Anyway, in this quest (if you have good information, please, send it for me…) I’ve stumbled across a challenge made by Gianpaolo Carraro (Director, Architecture Strategy at Microsoft): “Help us spread the word about Software-plus-Services. All you need is a video camera, this script, and lots of creativity!”

You need to read the story that Gianpaolo made to make clear what S+S is all about and make a movie of it. The win prizes are: S+S t-shirt, Microsoft LifeCam, the top 10 viewed videos will be shown at Tech-Ed SEA and the winner a weekend in Macau!!! Death line 31 of July.

I’m not very good as a “movie maker” L If you need any help you be my guest and mailme!!!

The link is here: http://www.bringitalltogether.asia/

Hi all,

First of all this post is an opinion based on my perspective of the new actual Microsoft and my knowledge about Cloud Computing! It’s important that you understand that I don’t have any inside information or whatsoever!

Currently, the big earning of Microsoft is licensing. Their customer has to pay a licensing fee, buy their own computer/servers and hire their own technology staff. So, the TCO (Total Cost of ownership) is high and, worse, this business model is not so flexible and so adaptable to the necessities that the organizations have to face in a global village.

If you think in a software/infrastructures view you have to answer two questions: Is your software/ infrastructures supporting and adding real/full value to the organization? Will your software/ infrastructures support/handle the organization needs in medium/long term? It’s now, that we start to think that scalability, elasticity and adaptability is very important for the life of an organization/enterprise. This issues are so important that organizations don’t bother to lost some of the in-plan features that some software architectural models like componentry, three-tier, event driven, etc , implemented. Instead, a conceptual view that software should be looked as a service brought SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) the mother of business models like: SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), S+S (Software plus Services), WOA (Webservices plus objects), etc…

So, in a Service business world, Microsoft business model (till now the traditional model) has not the same importance and in consequence the same revenue! However, Microsoft is not alone in the market. Microsoft has to count with their partners, ISVs (Independent Sales Vendors), final customer s, etc… It’s a really complex equation with heavy calculations! I’m not saying that is an impossible equation, I’m only saying that it’s a little messy and the approach has to be well designed in order to a continuous win-win relation can be guaranteed.

Microsoft didn’t pass right to SaaS and innovates the actual business model adding a kind of SaaS. The result was a new business model that mixes traditional software with cloud based software – Services plus Software (later on I will talk more deeply about this business model). Ok, we can see that this model is a way to not lose the old business model and it opens doors to the future. In my personal point of view and actual Microsoft state is the right approach.

However, we need to think that if we are speaking of Services, a service is not bought, is rented. A service business model is extremely demanding to an organization because the customer s will not pay a license fee plus maintenance, instead will be made a contract to the customer and is paid from time to time. This means that you will not receive a bucket of money and “bye, bye customer… see you in the next version” but you will need to have a true customer orientation and your earnings will be a reflection of this relationship. Your service it really has to be an asset to your customer and therefore the two questions above, without any doubt, need to be answer: YES, YES!!!

So, how Microsoft can make money in a world which is not the leader or the only huge player?

(In a next post

Principles of writing: SaaS\Cloud-Computing )

Dear all,

I very glad to announce, for all that didn’t know of course, that I’m getting happier everyday with Microsoft, because they are getting lighter and understanding what will be the future. It was and it will be a difficult path for them to cross but I think that it will worth it.

Another step was made by starting to not ignore enterprise 2.0 (and maybe other buzz 2.0). They first started to put SharePoint, SQL Server and BizTalk on the “Cloud”. Now, with Microsoft Office Labs they are building (testing the prototype) an internal Facebook-like social network that will be deployed with SharePoint plus office. SharePoint already have wikis and other social apps but it was not a true social Intranet and it wasn’t very used – at least in Portugal.

I know some cases that the organizations stopped buying Intranets and started to use “Facebooks” (a business model Platform as a Service) because more than 80% of their employees were using FaceBook. But the “Cloud” services have some handicaps and one of the biggest is security (can I trust on the Cloud?!?). Organizations are using FaceBook as an Intranet but the files are still staying on the shell (not in the Cloud). I think that is for now and Microsoft too! For the time being Microsoft will upgrade all (all that are possible) their products toward Software plus Services business model.

For internal marketing this “tool” will be great, because big organizations already understood that knowing their employees brings fantastic inputs to the chain of value and ultimately to the leadership and motivation field.

I promise to approach Software plus Services, Marketing 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, etc 2.0 more deeply soon!!!