Today Microsoft announced that their acquisition of FrontBridge Technologies will now be rebranded as “Exchange Hosted Service” (EHS). EHS offers a outsourced, per user, per month service to
Now if you’re a hoster, which most of you who visit my blog are, you’ll notice that this is pretty close to the naming of “Hosted Exchange” the solution. Sure there is no “Microsoft Solution for Hosted Exchange” any longer as it’s now just a component of the “Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging & Collaboration”, but most people still think of Microsoft offering Web Hosting (via IIS and some SQL) and Hosted Exchange.
Now that Microsoft has done this, what real issues will come of this? Small Business and Enterprise customers are still coming around to looking at outsourcing their Exchange platform to a hoster that offers “Hosted Exchange” as a service. Microsoft has “Exchange Hosted Services” that they host, but can also be hosted via a Service Provider offering or customer can use “Exchange Hosted Services” without “Hosted Exchange” as they host their own services. Confused yet?
Also, with Microsoft making a big push via their “Microsoft Live” services, I’m wondering when they’ll restart their “Hosted Exchange” offering themselves. Several years ago, Microsoft offered Hosted Exchange via their bCentral services targeted towards Small to Medium businesses. Microsoft is already targeting a hosted offering towards Small Businesses via their Office Live service (Email via Hotmail, Collaboration via new version of Windows SharePoint Services, and web hosting). I’m thinking they are only a few steps away from bringing Hosted Exchange back into the fold. This is all speculation on my part and Microsoft has not made any hits or announcements about this.
With that said, I still think that there will be much room for Service Provider to offer Hosted Exchange and other services provided by Microsoft. Why am I so optimistic about that? With Microsoft getting more into the space, they will use their Marketing might to educated customers about this service. But it will also teach Microsoft on how to make their products better to target the Service Provider scenario. As for the existing or future customer base of Service Providers, I think there will be many that don’t want to host their corporate data with a company that has a big hacker bull’s-eye on it and they’ll want someone who is within their same region, focused primarily in the Hosting space, or is offering services that you know Microsoft won’t offer (mySQL, Oracle, Linux, Blackberry, etc.).
Now with that all said, I think there will be many hosters looking to see how they can automate the process of signing up their Hosted Exchange customers to utlilize “Exchange Hosted Services” and perhaps get a discount (as the hoster will be doing the selling) via the Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA). Or maybe this is something customers can do on their own, but still have their Service Provider host their Exchange Platform.
These are things I’ll have to add to my list of items to research. More on that (I hope) later.
Exchange Hosted Services: http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/services/default.mspx
Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging & Collaboration: http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/solutions/hostedmessaging.mspx
Office Live: http://officelive.microsoft.com/