In my role as Hosting Evangelist, I am continually surprised at the number of hosters in the US who are willing to either partner with or simply refer customers to the largest threats to their existence, namely Microsoft and Google.
Let’s review the tape a bit and see what kind of “partners” these behemoths make.
Microsoft has launched several programs aimed directly at the SMB market both directly and indirectly. In the consumer space (which inadvertently participates in the SMB space), Microsoft has Outlook.com, SkyDrive, Skype, and a nearly complete Office product. For just a few dollars per month, Office 365 offers SMBs nearly the same experiences but upgrades them with full Outlook integration, Sharepoint, Lync, and a complete Office product. Sure Microsoft will let select providers give away their customer base for a decent first year split but second and subsequent years don’t even cover the billing headaches.
Most importantly, Microsoft is taking a flaming torch to the competition due to the threat to its existing installed base of Office product and the very real threat that Google presents. In an effort to “go all in in the cloud”, Microsoft is ready to squeeze their own partners in an effort to hold the market. And keep your eye on the Microsoft device story for an idea how this will play out. Ask a tablet manufacturer how he feels about Surface or a Windows Mobile provider how he feels about Nokia. Microsoft will be ruthless to their partners to get to the desired outcome.
Google claims to “do no evil.” However, they do not have a long history of partnering. They are an advertising company that makes products to drive the advertisements. As such, your business and its needs are not core to doing business with you. In fact, the design of Google’s products are to be disruptively open so that customers can choose to have the Google experience on any device, with any service, and performing any task. This includes offering cloud storage solutions, productivity tools, rich email, website hosting and chat solutions. Today, you may be referring a customer to Google for gmail but tomorrow they will take the rest of Google’s services and leave you behind.
As a hoster, especially in the US, you have to be planning today for the competition that is coming tomorrow. If you continue to refer your customers, they will gladly take them. If you do not currently have a communication, collaboration, and productivity suite, your business may be destined to fall incrementally in to the hands of you “partners”. They sure don’t have a problem selling them a complete line of hosting, saas and cloud services that compete with you.
Of course, Open-Xchange was founded on the proposition of being a real partner to the hosting community and we have many exciting products underdevelopment that can help you now and in the long term.
