11.04.09
BPOS – There really isn’t a reason not to.
Microsoft’s BPOS Suite has come on quite a journey since it’s difficult birth. I can remember the reactions from the hosters I work with when the product set was announced. It ranged from outrage “They’re in competition with us!” through disbelief to a very simple “Meh, we provide other stuff with they can’t.”
Today’s announcement that the pricing for BPOS is being dropped and the mailbox spec increased is surely going to cause more growls and shrugs. The simple fact is thought that Microsoft tried over and over again to place Exchange Server, SharePoint and OCS into the hosing space through it’s partners and it simply didn’t take off the way that it should have done.
There are as many reasons (or excuses) for this as there are HMC – the MS hosting solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration – partners out there, but the main ones are simply that the product was never positioned by any partner the way that Microsoft has positioned BPOS and that the investment in making it easy for the customers was almost totally missing.
BPOS customers are able to migrate their users, groups, contacts and mailbox contents onto the hosted platform with little deep technical knowledge being required. They can also elect to keep some mailboxes locally if they need to.
The release:
New Pricing Announced for Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS)
Over the last few years we have seen demand for hosted software applications rapidly increase. Due to the success of our online services (Business Productivity Online Suite) we have decided to reduce the price in order to continue to deliver a competitive and compelling offer that will help to drive continued customer adoption. In addition mailbox storage has now been increased from 5B to 25GB. From 3 November 2009 the new price structure for Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite is as follows:| Offer | Original List Price | New UK Price |
| BPO Standard Suite | £10.04 | £6.71 |
| Exchange Online Standard | £6.69 | £3.35 |
| SharePoint Online Standard | £4.85 | £3.52 |
| Office Communications Online Standard | £1.67 | £1.34 |
| Live Meeting Standard | £3.01 | £3.02 |
Let’s take a look at one of those prices in particular: Exchange Online.
With these price releases organisations can now get an Exchange Server 2007 mailbox – with a built-in upgrade path to Exchange Server 2010 – for £3.35 per user, per month. Take a look around the hosters and see what the pricing is… really. Then have a think about the cost of a new server, the OS and Application licenses, the backup tapes / disks and the administration resource and tell me it makes sense to run Exchange yourself as a business who’s core competencies are NOT technology!
And to the hosters out there who are, today, throwing their arms in the air and screaming betrayal; you had the opportunity over the last 3 years to develop a significant business offering your own BPOS solution and put yourselves in this position but you didn’t, you put an Exchange Server logo on your web site and sold the TECHNOLOGY not the SERVICE. If you don’t have a migration plan for new customers then you are simply saying you don’t actually care about their needs.
I’ve been banging on about this stuff for quite a while now and it seems that the proof is finally coming to roost.
1. Do it first
2. Do it best
3. Do it cheapest
Those are the keys to making money in hosting. If you can get a combination then it’s pretty much a cast-iron guarantee.
If you’ve simply built an HMC platform, created some plans and then marked up your SPLA pricing thinking you have a solution you’ve missed the point, significantly and now MS are making it for you.
To Hosters
You have a choice now, provide your Exchange products as a value-added part of a larger solution like ERP, CRM or the like, position your solution against BPOS with good, solid business support and services, OR resell BPOS and make a solid recurring referral fee. It’s really become that simple
To Businesses
Give your TCO a serious look. BPOS now offers a significant benefit in both technology and financial terms as an alternative to running your own systems. If you believe you have a more difficult technological issue to overcome then talk to a Systems Integrator (like Planet Technologies of course!) who will be able to not only identify how your systems can be structured but also how ‘Cloud Services’ such as BPOS can and should be leveraged for your business and help you to migrate, quickly and easily, to BPOS if you make that decision.
