So what does all this mean for you and for Microsoft?
For you, it means that Google Apps is has graduated to a must-evaluate solution, particularly if you're thinking about upgrading your existing Office-SharePoint-Exchange setup. Not only is the game-changing technology compelling enough to sample, the cost is a bargain for what you get. Whereas Google Apps costs $50 per user per year for the entire thing, you have to spend $120 per user per year just for Microsoft's collaborative backbone in the cloud. In addition to that, for users to be able to create and edit documents locally or in the cloud (using that collaborative backbone) will require a licensed copy of Microsoft Office for each user.
For Microsoft? One thing I've learned is, never count Microsoft out. As far as pricing is concerned, Microsoft can (and most likely will) reduce its price whenever it wants to. Also, Microsoft will probably have to relax one of its legal requirements, the one that makes a license to Microsoft Office 2010 a prerequisite for each user that's going to access the read/write versions of its Web apps.
In terms of technology, Microsoft, like Google, has some of the finest software engineers in the world. When Microsoft wants to, it can close pretty much any technological gap. It's just a question of whether that's what it wants to do. And if that is what it wants to do, it had better not wait too long to do it.
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?
