Wednesday, October 15, 2008

IBM, Microsoft and Google

On October 6th, IBM launched their cloud services initiative. This is a:

 "[C]ompany-wide initiative that extends its traditional software delivery model toward a mix of on-premise and cloud computing applications with new software, services and technical resources for clients and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). IBM's new cloud services can help businesses of all sizes more easily adopt cloud computing models to better manage data, lower operational costs and make collaboration easier."

Since IBM has partnered on cloud computing with Google, this commentary on Microsoft by Michael Vizard may be telling:

"Just about everything that Microsoft does and says about cloud computing comes across as fairly reactionary. Essentially, Microsoft has let Google set the tone for much of the last two years and every service that it rolls out is compared and contrasted to something Google already did...."

" ...Unfortunately, it looks like Microsoft is pretty much asleep at the wheel when it comes to cloud computing in the channel. Of course, one of these days Google is going to wake up to the same opportunity. And before Microsoft realizes, a large swath of the channel might find common cause with Google simply because it might actually be trying to make an effort."


But Google has issues as well. From the same commentary:

 

"Right now, it doesn’t look like Google even knows how to spell the word channel. But that’s not likely to stay the case forever. In the meantime, Microsoft is pretty much ignoring a coalition of the willing at its own peril."


Microsoft clearly has a chance to leverage it's dominance in the application space by helping it's partners port millions of applications to the cloud using the Microsoft Cloud OS. But will they move before Google wakes up and smells the channel?  


When is comes to channels, IBM also knows a few things so this will indeed be interesting.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You don't wake up and smell the channel, you spend half a decade trying to build it - that's why 3Com was so strong in the networking space, and also how Cisco managed to wash their face (after a few early struggles in the channel). There is a world between being a consumer oriented media company, and being a IT channel organization. There again, maybe IBM is Google's channel?