TM84 writes "InformationWeek reports on Microsoft's latest revenue plan. Within one year the company plans to offer hosting implementations of Sharepoint as well as CRM and ERP applications." From the article: "One thing is certain: Microsoft is exploring myriad ways to deploy and charge for software, ranging from subscription models a la MSN to easier ways for companies to buy incremental products not in their current Enterprise Agreements. Some industry observers liken the hosting move to the 'turn on a dime' shift that Microsoft executed years back when it discovered the Internet. When asked which other products and services Microsoft would host, another Microsoft insider said, 'Everything. Hosted Office. Everything hosted.'" Microsoft To Enter Hosting Business Log in/Create an Account | Top | 187 comments | Search Discussion Display Options Threshold: -1: 187 comments 0: 182 comments 1: 147 comments 2: 100 comments 3: 36 comments 4: 22 comments 5: 12 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First (Ignore Threads) Newest First (Ignore Threads) The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. 2nd place again (Score:1) by mustafap (452510) on Thursday October 27, @08:55AM (#13888211) (http://www.drivesentinel.co.uk/) Looks like they do read Sun's press releases :o)Hosted Office? Not from Microsoft thanks. I'd rather go with the power of Ajax.http://www.writely.com/ [writely.com]Or OpenOffice. Or anyone. But not Microsoft. [ Reply to ThisRe:2nd place again by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @09:02AMRe:2nd place again by mustafap (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @09:09AMRe:2nd place again by zootm (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @09:10AMRe:2nd place again by LDoggg_ (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @10:27AMRe:2nd place again by zootm (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @10:35AMRe:2nd place again by LDoggg_ (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @10:49AMRe:2nd place again by zootm (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:04AMRe:2nd place again by I'm Don Giovanni (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @01:16PMRe:2nd place again by Anonymous Coward (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @09:13AMRe:2nd place again by chrismcdirty (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @09:28AMRe:2nd place again by BaseLineNL (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @10:56AMHistory of AJAX by b4k3d b34nz (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @11:58AM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:2nd place again by SatanicPuppy (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @10:05AM MS Reactionaries - the next big thing (Score:5, Insightful) by yancey (136972) on Thursday October 27, @08:56AM (#13888217) Is it me or has Microsoft become highly reactionary? Google says they are going to start hosting things like databases and office applications on the web and *bam* suddenly Microsoft says the same thing. Mac OS uses the graphics processor and OpenGL to provide dazzling desktop effects and *bam* suddenly Microsoft says their next version of Windows will have the same thing. I'm sure there are probably many other examples. Can Microsoft not come up with useful new technologies on their own? Are they brain-dead followers blantanly copying everybody else's ideas? [ Reply to ThisRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by Anonymous Coward (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @08:58AM Re:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing (Score:4, Insightful) by Anita Coney (648748) on Thursday October 27, @09:06AM (#13888265) "What exactly is wrong with implementing a good idea, regardless of who came up with it?"This shouldn't have to be explained, but when a person or entity can only steal ideas, that means they ran out of ideas. When a company runs out of ideas, the shark is jumped and the decline begins. Thus, we're witnessing the beginging of the end of Microsoft as a relevant force in the computer industry."What have OSS developers come up with on their own lately?"A bullet-proof OS that NEVER gets viruses, spyware, etc. We could only dream that Microsoft would follow that lead! [ Reply to This | ParentRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by zootm (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @09:12AMthe next big thing : MS Pro-Active Security Model by da5idnetlimit.com (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @10:18AMRe:the next big thing : MS Pro-Active Security Mod by zootm (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @10:23AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by tpgp (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @11:03AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by zootm (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:18AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by vertinox (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @05:02PMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by zootm (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @07:23PMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by zootm (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @10:29AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by Retric (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:19AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by zootm (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:24AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by Retric (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:37AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by zootm (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:47AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @11:03AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by vertinox (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @05:20PM2 replies beneath your current threshold.Re:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @09:12AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by ThosLives (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @09:21AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @09:27AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by penguinrenegade (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @11:50AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by thelexx (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @01:21PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @09:13AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by ozmanjusri (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @10:20AM1 reply beneath your current threshold.1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing (Score:5, Insightful) by Iriel (810009) on Thursday October 27, @09:06AM (#13888264) (http://www.stevenvansickle.com/) has become? Has always been. I'm honestly not trolling, but Microsoft is not smart in the innovative sense as much as they are at keeping an eye out for a good thing. Say what you want about whether or not MS will rape and pillage that good thing for the almighty dollar, but when they see something work, they know how to exploit that with their marketing to be 'good enough' to come out on top. At least, more often than not. Another great example is that they just joined Yahoo! with the Open Content Alliance, now that almost everyone is poo-pooing Google Print. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by Iriel (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @10:19AM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing (Score:4, Informative) by rolfwind (528248) on Thursday October 27, @09:09AM (#13888284) I noticed the same: all MS seems to do lately is flail about blindly attacking fad after fad to make money. It seems to be a lack of vision for what the future holds so they instead chase after every rainbow for that pot of gold at the end.Of course, with billions in the bank and their core businesses still sucessful - they can afford to do this. But for how long? I doubt with this (lack of) leadership, they'll innovate anything in the next 10-15 years. Though the one big sucess with this tactic was that they had was the Xbox, though I argue that this was a natural outgrowth of the PC/OS business, but at least they have a decent games division for it.The reason they do this is mentioned previously: cash in the bank - it wants to flow places and be put to use. However, I think Google has the better idea with employees playing around in their spare time and from that new business ideas get implemented.I'm sure enough people at MS are just as smart but the management is stifling them because they are too scared and want to protect the core businesses. Thus any 'new' business ideas are reactionary - the managers are reacting. Not acting on their own initiative. [ Reply to This | ParentThe follower not catching up anymore by SgtChaireBourne (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @10:33AM2 replies beneath your current threshold.Innovation by RahoulB (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @09:33AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by Mr_Silver (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @09:35AM Re:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing (Score:5, Interesting) by Foofoobar (318279) on Thursday October 27, @10:13AM (#13888664) Over promise... under deliver, remember? This is the Microsoft way. It's not plan well and then have a well structured launch. First they make promises and then they work on delivering. It's been this way with almost every single one of their products. They see someone making alot of money making a product and say 'me too! me too!' and then make loads of promises and lots of hype and then when it's delivered, the product only has half the features they mentioned and doesn't work well at all until at LEAST the third version. Did I just describe every Microsoft product? OOps.Nothing new here. [ Reply to This | Parent +555555555 Insightful (Score:4, Interesting) by bogie (31020) on Thursday October 27, @11:14AM (#13889090) (Last Journal: Tuesday October 29, @11:47AM) This is exactly how MS operates. If you actually pay attention from initial product announcement, through Alpha, Beta, RC, and Final, the backtracking is simply incredible. If you look at what MS first promises and then what they end up delivering it's a fair assessment to say that every OS and many products they have released are total failures based on what they were really supposed to be able to do. They promise the world and then upon Final delivery have a product that doesn't accomplish 75% of what you were initially promised. They hype up the next release as the be all end all, and then quietly yank feature after feature from the real release. I don't know of any company that is as bad as MS at announcing vaporware year after year after year. I also don't know any company that is as good as MS at pulling the wool over everyone's eyes year after year after year. Never mind that the products are usually buggy for several product revisions. Hell with 2000 out of the box you had to wait for hotfixes to even get features that were "officially" in the product when you bought it. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by zootm (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @09:35AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by electroniceric (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:50AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by zootm (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:05PMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by electroniceric (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:51PMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by zootm (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @01:04PMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by electroniceric (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @01:41PMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by zootm (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @01:47PMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by giorgiofr (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @09:38AMhosting maybe by badriram (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @09:46AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by imbroken3a (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @10:31AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by csguy314 (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:15AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by Zerbs (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @11:41AMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by hey! (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:54PMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by nolife (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @01:16PMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by kokorozashi (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @01:46PMRe:MS Reactionaries - the next big thing by rtb61 (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @10:44PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. Way to shaft your partners, Microsoft! (Score:5, Interesting) by LibertineR (591918) on Thursday October 27, @08:56AM (#13888218) Oh, this is great. I look forward to calls from all my hosting clients asking me about this. "Will Microsoft be cheaper?" "Will they help me design my web parts, since I am just too stupid to do it right myself?" Oh, its a beautiful thing. But then, we partners cant say "Hey, if we host you, we'll knock off 30% on that Open Licence Agreement". Thank you, Microsoft. If for anything, just for tossing a big FUD ball into the pool. [ Reply to ThisRe:Way to shaft your partners, Microsoft! by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @09:12AMRe:Way to shaft your partners, Microsoft! by Johnny Mnemonic (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @10:58AMCant agree completely by LibertineR (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:22AMRe:Cant agree completely by Jason Earl (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:49PMRe:Way to shaft your partners, Microsoft! by vinlud (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:10AMReality check by LibertineR (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:17AMRe:Reality check by LibertineR (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:55AM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Well, they already are in the hosting business... (Score:3, Funny) by kah13 (318205) * on Thursday October 27, @08:56AM (#13888219) (http://kc6sst.marchordie.org/) ...with Hotmail and Groove (you can buy Groove services from them, rather than run your own servers). However, this does sound a little too much like its justified by "well, Google is doing it!", which isn't exactly true. Running hosted services is a difficult proposition, unless you can either quickly crank out SLAs or its all zero-admin. Its not something they've really done before, but I suppose it worth a try, since it will give them lots of experience in improving their admin interfaces for Windows Server 2k* as well as learning first hand the risks caused by the security holes in their products. [ Reply to ThisI think you've got it by solomonrex (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @10:11AM1 reply beneath your current threshold.1 reply beneath your current threshold. "Everything hosted" (Score:4, Funny) by deanj (519759) on Thursday October 27, @08:57AM (#13888221) another Microsoft insider said, 'Everything. Hosted Office. Everything hosted.'"FINALLY .... a place for all that spam I've been getting. [ Reply to This1 reply beneath your current threshold. Do hosting companies have a survival instinct ? (Score:5, Insightful) by Crashmarik (635988) on Thursday October 27, @08:59AM (#13888235) Its going to see how many companies keep hosting on Microsoft products. Do they really want to use their competitors product ? Especially a take no prisoners competitor like Microsoft ? The situation should be comparable to when pepsi decided to get into the restaurant business and handed coke a great marketing tool. And it now seems, that the only fast food places that serve pepsi are owned by pepsico. [ Reply to This Re:Do hosting companies have a survival instinct ? (Score:5, Insightful) by azaris (699901) on Thursday October 27, @09:14AM (#13888318) (Last Journal: Friday August 20, @05:37PM) I doubt Microsoft want to put their enterprise hosting partners out of business, after all they are paying bundles in license fees, training, certification etc. I have a hunch that Microsoft are having difficulties finding partners willing to host certain products in a large enough scale and they decided it's just easier to do it themselves. I certainly wouldn't want to host Navision or Exchange for any reasonably large number of users. [ Reply to This | ParentJust a matter of numbers by jscotta44 (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @09:44AMRe:Just a matter of numbers by azaris (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @10:47AMRe:Do hosting companies have a survival instinct ? by Amouth (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @02:19PMRe:Do hosting companies have a survival instinct ? by k3s (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @09:20AM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Saturated Market (Score:5, Insightful) by Karzz1 (306015) on Thursday October 27, @09:01AM (#13888242) (http://slashdot.org/~karzz1) It seems as though MS is trying everything they can to enter new markets to make up for their lack of growth options with the OS and Office markets. From the sounds of it, they are going to try and proprietarize this venture and I dont see what the advantage would be for most customers. I can see small companies with 100% outsourced IT possible trying this, but not too much else. Anyway, to sum up, this looks like another example of MS entering a market too late to make much impact. Just my 2cents. [ Reply to ThisRe:Saturated Market by rbochan (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @09:23AMRe:Saturated Market by demachina (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:22AMRe:Saturated Market by Karzz1 (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @09:32AM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Hosted Office? (Score:3, Interesting) by jkind (922585) on Thursday October 27, @09:01AM (#13888243) (http://www.milliondollarsweethearts.com/) What does this mean exactly? When I want to edit a Word document I have to be online? "Microsoft's hosting push is expected to target the gamut of users--including small companies with five to 10 PCs and no dedicated IT staff--who may want to do things like share calendar items but not worry about how that is accomplished." Couldn't an undergrad CS student develop an app that could do this for said small IT company. [ Reply to ThisRe:Hosted Office? by Karzz1 (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @09:08AMRe:Hosted Office? by OakDragon (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @09:15AMRe:Hosted Office? by azaris (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @09:18AMRe:Hosted Office? by B3ryllium (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @09:33AMRe:Hosted Office? by OakDragon (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @09:17AMRe:Hosted Office? by ctr2sprt (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @09:30AMRe:Hosted Office? by qodfathr (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @10:02AMThe REAL question by amliebsch (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @10:02AMRe:Hosted Office? by somersault (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @11:53AMEnterprise Applications - Not Windows or Office! by krouskop (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @05:20PM Cool (Score:4, Insightful) by kevin_conaway (585204) on Thursday October 27, @09:01AM (#13888245) (http://pyscrabble.sf.net/ | Last Journal: Thursday April 28, @02:48PM) From what I hear, a lot of depts have trouble implementing these Sharepoint solutions and other things. If you could get actual Microsoft people to run these solutions for you, I think it would save people a lot of headaches. Isn't this what a lot of other companies like IBM are doing anyway? "Heres your software. What you don't want to run it yourself? Thats fine, we've got this nice shiny datacenter here, we'll take care of it for you!" [ Reply to ThisRe:Cool by kotkan (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @09:45AMRe:Cool by poot_rootbeer (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:36PM Re:Cool (Score:5, Funny) by $RANDOMLUSER (804576) on Thursday October 27, @09:22AM (#13888372) >IT folks who specialize in M$ products aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. How can you say that? They've got certifications and everything ;-) [ Reply to This | Parent1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Cool by advid (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @01:22PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. Everything hosted? (Score:4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27, @09:02AM (#13888247) Anyone else read that as everything hosed? [ Reply to This From the article (Score:4, Interesting) by Dekortage (697532) on Thursday October 27, @09:07AM (#13888272) "Ozzie, the former chairman of Groove Networks, has been charged with leading Microsoft in this area." If only that was a criminal charge.Elsewhere: "How much competitive advantage does e-mail give any company? Wouldn't those internal IT resources be better deployed elsewhere?" said one Microsoft source, who asked not to be named.You mean, you won't need to buy email server software and support from MS? [ Reply to ThisRe:From the article by advocate_one (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @10:04AM Which insider ? (Score:5, Funny) by alexhs (877055) on Thursday October 27, @09:08AM (#13888278) (http://dr-tools.sourceforge.net/) When asked which other products and services Microsoft would host, another Microsoft insider said, 'Everything. Hosted Office. Everything hosted.But isn't that insider a newly hired, "lower-level business person" who did not understand the company's obligations ? [ Reply to This Microsoft Hosting (Score:2, Funny) by ChrisF79 (829953) on Thursday October 27, @09:09AM (#13888282) (http://www.understandfinance.com/) Please join me in a prayer asking that the servers run BSD and Apache. I'd hate to see people's sites/apps/etc go down instantly. [ Reply to ThisRe:Microsoft Hosting by AndreiK (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @09:38AM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Just another step (Score:5, Interesting) by keraneuology (760918) on Thursday October 27, @09:09AM (#13888287) (Last Journal: Thursday October 13, @11:31AM) While the (theoretical) advantages are clearly there, I'm not convinced that this is the best move for small businesses. The big boys of Ford, GM, Lucent and EDS would all love to be able to have internal office hosting for thin client terminals that make it a piece of cake to deploy new desktops, but for small 10-15 user offices with expensive and relatively slow network connections there just isn't enough value in putting your entire productivity in the hands of Ameritech, Comcast or shudder Qwest. In my office if the network goes down it is terribly inconvenient but I can still compose replies to emails that stack up in my inbox, examine reports, and engage in many other productive activities. If a construction crew digs up a network cable, if the DNS goes flewkey on me or if another Paris Hilton prawn video comes out and everybody for miles around clog up the bandwidth then I'm left high and dry with nothing to do.From the MS POV, it is very difficult to pirate a hosted app and makes it easier to enforce EULA clauses along the lines of You may not use the Software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, or their products or services (FrontPage 2002).Personally, I don't think that the company that allows "low level" employees to announce company-wide projects that violate anti-trust agreements without review by upper management can be trusted with confidential and sensitive documents that I create. But that's just me. [ Reply to This How about "Hosted Windows" (Score:5, Insightful) by G4from128k (686170) on Thursday October 27, @09:17AM (#13888332) As a Macintosh owner I have occasionally really needed Windows. I've spent money on various emulators (e.g., SoftWindows) and even bought a Pentium laptop at a garage sale for $35. But I never used these things as much as I thought -- only 3 or 4 times in the last 20 years. Hosted Windows for $4.99/day would be a good way to use Windows once every 5 years or so.Of course if MS can provide Hosted Windows then Google could provide hosted whatever (GLinux?) and things would get interesting. [ Reply to ThisMyInternetPC by jscotta44 (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @09:51AMRe:MyInternetPC by chez69 (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @10:40AMRe:How about "Hosted Windows" by romanr (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @10:57AM This has sort of been an on/off thing with MS (Score:5, Insightful) by grasshoppa (657393) on Thursday October 27, @09:22AM (#13888367) (http://tpno-co.org/ | Last Journal: Friday August 13, @12:03AM) They get warm to it, then it goes cold for a while. Then they warm up again.The reason? Some new exec ( I'm guessing ) dreams up a way of sustainable yearly revenue, only to find that people's network connections aren't good enough yet. Sure, in the redmond area I'm guessing their inet connections are as solid as t1s, but the rest of the country is severely lacking in even enough bandwidth to pull this off, nevermind the reliability of the line.This is an idea before it's time, and quite frankly, the implementation would appear to leave much to be desired. Not only that, but are still a ton of security considerations to take into account. [ Reply to ThisRe:This has sort of been an on/off thing with MS by jafiwam (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @09:37AMRe:This has sort of been an on/off thing with MS by grasshoppa (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:41AM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Yes, of course... (Score:2, Funny) by Liam Slider (908600) on Thursday October 27, @09:24AM (#13888378) We already know everything at Microsoft's hosed. Oh...HOSTED! That's very a different story. So basically, what they are saying is...they want to move to a model where they screw you over and over, and you pay each time you're screwed. No surprise they are moving to that business model really...Microsoft has always acted like a two bit whore. [ Reply to This1 reply beneath your current threshold. Could be a big mistake by Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful) by RoLi (141856) on Thursday October 27, @09:28AM (#13888403) (http://f1-facts.com/) If they don't pay attention and become competitor in the "normal" hosting business, Windows by hosters could share the same fate as OS/2 on PCs: Companies don't like to put competitor's products on their products. [ Reply to This Microsoft or some 3rd party? (Score:4, Interesting) by Raindeer (104129) <raindeer72@hotma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Thursday October 27, @09:28AM (#13888408) (http://lunaticthought.blogspot.com/) I like the idea of hosted apps alot. I like it most for small (1 employee) to medium size enterprises (250 employees). Now that Fiber to the Businesses start to get some steam it is a logical step. If you're running a small to medium size company like a law firm, consultancy, factory, shop etc. the IT department is not the core of the business if it exists at all. Where it exists it only comprises up to 10 percent of the workforce which means too small an amount of people to actually have a clue of all the different branches of IT. (How many people do you know that have in depth knowledge of CRM, ERP, security, internet applications, databases, hardware, switches, archiving etc etc. You do know such a person? a SME can't afford her) So if you need several of these apps, you're in serious staffing trouble.Outsourcing seems the way to go. Let a knowledgeable company or group of companies run and maintain your apps for you. However, who would you trust to do that? For general programs like Office, probably Microsoft or Google would be a good choice as any. For specialised/customized programs, like CRM and ERP, I would go for a 'local' guy that is approachable. I would most definitely not opt for a company that is as huge as Microsoft to run my customized programs, because I'll end up in Helpdesk HELL.In my ideal world I would go to a company that offered me a subscription like model to a whole range of desktop apps (photoshop, acrobat, office, visio etc etc) and a company that runs my serverside apps and specialized apps) It could save alot of money on IT-people and specialized rooms etc. (And probably get me into trouble some other way) [ Reply to This1 reply beneath your current threshold. Hosted EULA... (Score:4, Insightful) by TheIndifferentiate (914096) on Thursday October 27, @09:37AM (#13888460) I imagine their EULA for the hosted stuff would be just like their Hotmail one in that the user completely indemnifies them if they lose all the user's files like what happened to some Hotmail users a while back. Mmm... One of the biggest arguments they use against GPL/OSS is that there is no one to hold accountable for it if something goes wrong-What's the difference here? Oh, you are paying for someone to not be accountable. [ Reply to ThisRe:Hosted EULA... by TheIndifferentiate (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @10:53AM1 reply beneath your current threshold. It could work (Score:1, Interesting)