Microsoft's new stepping to face google in software business 2007-02-28
The Internet is forcing Microsoft Corp. to change the way it sells software to businesses, but the technology giant says the industry will not be turned upside down overnight.
Increasingly, companies are looking at buying subscriptions to software that is run on third-party computers linked over high-speed networks.
Google Inc., for example, last week began selling an annual subscription to a package of online business software in a direct challenge to Microsoft. The product, Google Apps Premier Edition, is an enhancement of an earlier, free offering already in use by thousands of businesses and universities.
Software as a service is an emerging trend, but five years from now most businesses will still be running programs the way they do today, predicts Doug Burgum, senior vice-president of Microsoft Business Solutions group.
"People have not rushed to the numerous offerings that have been made available," he said in an interview in Toronto yesterday.
His unit oversees Microsoft's Dynamics product line, software that performs supply change management and financial management and is designed mainly for small and mid-sized businesses.
There is "an appropriate sense of urgency" in Redmond, Wash., he said, but nobody thinks that the market has already shifted to Internet-based software, some of which is free and supported by advertising. "We are not anywhere close to a tipping point," Mr. Burgum said.
A handful of companies that include San Francisco's Salesforce.com Inc. and NetSuite Inc., of San Mateo, Calif., are today sell
