Web Host Industry Review Blog

Liam Eagle

April 9, 2008

My notes say "grueling," which is not quite the right word, but the Wednesday morning sessions at Microsoft's Hosting Summit were definitely an exercise in endurance, in terms of both the length and the volume of information to be digested.

From 8:15 to 12:30, the company rolled out a series of keynote presentations designed to put Microsoft's message to its partners into sharper relief, and to outline roadmaps for some of the software most relevant to the company's hosting partners.

A fairly long list of presenters took the stage during that time, and offered a lot of commentary on a lot of subjects. Covering everything interesting that came up is definitely the work of more than one blog entry (halfway through day one, my notes are close to 4,000 words long). But there were a couple of key points that kept coming up, which sort of put Microsoft's general partner message in context.

The early presentation by John Zanni seemed to anchor the whole thing, and while a lot of what he had to say dealt with what partners ought to expect from the conference itself, he brought up those key points that were repeated often in, or informed, the rest of the presentations.

First, and this is certainly not the first time I've heard this from Microsoft or anyone else, was the idea that there is a tremendous opportunity in what Microsoft terms the market for "software + services," of which "Software as a Service" is a part. With data from groups like IDC and Gartner, some of which you have probably seen, Zanni and other presenters highlighted the point that hosted applications, be they straight-up Microsoft applications or other tools developed by ISV partners, are one of the areas of greatest opportunity for hosting providers in the years to come.

Microsoft, says Zanni, is seriously invested in the hosting space, and the software + services space.

From that assertion come questions, presumably, of what Microsoft's approach to the market will take. The second really major point made in the morning sessions, and the one made most emphatically, is the fact that Microsoft is committed to its partners.

Not a surprising statement, given the audience. But there are some questions about exactly where partners lay in Microsoft plans, given the semi-competitive prospect of Microsoft's recently-announced Online Services.

According to Zanni, Microsoft depends on its partners. The company knows that in order to be successful, it needs its partners to be successful.

This, more than anything else, appears to be the premise of the event. The company wants to find out from its partners what they need in order to succeed - what strategies and processes work best for its partners so it can speed the process of integrating those processes into the platforms for high-end hosting.

Zanni says that's not just him talking. It's a notion that is held at even the highest levels of the company (he put up a slide with a quote from Steve Ballmer about the nature of the company's relationship with France Telecom).

Online services, he says, is about building the platform to grow the market - another concept I'll likely tackle in another post. But he, and Microsoft, see it not as competing but as an offering that will benefit partners.

But that key partner-focused message carried on into the other presentations, and to the event itself. The Hosting Summit is about Microsoft being transparent to its partners, in terms of its technology and roadmaps, and about inviting input, contribution and feedback from its partners.

It's worth pointing out that there are some folks who aren't quite as accepting of the message as others - that is, there are people who remain not quite convinced that Online Services , for instance, is not a competitive product to their hosted exchange product.

But that's all in the spirit of this event, according to Microsoft. That's precisely the kind of concern they want to hear about.