Clash Of The Titans - The WAR IN THE CLOUD FOR THE CLOUD!

As speed of serving customers and accessing information in real time becomes a crunch piece to stay ahead in the marketplace. The power of the web is being harnessed by every corporate player to make their service offerings viable, deliverable and to expand their own piece of the pie. The last decade on the web has slowly surfaced as being or becoming the integral part of every one’s life, it is no surprise that in the last five years social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, Twitter, Blogger and the million others have exploded in their user base and numbers. Its ultimately volume that decides the fate of your business today, quality though important can be delivered over the period of service.The primary motivators are if you are cheap, reliable and substantial on the cloud a user base will follow, once hooked they will be willing to pay the price and support it.

Disruptive technologies are here to stay and very well form the preferable mode of communication and they are well into their way in becoming part of web delivery applications. Hence on the webosphere we see the skirmishes and battle lines among the major players like Google and Microsoft blowing up into full-fledged wars as to who will ultimately control the cloud.

Google had a head start in terms of web apps for using the internet as way people eventually would exchange, share and manipulate documents - the result Google We Apps and tools. Rival Microsoft the sleeping giant has awakened and is quickly catching up on the heels of colored spheres company and it seems there will be some A-kicking time for the micro softies. The release of Microsoft’s office 2010 online based office tools and Sharepoint 2010 will put them again in the driver’s seat. A substantial user base and the right incentives by Microsoft will give Google a blow and will force its hand to aggression in terms of innovation.

Simplicity of Web apps and more accurately simplicity of the user interfaces so far has kept Google ahead but users who use MS-Office as a desktop application are not sold on it to switch because they want the rich features they are used to. A true complain and a hindrance on web applications to date. Microsoft is going to narrow that gap rapidly and with 25 years of experience behind them and the marketing killing machine they are it will be hard to bring a substantial user base into the fold as soon as they begin to push these applications.

Software as a subscription service will rule the web and is here to stay as the preferred model of software business. Its now well on its way as how organizational information are disseminated, reported and collected in real time in almost all domains. True business intelligence right from tasks from the bottom user to the the top decision makers will be on the touch, flicks and clicks of doing their jobs and all information collectively coming into one place.

So as the giant’s battle it out it will be interesting to see in the next five years who emerges victorious. Microsoft has always adopted the policy of embrace, extend and obliterate or (exterminate) the competition and Google seems to be under the gun. The Cloud or the Internet will be the uniting factor of all these services being offered from the different stables and quarters be it in the technology arenas of Mobile communications, Web-based office applications, Social networking, Database and ETL tools, Online Gaming, Networking and Advertising. A company that I am following since last two years is zoho.com the guys there have got what it takes in the technical sense of delivering SAAS model that can be the death of corporate enterprise level desktop applications but it remains to be seen how good are they at marketing and this is where I suspect the Microsoft has an edge along with its technical and Capital muscles....watch out the giant is flexing...the clash is inevitable.

My personal opinion is the tech company with a vision, strategy and business model that hooks users increasing the user base by leaps and bounds will be the ultimate survior or the absolute winner. Your comments on this are welcome....let me know.

Cheers,

Sam Kurien