Productivity Applications and the Cloud

What a week! Just days ago in New York, we launched Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 to business customers worldwide. The response to this epic release has been nothing short of amazing.  With more than 8.6 million people already using the 2010 set of products in our beta program, it is clear there’s tremendous appetite for a platform that lets people work anywhere across the PC, phone and browser; brings social networking behind the firewall; and makes it easier to bring ideas to life with video, text and images.

Customers are seeing significant productivity gains with the 2010 products, and greater returns on their software investments.  In fact, Forrester published a series of commissioned studies detailing how companies  can expect more than 300% ROI over a 3 year period deploying the 2010 set of products.

The 2010 wave ushers in a new era of computing that takes advantage of the power of the rich client with the scale and pace of innovation of the cloud, and customers are moving to the cloud with Microsoft.

• More than 40 million people already have Microsoft Online Services, our cloud-based business applications and services.  Microsoft Online Services are flexible so businesses can embrace the cloud on their own terms, whether that means moving everything in the cloud now or ‘going hybrid’ – where customers move only some applications, like email or portals, or a subset of their employees to the cloud.  
• 90 million Office business customers can now run Office Web Apps, the online companions to Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote. Along with easy access to documents from virtually anywhere, Web Apps maintain document fidelity, giving customers the confidence that their content will look great across the PC, phone and browser.

Great companies including Kraft Foods, Novartis, Codelco, Transcorp, Phaeton Automotive, Rexel and Vinci have bet on Microsoft solutions over the competition are seeing tremendous upside by providing rich tools and solutions for Office and related products.  You can read about their experiences in the links above.  These companies found they needed solutions that are enterprise-ready, secure, and flexible - something they didn’t find elsewhere.  

In my role, I’m fortunate to have the chance to talk to companies like these around the world to hear how they’re using our technology to grow their business and stay competitive.  I’ll have a chance to share some of those insights at the MIT CIO Symposium on Wednesday, May 19 in Boston.  If you plan to attend, I look forward to seeing you; and if you aren’t, please check out what our customers and partners have to say on the Why Microsoft and Microsoft Online Services blog today and in the coming weeks.   

“The Total Economic Impact ™ of Implementing Microsoft’s Integrated Productivity Platform” is a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Microsoft in May 2010. The study evaluated Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Exchange 2010 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Based on interviews with early adopter customers, Forrester constructed a TEI framework for a composite organization and the associated ROI analysis illustrating the financial impact areas.

Posted by Chris Capossela
Senior Vice President, Information Worker Product Management Group