Battle in the Cloud

Following yesterday's post on tonight's (NZ-time) Azure presentation in Swansea, I read an interesting article on Reuters today.

Google has introduced software to make it easier for businesses using Microsoft's Outlook to switch to its Web-based communications and collaboration products. Google says that its new software can easily transfer data from a Microsoft Exchange server to its own cloud-based online service.

The new product allows business users to continue using the Outlook client for email and other tasks, but the back-end functionality and data storage would move to Google, instead of residing on a company's internal servers running Microsoft software.

The product, Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, will be available immediately as part of the existing Premier version of Google apps, which costs US$50 per business user but is also available to educational and nonprofit customers for free.

This is not so much a battle, as a preliminary skirmish. Expect plenty more of the same however as the Clouds gather. At the moment, it is 'handbags at dawn'. Down track, the battles for eyeballs, hits and dollars will become much more intense.