Microsoft embraching SaaS? Its starting to sound like Nicholas Carr was right when he said IT doesnt matter.

This looks promising. Outsourcing these sorts of basic infrastructure support functions and focusing IT more on innovations is crucial to moving many businesses forward. Curious that they don't include the Outlook client and impose a 1GB restriction on storage. They will need to offer some type of archiving solution, and of course spam/virus filtering service (like Postini) to make this a fully viable solution for many organizations (and to be competitive with other hosing providers of Exchange/SharePoint).

MSFT's online version of mail does include AV/AS and archiving

I think there are many hidden costs - the cost of integrating LOB applications into a SaaS online model - also, how does MS account for growth items like the ever-increasing spam loads that typical on-premise shops need to deal with? Does SaaS mean a separate helpdesk for user issues like mail restores? How do you effectively integrate support from internal helpdesks through to the hosted vendor without a dropoff in service levels? Also, will the MS offering (or others for that matter) include regulatory compliance elements such as journaling for financial institutions?

I think SaaS can work for some organizations, but many organizations have built so many business processes and applications into the on-premise solution that forklifting it might be a negative-ROI situation..

One last point - IT managers in companies with distributed networks will have to look at the implications of backhauling an enterprises client-server mail traffic over tyypically over-subscribed WAN and Internet links..

Who will be the first global enterprise CIO to take this step?

I think there are many hidden costs - the cost of integrating LOB applications into a SaaS online model - also, how does MS account for growth items like the ever-increasing spam loads that typical on-premise shops need to deal with? Does SaaS mean a separate helpdesk for user issues like mail restores? How do you effectively integrate support from internal helpdesks through to the hosted vendor without a dropoff in service levels? Also, will the MS offering (or others for that matter) include regulatory compliance elements such as journaling for financial institutions?

I think SaaS can work for some organizations, but many organizations have built so many business processes and applications into the on-premise solution that forklifting it might be a negative-ROI situation..

One last point - IT managers in companies with distributed networks will have to look at the implications of backhauling an enterprises client-server mail traffic over typically over-subscribed WAN and Internet links..

Who will be the first global enterprise CIO to take this step?

I think there are many hidden costs - the cost of integrating LOB applications into a SaaS online model - also, how does MS account for growth items like the ever-increasing spam loads that typical on-premise shops need to deal with? Does SaaS mean a separate helpdesk for user issues like mail restores? How do you effectively integrate support from internal helpdesks through to the hosted vendor without a dropoff in service levels? Also, will the MS offering (or others for that matter) include regulatory compliance elements such as journaling for financial institutions?

I think SaaS can work for some organizations, but many organizations have built so many business processes and applications into the on-premise solution that forklifting it might be a negative-ROI situation..

One last point - IT managers in companies with distributed networks will have to look at the implications of backhauling an enterprises client-server mail traffic over typically over-subscribed WAN and Internet links..

Who will be the first global enterprise CIO to take this step?