I recently blogged that Microsoft's BPOS went offline on August 23rd for over 2 hours. Well, lightning definitely does strike the same place twice (as Intuit recently also showed) because Microsoft's BPOS also went dark for around 90 minutes yesterday, Sep 3rd.
Now, is this becoming a pattern? I hope not, but there's only one way to find out for sure...
Microsoft, in their price-cutting war with Google Apps, may be biting off more than they can chew - considering Microsoft BPOS is still only offering Exchange 2007 and SharePoint 2003 and their own partners are offering Hosted Exchange 2010 and Hosted SharePoint 2010. BPOS, even on the older versions of their own software, still offers a restricted feature set compared to the on-premise versions of the exact same components. And then add this lag in application versions to their recent service instability and you have a service in need of some serious effort to get it to the point where "We're all in" actually means "and you can rely on this system" because, right now, well... I'd not like to have a reduced functionality, previous release cloud-based system that isn't all that stable being used to run my business.
I don't for a second think that Microsoft can't overcome these issues. I do, however, wonder how long it will be before their Chief Directionless Officer (ie, Steve Ballmer) will actually get this right.
Regards,
The Outspoken Wookie
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