The message was - keep clear of enterprise search!
Microsoft get tough
At only his second appearance at a Microsoft conference, Kevin Turner addressed a huge gathering of 7,000 business partners in Boston on Thursday. For us in the world of SEO, his most important words of the day were:
"Enterprise search is our business, it's our house and Google is not going to take that business."
This tough talk has come about through Microsoft's intentions to enter a new set of markets over the next 12 months thus branching out and building their business from another angle. Microsoft's intentions are accompanied by a fearsome determination to prevent Google from spoiling their parade. The strong nature of their views on Google is shown in Turner's words. He stated: "Those people are not going to be allowed to take food off of our plate, because that is what they are intending to do."
The market they are talking about is search - from the desktop to the enterprise to the internet. Enterprise search is a business which they believe will come to be of considerable importance. In the past this market has been referred to as Business intelligence: the portal, content management, workflow and collaboration market. Microsoft will tackle the market by releasing the long-delayed Windows Vista operating system, Windows Server operating system, Office 2007 desktop application package, Dynamics Live CRM, and many other products between now and the end of next year. Microsoft believes that these products represent US$20 billion of research and development coming into the market.
Microsoft is also pushing the Microsoft Live rebranding of it's MSN services online.
Microsoft and Google are increasingly seen to be battling in the business software market. The Big Daddy of search has introduced products such as Google Spreadsheets and Google Calendar of which all can potentially threaten Microsoft's desktop application business. They have not, however, spoken of any plans to progress in areas such as word processing.
In recent months Google has indeed unveiled new search appliances but as yet its enterprise search plans remain unannounced.
So what can we expect from here on in? Will Microsoft's tough words be enough to keep Google at bay? This all remains to be seen but there is one thing that we should always bear in mind when these kinds of issues arise - Google are armed with considerable muscle when it comes to market dominance.
