The advent of cloud computing has most vendors scrambling to offer their services on an on-demand basis, which is great for consumers. Finally the consumer has some choice without heavy upfront capital expenditure.

There are service companies which offer professional services within the cloud, vendors that offer SaaS and vendors that offer both. The combination vendors that offer a platform, applications, typical IT services, integration and hosted and professional services are poised to capture more of the market a lot quicker than the traditional vendors that just offer software.

Microsoft has announced that with the release of Office 2010, it will extend its cloud offerings. The possibility to have other MS products such as email, CRM, and SharePoint through the cloud remain a distinct possibility. The reason for this is that DaaS (desktop as a service) is not far behind.

Imagine an SMB that can get DaaS for multiple users with full MS Office Integration and with CRM and SharePoint capabilities and even a Dynamics ERP thrown in – it would lower IT purchase costs and adminsitration costs signifcantly. A pretty compelling argument! Threats to this models already exist from other vendors like Salesforce, Zoho and Google that are offering additional applications around the CRM and rapidly turning it into a new landscape with endless customer choice.

Other vendors have stepped up their game and even acquired software to offer a similar breadth of features.

Google recently bought Doc Verse which allows users to collaborate, edit and share Word, Excel and PowerPoint in real time mode over the web. Since the release of Chrome as a browser, Google has served notice to the market that a Chrome OS is on the way.

This means Google will now offer an OS, browser, email, analytics, blogging platform, communication features (in the form of Google Messenger) and applications in the form of Google Docs (which is now fully compatible with MS Offce due to the acquisition of Doc Verse.)

It seems that other vendors have caught on to this and are following the leaders. IBM has fortifed its commitment to the cloud by offering Lotus Live iNotes and also IBM Lotus Symphony which happens to be free (a decent MS Offce substitute).

Additional vendors are entering this marketplace such as little known player Evermore Software – a Chinese company in Wuxi province. This vendor offers an Office-like suite to rival MS Offce for half the price of Offce but with similar look and feel, and is even starting to offer this in the cloud.

As the demand for cloud-based applications increases, new vendors will challenge the traditional and big players. The ones who innovate will stay ahead in the game!

ABOUT DYLAN PERSAUD:

MD of Eval Source, Canada, Dylan is also a business analyst and project manager with expertise in disciplines such as ERM, Retail, Supply Chain, social media and enterprise systems. He has consulted for Indigo, Nike, Sears, GM, Ford, IBM, IDC and others.