Q1: Why should I care about Online Services? What problems does it solve?

S+S provides businesses with the opportunity to leverage their existing technology and marry this to new services and capabilities being delivered from the cloud. Specifically, Microsoft’s approach permits customers to continue to use familiar user interfaces (e.g. Microsoft Office system) and to rebalance their infrastructure across on-premises offerings for mission critical or “secret sauce” applications and to offload non-differentiating applications – perhaps collaborative applications and messaging – to Microsoft to host and run from the cloud.

Microsoft uniquely provides businesses with server-service symmetry such that the underlying server infrastructure is the same regardless of whether the server is deployed on premises or as services. The businesses developers are able to leverage their existing tools, language and frameworks to build solutions that span the client, the server and services continuum.

Q2: How will online services save us money or help us make more money for shareholders? What is the business value?

In considering whether you should take all or a portion of your business productivity infrastructure online, there are four areas of potential cost savings and innovation opportunities to be aware of: Finance, People, processes, and technology.

Financial operations
In these difficult economic times, many customers look at online services as a way to shift from the large, ‘lumpy’ capital expenditures associated with upgrading every few years to a more predictable monthly operating expense. Online services can actually do better than that – they can reduce both capex and opex budgets. And determining the size of those budgets is simpler by virtue of the all-inclusive price. No more wondering whether you’ve captured everything from hardware to software licenses to maintenance fees and support costs. Online services combine all these aspects of the cost into a single bill.

People
The simplified administration and offloaded operational maintenance of the services enable you to make the most of your IT people resources – putting the best people on the most important projects

Processes
The operational cost is easy to overlook, and sometimes difficult to account for. But it can be the largest part of your overall expenditure. Consider what it takes to implement industry best practices for high availability and security, and how much time your IT team spends maintaining the health of your servers.

Technology
It makes business sense to get the most value you can from new versions of software, as quickly as possible. It not only makes your employees more productive, it maximizes the value you get for your investment. Online services can greatly accelerate this process. And the ability to purchase exactly what you need now and expand later if necessary enables you to ‘right size’ those investments.

Q3: Does S+S mean that I won’t be buying product X in a box moving forward?

That depends on whether you would like to. Microsoft is evolving its software portfolio to better address its customers and partners needs. For many of Microsoft’s software products and all of its server products, Microsoft will offer services-based analogs but, Microsoft will permit its customers and partners to buy its software and install it on-premises for as long as they wish to do so.

Q4: Isn’t Software-plus-Services Microsoft’s attempt to redefine the technology landscape in a way that’s most appropriate for it by making it appear that its biggest franchises of Windows and Office are still relevant?

No. Microsoft believes that its customers and partners should participate in the decisions as to how best to manage their existing technology investments and capitalize on new technologies rather than rip-and-replace much of it. Many of our customers and partners have built their businesses upon Windows and Office and have employees that are well-versed in these technologies. Microsoft’s approach to Software-plus-Services enables these customers to augment their existing investments with new features on a time scale that’s most convenient to them.

Q5: How can Microsoft be sure that my data is secure?

Businesses must use a combination of technology and processes to help protect their messaging and collaboration environment from internal and external security threats. These threats use an array of attack vectors that require the establishment of multiple layers of protection. The threats are also evolving to find new ways through old defenses requiring the use of multiple technologies. Together, the use of multiple layers of security controls and multiple technologies form Microsoft's defense-in-depth strategy.

To simplify security management and to enhance performance, Microsoft also recommends that the solution is integrated into the business infrastructure. Microsoft looks at security along three dimensions: security of data (virus/spam filtering in the cloud), secure data access (HTTPS- 128-bit encryption) and secure datacenters.

Q6: If I already own Exchange licenses, but want to move to Exchange Online, will Microsoft give me credit for my investment?

Yes, to protect investments in Exchange, SharePoint and Office Communications Server, Microsoft will give credit to customers with active SA for the CALs that they've purchased - to transition management of their servers to Microsoft today.

Q7: What is the availability and performance like? Is a dedicated network connection required?

We offer 99.9% scheduled uptime with financially backed Service Level Agreements. The standard version of the service does not require any dedicated network connectivity. Data exchanged between our data center and the end users are secured with a 128 bit encryption (https). Depending on the current customer network connection bandwidth, some customers might have to upgrade their existing network connection. In the dedicated version, dedicated network connection is required and is the responsibility of the customer.

Q7: I've heard that the on-premise version of Exchange has more features than the hosted version. Why should I buy the hosted version if I don't get as much functionality?

We offer a very rich subset of the features found on the servers. Over the next 12-18 months, it is our goal to reach parity with the server features through our service updates. Our dedicated version does provide a broader set of server capabilities today as a service. One of the key benefits of purchasing a hosted service is the "evergreen" nature of the service. Customers pay an on-going subscription, but are kept up-to-date with the latest features and functionality.

Q8: There are lots of other "cloud services" players out there such as Google. Why should I bet my business on Microsoft?

Rich Software
With the Business Productivity Online Suite, your users still get the full functionality of the Office applications they are accustomed to. They get the great rich-client experience of Outlook and Word and PowerPoint, with the server integration you've come to expect; SharePoint libraries synchronized with Outlook, full-fidelity document editing clients launched from within SharePoint sites, and so on. And you get the rich functionality of SharePoint – including portal, content management, and collaboration capabilities. You can drive down cost by enabling web conferencing instead of traveling to meetings. And the integration across services – between Exchange Online and Office Communications Online, Office Communications Online and SharePoint Online, enables unique communication and collaboration capabilities.

Choice and Flexibility
Microsoft's software-plus-services approach is unique in the industry. We recognize the power of flexibility, it enables you to determine the best fit for your business, and match the solution to your requirements, whether they are simple or complex. We've designed from the ground up for co-existence, so you can decide to take just some of your users "to the cloud" and still maintain communication and collaboration capability with the on-premises deployments of Exchange and SharePoint.

As your business grows and changes, as your priorities shift and the external realities change, you may decide to revisit your decision, maybe it makes sense to move a different division to an online deployment, or gradually increase the number of users you deploy online. These shifts are easy to deal with under the software-plus-services model. And of course, you get to choose your client: web or desktop?

Enterprise Capabilities
Microsoft is not new to business software, nor to online services. We've built the Microsoft Online Services on proven infrastructure, using the valuable lessons we've learned in operating our own website, Hotmail, LiveMeeting and Exchange Hosted Services for many years. We combine that knowledge with our background in understanding the needs of enterprise customers to create services that meet the special needs of business customers.

For example, we know that enterprise customers require enterprise-class dedicated support. 24x7. And we integrate those services with your existing on-premises infrastructure, like Active Directory; rather than asking you to create parallel directories in the cloud or duplicate processes you already have mastered on-premises.

Q9: Aren't your Online Services Solutions more expensive than Google?

Microsoft provides superior TCO through a combination of simple, effective pricing and a rich set of service capabilities. First, our BPOS Suite offering is priced starting at $10/user/month for Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communication, and Live Meeting Online). If you just want messaging, Exchange starts at $5/user/month. Moreover, unlike Google, we offer light versions of our Online Services targeting task workers priced starting at $2/user/month!

Finally, it's important to note that $50/user/year from Google is just the starting point. Those organizations needing services like identity management, single sign on, etc. will have to purchase them separately. With Microsoft, you get a enterprise class Messaging and Collaboration services that you know and trust for one price.