EnjoyTech

Today Microsoft announced the cloud offering for Exchange and SharePoint . I was invited to participate into the Microsoft Blogger round table that took place after the announcement as an initiative by Microsoft to establish relationship with the bloggers and thought leaders in the cloud computing area. The launch event, attended by select customers, partners, bloggers, and the press, included a demo that articulated the seamless ubiquity of the solution – from the cloud to on-premise and vice versa reiterating the client-server-service strategy. Microsoft also iterated their commitment to continue investing massively into the data centers and also emphasized commitment to sustainability. When asked about the SLA the answer was that the SLA is based on availability, security and privacy, and recovery time in the event of a disaster based on the geography. The SLA is three 9. Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division at Microsoft dismissed the possibility of slow online

The current economic downturn has forced many CIOs to significantly reduce the external IT spending. Many projects are being postponed or canceled. This situation poses some serious challenges to the sales and marketing people of companies selling enterprise software. Many argue that there is nothing much these people can do. I would disagree. Marketing campaigns tend to rely a lot on selling a product using active aggressive marketing that may not be effective under these circumstances since many purchase decisions are being placed on hold. However these circumstances and poor economic climate are ideal to build a brand and paddle concepts with continuous passive branding exercise. The branding exercise, if designed well, could change buyers’ experience around a concept or a product and evoke emotions that could be helpful when a product is actively being sold. Guy Kawasaki points us to an experiment that studied the art of persuasion to change people's attitudes . People should