Microsoft is digging in for a fight with Google in the enterprise search market.
"Enterprise search is our business, it's our house and Google is not going to take that business," Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, told a conference of more than 7,000 business partners on Thursday.
It's the largest gathering that Turner has addressed, and only his second appearance at a Microsoft conference, since joining the company from Wal-Mart 11 months ago.
Turner said the company is also gearing up to take on IBM and Oracle, among other competitors, with new products slated for debut in the next few months. But he saved his most acerbic comments for Google.
"Those people are not going to be allowed to take food off of our plate, because that is what they are intending to do," he said.
In recent months, Google has unveiled new search appliances. But it hasn't spelled out its overall enterprise search plans.
Earlier in the week, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer listed search — Google's bread and butter — as one of his company's most important areas of investment. "Search from the desktop to the enterprise to the Internet is a business of great importance and a market of great importance to us," he said Tuesday.
Ballmer said the enterprise search market represents more than $13bn, and that the software maker has signed up 35 partners to focus on that area.
Microsoft plans to release the long-delayed Windows Vista operating system, Office 2007 desktop application package, Windows Server operating system, Dynamics Live CRM, and many other products between now and the end of next year. Turner said those products represent "$20bn of R&D coming into the market".
Microsoft and Google are increasingly seen as being on a collision course in the business software market. The search giant has introduced products such as Google Spreadsheets and Google Calendar that have the potential to threaten Microsoft's desktop application business. But the company hasn't made clear its plans in other areas, such as word processing.
The threat has been enough to spur Microsoft on to revamp its business to focus on online services under the Windows Live and Office Live monikers.
Talkback
i really cannot wait for those two to battle it out.
Go on billy, pick a fight with one of the Ceos from GOOGLE, televise it and split the profits or even better still, why dont you both televise it on your websites, see who gets the most hits and the loser signs the deeds of their business over to the winner?
i cant wait! :D
In the long run my money is on Google. Since most people seem to forget that Google thinks aheads while Microsoft is playing catch up. As usual.
Isn't that what everyone thought of Microsoft a decade or so ago? We may think that Google think ahead but maybe they too just have the profile, the money and the PR savvy to just be very quick 2nd movers. They just do it by stealth. Yes, bring it on (and i can't be doing with the current trend of google-bashing) but really, Microsoft vs google? The big question is who are the real forward looking thinkers out there? I would lay big money on it not being either of these big brands.
Simon, could very well be but my focus here is not on a possible third party but on Google vs Microsoft. And given that Microsoft is thinking about going the ad driven and (web) services based route it's obvious that Google has a head start. Not to mention that Google will have planned right from the start how to deal with Microsoft later on (given their CEO background for one) and that can't be said from Microsoft. Furthermore Google isn't in the hot spot as much as Microsoft is worldwide. That said I wouldn't keep my eyes from other emerging markets either.