One might think that, as a chief information officer, it would be uncomfortable to have someone else running all of your desktops and many of your servers.
Randy Benz, chief information officer of Energizer, disagrees. For more than three years, Energizer has handed off much of those duties to Microsoft. And Benz said he would be fine with Microsoft running just about everything.
"If I never run another server in there for the rest of my life, I'm as happy as can be," Benz said last week following the launch of Microsoft Online, essentially the company's effort to turn the Energizer experiment into a business.
Initially, Microsoft is offering to host only a few of its server products — Exchange and SharePoint — although, over time, businesses will gain the option to run most Microsoft server products as a service running from inside the software maker's datacentres.
One might reasonably ask what Benz and his team are doing if they aren't running all the servers and managing desktops.
For one thing, his group now offers a much broader range of computer training for Energizer workers. Beyond just teaching how to use specific products, Benz said Energizer now has classes for different types of workers, focused on their particular role. One recent creation is a specific programme just for road warriors.
"It cuts across products," Benz said.
Of course, businesses that don't want to handle the more mundane IT tasks have had other options for a while, such as more conventional outsourcing, in which a third-party company comes in and handles helpdesk and server management, for example.
The problem, Benz said, is such a strategy typically doesn't save much money. Any efficiencies the outsourcer gets because of its expertise are offset by its profit margins.
By having Microsoft run its software from its own datacentres, however, Benz said he believes that it will have enough scale to actually be more cost-effective.
Not everything that Microsoft has been doing with Energizer is going to be offered broadly. But, Benz said, that has more to do with the fact that some of the things aren't good businesses for Microsoft, as opposed to the fact they didn't work out for Energizer.
"There's nothing we've done that I'm disappointed in," he said. Rather, he said he is looking to what he can hand over next. The two companies recently added a hosted business-intelligence offering, something that isn't yet part of the services Microsoft is offering broadly.
Benz also knows the managed-service route isn't for all customers. Even though it resembles outsourcing, he said it is actually more suited to customers that want to be on the cutting edge. Having Microsoft manage their software means that Energizer is always running the latest versions, for better or worse.
"This has to be targeted at people that want to keep up," Benz said. "The reason we got into services arena is to avail [ourselves] of newer stuff."
One of the areas the company is looking at keenly, Benz said, is Microsoft's plan to offer web-based versions of Office applications. Energizer licenses the full version of Office for every PC, but limits the number of PCs it gives out accordingly. Having a lower-cost, web-only option for workers that just require light editing abilities might mean more workers get access to the technology.
"It may be a break-even for us, but we are reaching more of our people more appropriately," he said. "We'll revisit it when the products are out."
Microsoft has said technology preview versions of the Office apps will be available later this year, but hasn't said when the product will be formally released or when the business version might be available. For consumers, the Office web apps will be part of Office Live, while businesses will be able to provide access as part of Microsoft's SharePoint server software.
