“Long term, we want the [BPO hosts] to turn into software companies building on their domain expertise,” stated Tom Yoritaka,
senior product manager at Microsoft.
The goal is to have the outsourcers cast in the role of the hub, with Microsoft as the foundation technology. The infrastructure
stack would typically include Smart Client for accessing data and services from within Office.
Microsoft’s strategy calls for working with its business partners to create solutions that integrate with or enhance Microsoft
products. SharePoint, for instance, has connectivity to the Web and is integrated with Office programs.
There are 34 million desktops with SharePoint, said Chuck Nash, CEO of KnowledgeLake, a production workflow ISV and Microsoft
partner. “We’re part of the Microsoft infrastructure. We get snapped in,” Nash said.
SharePoint becomes the data repository and comes free with Windows Server. Add on a $100-per-seat KnowledgeLake application
and you have a system that’s as robust as an ECM (Enterprise Content Management) solution at 30 percent of the cost, yet is
easier to implement and maintain, Jost said.
“It is inherent to the OS. It works so much better with Word, Excel, with all the other desktop applications,” Jost added.
Nevertheless, Greenbaum isn’t convinced. He said it is the process, not the technology, that injects BPO with its real value.
“If this is what Microsoft calls BPO, they don’t understand business processes. It has nothing to do with technology,” Greenbaum
explained.
Microsoft has a lot to gain by being the low-cost technology provider to the high-end service companies, and it may indeed
undersell rivals such as Documentum, which is now owned by EMC.
If Greenbaum is right and technology doesn’t play a key role in BPO, then the Redmond giant has a lot to lose, especially
if competition comes from open source and Web-based applications.
“From the customer standpoint, the technology doesn’t matter,” EAC’s Greenbaum said.
Charles Fitzgerald, general manager of platform strategy at Microsoft, scoffs at the idea that BPO technology doesn’t matter.
For Fitzgerald, the technology resides in the business process and the business process is delivered by the application.
Companies such as HP and IBM have no significant domain-specific expertise in HR, tax accounting, or other areas where business-specific
expertise is required, Microsoft’s Fitzgerald said. Those companies are ITOs (IT outsourcers) and are trying to change their
stripes and become BPO hosts, Fitzgerald added. Echoing Yoritaka, Fitzgerald predicted that BPO hosts will become software
vendors by forging solutions out of Microsoft products that are integrated with their own vertical components.
To that end, Microsoft wants to ensure that inside the solution offered by BPO hosts with domain expertise will be Microsoft
infrastructure, beginning with the application development environment and continuing to the platform the solutions run on.
What we’re witnessing is the classic Microsoft strategy of expanding the core operating system into the business application
space and locking the customer into both, Jost said.
“When you stack up Microsoft along with business partners against mainstream traditional BP [business process] re-engineering,
this is a market disruption,” Jost said.
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