First BIG loss for Exchange, HUGE loss for Microsoft

It sucks to lose, but when you lose big it makes you scratch your head about your approach.

May 6, 2007: Biggest Exchange loss in over 10 years. (at least in Vladville)

Comcast chose Zimbra to power it’s SmartZone portal. This is certainly a big loss for Microsoft Exchange but they will be OK, they are still in many ways untouchable by Zimbra when it comes to collaboration and the feature set.

Microsoft is the huge loser here. Conceptually. Ignore for the moment the financial loss here. Ignore even the boost this will give to Zimbra competitively, financially, marketing-wise, etc. Ignore the fact that none of these systems will run Windows, effectively wiping out a huge server deployment.

Ignore all those little details that hardly impact Microsoft.

Focus instead on the huge Las Vegas-style billboard this puts up to Microsoft: “Unbundle.”

Make no mistake, Microsoft didn’t lose this one on the cost – I’m sure they would have haggled it in. They didn’t lose this one on technology or feature set. They didn’t lose this one on the server stability and reliability.

They lost this one because, after years of alienating partners, Microsoft’s anti-competitive bundling strategy is starting to alienate it’s customers as well.

Comcast selected Bizanga, Cloudmark, Plaxo and Trend Micro. If you’ve ever seen my many presentations and tech dives on Microsoft Exchange 2007 you’re aware that there is very little acknowledgement of anything outside of Microsoft in that install or deployment. Microsoft Hosted Security, Microsoft Forefront, Microsoft Antigen, Microsoft LCS, Microsoft UM, Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft.

Today’s head-scratcher? Sometimes 12 million users customers want flexibility. Flexibility that Microsoft fails to demonstrate by forcing offering Microsoft-only solutions.

Dear Microsoft, you still need your partners. It might be a good time to start being nicer to us.