Reality check: Microsoft losing its grip in the UK?

• Tweet

• Tweet

An Accredited Supplier survey of Microsoft customers suggests:

According to an Accredited Supplier poll, Microsoft is losing their grip on the UK small business market under increasing pressure from cloud computing and open source software.

Accredited Supplier’s poll of 1400 Microsoft customers, all small businesses in the UK, has raised concerns over Microsoft’s future in this market segment.

Let’s look at the numbers as reported in the survey:

• 13% of businesses intend to switch to Google Apps within 12 months
• 32% use Firefox as their default browser within their business
• Only 8% plan to upgrade to Windows 7 within 12 months of release
• 62% “prefer” or “strongly prefer” to have their business applications work through a browser

Mike Butcher at TechCrunch Europe dives in with the provocatively titled: British small biz falls out of love with Microsoft, heads to the Clouds

So the broad implications are that Microsoft is not fairing well in the march towards cloud computing, Internet Explorer is on the decline and Firefox on the rise. And 10% of Microsoft’s UK small business customers are actively considering making the switch to Google Apps.

There are plenty of problems with the ‘survey.’

• 1,400 users is a flea bite. Barely a statistical blip when compared to the millions of Microsoft product users.
• We know nothing about the 1,400 users. We don’t know what kind of business users this group represents, whether they are developer types or anything else for the matter. There are plenty of businesses out there that mandate Internet Explorer 6. Yes – that’s IE6.
• An intention to switch and implementation are two entirely different things. Why didn’t the survey try get the numbers of those that HAVE switched? Presumably the answer today is zero although that would also be a fallacy?
• Having applications work through a browser and then conflating that to mean ‘cloud computing’ is a gross overstatement and yet another example of inexactitude. How do you necessarily get from one to the other when there are plenty of applications that work through a browser but do not operate in the so-called cloud? Again – I’d be much more impressed with figures that talked to the specifics of what is actually going on.

Microsoft is not going to sit around and watch its multi-billion dollar franchise disappear. In its applications business, some think Microsoft is Switzerland to the giants out there. Microsoft may struggle to contain the flow of companies moving to the internet for their applications but that is a world removed from what’s being suggested here and is a battle that has yet to be fought.

The moment Microsoft makes Excel and Word available as services consumed in the so-called ‘cloud’ it will be game back on with Google, Zoho and all the other wannabe next Microsofts. Both these applications are so well embedded into the fabric of day-to-day computing that you’d have to be nuts to bet against them – at least in the next 5-10 years. Microsoft doesn’t have to do much to retain its core franchise other than make sure that pivot tables are included in whatever they choose to put out in Excel and strip out a good 40-60% of stuff that most people don’t use in both products. They’d still be ahead of the game the others are playing.

Get ready to heft those bags of salt people.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Microsoft: Firefox’s billion claim is ‘interesting math’ (guardian.co.uk)
• Microsoft backs long life for IE6 (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Firefox eating Internet Explorer’s lunch in New Zealand? (billbennett.co.nz)
• BROWSER WARS: Google Chrome to Come Standard With Sony Computers (mashable.com)
• Opera 10 to emerge Tuesday (news.cnet.com)