Microsoft's planned acquisition of Yahoocould boost the company's efforts to deliversoftware as a serviceover the
internet.
Gartner said both
Microsoft and Yahoo could benefit from a relationship.
According to Gartner only a few companies can build such a
business. "Google and Microsoft both have the money and the
ambition to compete in such activities during the next few years.
Other smaller suppliers such as Yahoo, Amazon and Salesforce.com
that also want a piece of the future opportunity face pressure to
ally themselves with or combine to compete with the "megavendors",
Gartner said.
David Mitchell, senior vice-president of IT research at Ovum
said
Google Apps posed a long term threat to Microsoft Office. "Over
time the functionality of Google Applications will become
progressively richer and more complete, to the point that they will
represent a real alternative. As a defence against this position,
Microsoft needs to accelerate its own move into online
services."
Mitchell said the online engineering capabilities of Yahoo will
enable Microsoft to bring new services to market, to compete this
Google.
