What Does the End of the Ballmer Era Mean for Microsoft Exchange?

Love him, hate him, or fear him, there is no denying that Microsoft co-founder and CEO Steve Ballmer is one of the industry’s true larger-than-life personalities. Reactions to the news that Ballmer is to retire within the next year have varied greatly, from “worst CEO ever” to reflections on his “classy exit.” The one certainty of the situation, however, is that Microsoft is due for drastic changes. What impact will the departure have on Microsoft Exchange and enterprise email?

Office 365 is an important part of Microsoft’s future strategies. The platform faces competition from many other providers with enterprise productivity capabilities — one of the most important of which is email. What we will see in Microsoft’s future will undoubtedly be an acceleration of its transition to cloud services and move away from the Window’s bound mindset. The argument has been made that Ballmer’s reign was marked by the unwillingness to accept that the company needed to move beyond Windows.

However, Microsoft must cover a lot of ground if it is get past the “lock in” of its once ubiquitous operating system. Office 365 reflects this fact: despite being cloud-based, its roots in the proprietary license software model show very clearly. Most of its applications need a major retrofit for the cloud-based environment in which access from any device and data interoperability rule.

Rather than waiting for Microsoft to catch up, organizations have more Exchange alternatives than ever for their 21st century email needs. Platforms such as the open-source Zafara were built with web-access and platform independence in mind. Contact us to learn more about systems with all of the capabilities of exchange that also happen to be way ahead of the curve in giving businesses the agility that they need in the modern age.