Commentary by Juergen Geck, CTO of Open-Xchange

If Ray Ozzie (always a man ahead of his time) says it, we should all pay attention.

At a recent conference, Microsoft's chief software architect said to build confidence in cloud computing, the best way would be to take some applications that are "more cloud-friendly" -- such as e-mail and employee collaboration -- to the cloud. As logical candidates for cloud deployment, he offered up Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint, as well as comparable offerings from others (like Open-Xchange),

What are the key ingredients to making his prediction come true?

SaaS? Yes. Cloud? Yes. Open? Yes (okay, he did not stress this point) Deployed by independent Service Providers? Yes. Supported by trusted, local partners? Yes.

And even beyond Ozzie's predictions, as we look into our crystal ball at the future, we think about far greater data integration than exists today. Not via big services projects (too expensive for SMBs), nor via EAI infrastructure (too expensive for SMBs), nor via XML (too expensive because only a handful of developers understand the whole set of complexities involved).

At Open-Xchange we're working on providing access to our data content via html with semantic markup. This means third-party apps and users with nothing more than a browser will have complete access to the data within Open-Xchange. And, of course, the reverse is also true: Open-Xchange can read such markup.

Simple, easy, fast, and capable of being implemented by any web designer or html-savvy programmer within hours rather than months.

So, we agree with Ray Ozzie that the first wave of adoption for enterprise cloud computing will be driven by e-mail and collaboration applications. And, that software will provide users with even greater capabilities than anyone knows today.

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