Advantage Google

It's been pretty amazing to see the advancements of Gmail over the past 5 years or so. Multitenancy has many advantages for customers but probably even more so for the vendor.

Gmail provides a good example.

Google's messaging service:

• Gmail

Microsoft's messaging products and services: 

• Exchange Server 2003
• Exchange Server 2007
• Exchange Server 2010
• Small Business Server 2003
• Small Business Server 2008
• Small Business Server 2011
• Business Productivity Online Suite
• Business Productivity Online Suite Dedicated 
• Office 365
• Office 365 Dedicated
• Hotmail 
• Office Communications Server 2007
• Lynx 2010 
• Office Live Small Business (forced sunset coming 10/11)
•  ...I'm sure there are a couple more. 

Consumerization is an extremely powerful force that's just getting started in the technology industry. The iPhone is the best example. Gmail is another great example. It was cool to see Facebook roll video chat into their service, it was also a reminder that Gmail has had this feature for more than 2 years. 

Today our personal computing experience is dominated by multitenant web-based services. Tomorrow our business computing experience will be as well.