If Microsoft Screwed Up Sidekick, What Hope for Office 2010?

The dust is settling on the failure of T-Mobile’s Sidekick service in the US, and it looks like Microsoft is at fault. The foul-up for consumers could have serious consequences for the company in the business field.

Microsoft is increasingly trying to give the impression that it “gets” the cloud. It’s promised a cloud version of Office 2010, as a way to compete against the threat of Google Apps, And Steve Ballmer is now promising cloud with every presentation – though always with the caveat that “no one believes in thing clients”.

People will certainly be doubting Microsoft’s thin clients now. Danger, the company the makes the Sidekick, is a Microsoft subsidiary, and it looks like it was a Microsoft-run server failure which lost  the Sidekick data and – by implication – a Microsoft back-up failure which made the loss permanent.

Microsoft has at least two cloud-based initiatives on the way. One major selling point for the generally disappointing Windows Mobile 6.5, is a “free cloud backup” service which Microsoft is calling My Phone.

After the problems with Sidekick, who is going to rush into a Microsoft-run cloud backup service?

And the web-based Office 201http://www.innovate09.co.uk/streaming_live.aspx0 is also dependent on the reliability of data in the cloud.

Google has had to struggle to convince users of the reliability of its service – but has generally had few problems with actually losing data. A temporary outage was enough to raise questions about the cloud but that is a much smaller problem than a permanent loss of data.

Google is now earning large customers for its Google Apps Premier Edition, such as Rentokil, because it has convinced them it is more reliable – in many cases – than the customer’s own in-house IT.

Microsoft will have a long road to travel before it can claim likewise.