Where is Microsoft’s “Exchange for the rest of us” – take 2

In the middle of last year, I pondered the whereabouts of Microsoft’s Exchange for the rest of us.  Recently, I received a trackback from Paul Smith’s blog, wherein he quotes excepts of that post and writes that “Microsoft already offer push support for Hotmail, and custom domains that use Hotmail as their backend, and they offer this for free, and have done for a year or two.”

This is my reply to Paul:

Hey there Paul,

I somehow missed your reply to my post until now, so I apologize for the delayed response – linking to your post in the comments section of TechNest Report would have helped.  Thanks for quoting me, by the way: I feel famous and important already

Now for the topic at hand: you state that “Microsoft already offers push support for Hotmail.”  That’s great!  But I have to ask: if a tree fell in a forest and nobody heard it, did it ever fall?The point is that even if Microsoft does offer push for Hotmail, it is nigh impossible to find.  Let me give you some examples:
1) A simple search on Microsoft’s own live.com search engine for the terms “hotmail push” returns no Microsoft-hosted results.  In fact, none of the links on the first five pages have anything to do with getting Hotmail push working on a Windows mobile device.  Most of the returned search results are for getting Hotmail to work with Blackberry devices.  After page 5, I quit looking.
2) In my live/hotmail account, there is not a single mention of the feature.  Not in the settings pages, nowhere.  It doesn’t exist.

I keep coming back to your sentence: “It’s just unfortunate people like yourself either don’t know it exists, or pretend it doesn’t so you can claim that Apple were first.”

Let me say this: when Apple released MobileMe alongside the iPhone, it brought the service into the spotlight.  The “typical consumer” knows that the service exists and available.  It’s simple to market and understand – “Exchange for the rest of us.”

Now let’s turn to Microsoft’s effort of consumer-level Exchange: I have not found the ever-eluding “switch” to turn this service on.  What does that say about Microsoft’s marketing?  If I – Alex Luft – founder of more than one tech startup – have searched and after searching have not found the service, how can you expect the “regular consumer” to find it?  That’s the problem with many a Microsoft product: the company makes very good products yet somewhere between the engineering department and the advertising department, the product gets lost.

See, Paul, there is a greater problem here at stake: it’s not that I buy into the “anti-Microsoft fanboy nonsense” – to say that would be merely not having done your research (if you would have listened to a TNR podcast, you would see that this can’t be further from the truth).  The greater problem is that if a company such as Microsoft builds an awesome product to the likes of Vista but fails to deliver the correct message to consumers – which Microsoft has done on multiple accounts – then what is the point of building such a product in the first place?  It only serves to the detriment of Microsoft and it’s image in the minds of the public.  The same can be said of this ever-elusive consumer-level Exchange from the folks over in Redmond.

Microsoft makes products for people.  Moreover, it has been the goal of Microsoft to always be #1 – the market-share leader – in whatever product category it competes.  The fact that I don’t know that
a) Microsoft’s consumer-level Exchange exists, and
b) Where to find it,
defeats those goals.  If people can’t find it, how will they use it?  It’s as simple as that, not about fanboyism, “anti-Microsoft nonsense,” or a “reality distortion field.”  Rather, it’s pure common sense and a little bit of marketing.

So where is this service and how come it’s widely publicized?  Apple puts MobileMe on their home page.  Microsoft should do the same – we both know Windows Mobile needs all the help it can get these days (have you seen the 6.5 interface?).

After almost a year after writing the original post, I still haven’t come across Microsoft’s Exchange for the rest of us.  And I’ve been looking!

PS: as a tip for the future – it might be better for you to provide your readers some value and link to the service you’re writing about (the Microsoft Exchange consumer-level service in question).  Not doing so actually provides your readers a dis-service.  What’s more – it would have been nice for you to post a link to your blog post in the comment you left at TechNest Report.  Not doing so and then publishing this piece makes you look like a back-stabbing sleaze ball.  Watch me link to this post in your comments.

Posted in Apple, Common Sense, Marketing, Microsoft