…or is it Purity of Essence? [movie buffs will get it]

This announcement from Microsoft and Amazon.com certainly leaves a lot to the imagination, especially when thinking about Recombinant Communications (RC) tactics. In it, Microsoft reveals that Amazon.com is paying an undisclosed sum and entering an agreement by which each company provides “access to the other’s patent portfolio” which “covers a broad range of products and technology, including coverage for Amazon’s popular e-reading device, Kindle™”.

Even though Microsoft says that it has entered more than 600 deals since it started its licensing program in late 2003, this one is of great interest as both companies position themselves to offer new services in opposition to non-traditional competitors who are fellow software superpowers. Microsoft makes a point of mentioning that it has an interest in the publishing platform embedded in Amazon.com’s Kindle. That would signal a direct assault against Apple’s iTunes-based e-commerce platform, as well as some preemptive positioning versus Google’s ever-growing roster of cloud-based resources. Apropos of “the cloud”, Microsoft’s statement also makes mention of Amazon’s Linux-based technology. This really is losing one’s religion around Windows-based servers.

The fate of Windows Phone is another matter. With Microsoft showcasing a graphics-laden, Zune-like roster of applets running on a range of mobile devices, the idea of piecing together a back-end system that is “the best of…” cloud-based e-commerce resources from Amazon and Microsoft has tremendous merit. The fact that Amazon is paying Microsoft to cement the relationship without discussing which elements are of interest to the Web-based retailing giant is also ripe for speculation. At a minimum, it signals that the fast-growing (though comparatively diminutive) Amazon Web Services group will be able to make more serious inroads into enterprise IT infrastructure, especially where companies are committed to Windows-based servers.

At a minimum, Amazon.com’s EC2 (Electronic Commerce Cloud) and Microsoft’s Azure, will start looking a lot more like one another. This spells a stronger position for both in yet another large area of opportunity now dominated by Oracle and fast-growing Salesforce.com. An RC-based approach is key to understanding how these developments will play out. Open-ended, cross-licensing agreements makes it possible for either company to piece together solutions from both “open” and proprietary elements of their current technologies. RC makes it possible to re-assemble these pieces and move them forward into new products and services that directly address a customer’s (or end user’s) needs. It may be as mundane as providing a better way to re-schedule a sales call in Outlook or Microsoft CRM from a mobile phone, or it might be a full-blown effort to make Microsoft’s Azure a stronger competitor to Google Apps.

From our perspective, this is a watershed deal that reflects a major change in the competitive landscape.

[Update: Long-time Microsoft follower Mary-Jo Foley posted these comments earlier. At base, she says that Amazon is “using Linux” to pay Microsoft for unspecified patent infringements. She notes that, although this was not a joint press release, there was no corresponding notice from Amazon.

This hardly sounds like the basis of a joint development effort in cloud computing or e-publishing.]

Categories: Articles

Tags: Microsoft, Amazon.com, ecommerce, Recombinant Communications, Web Services