On Microsoft and anticompetitive positioning in e-learning environments

During the early stage of world ICT adoption growth Microsoft was very much influential in providing the operating systems that simplified computer use. This simplification allowed users to navigate complex computers more simply by providing a neater graphic interface. This was a major break though and very welcomed. During its time as a major software producer it has had to deal with significant complaints of anti-competitive behaviour. At eScience we see with great surprise that Microsoft are again more then willing to enter new and emerging markets using what can best best described as 'anti-competitive' behaviour that will limit innovation in the e-learning and course management market. In the US Microsoft has launched its new educational support service called live@edu. It is a service that devolves information system responsibility to Microsoft by use of its cloud centres. On the face of it the service looks quite good (although we haven't had an opportunity to evaluate tools). The service offers educational establishments the opportunity to move information systems into the cloud yet maintain branding. Institutions that run with the service will be provided free branded email services, free online storage and backup (25Gb per user), free class worksites, free collaboration tools, free access to Office 2010 and free support. Our problem is nothing to do with the products or services, which on the face of it look OK, our problem lies in the disruptive way it is entering the market.

Our objection is that they are entering a fairly mature industry disruptively that will eventually limit competition they face. There is no such thing as free software solution on this scale and there is already very little profit left in the VLE market. If all UK universities where to adopt their model, Microsoft would need to account for approximately 100,000 terabytes of storage space. This will cost something somewhere down the line and that is impossible to refute. The issue, however, is that during times of financial crisis institutions may be tempted to take on this technology to minimise budgetary problems. Come the next economic up wave they'd be locked into a corporate technology where they have no influence on future technology developments. Welcome to a world where Microsoft guides how you research and teach; whereas those institutions with open source developers embedded into their e-Learning/research frameworks can ask for tools to be developed to meet specific institutional needs... to the benefit of all universities using the open source technology. In the long run, the open source opportunity will cost much less than the corporate version as an investment of, say, £100,000 could raise productivity for millions of people globally. We firmly believe that software for universities should be designed by universities that understand the dimensions of academia; not by external profit making agencies seeking to capture human market share. One cannot help but think the long term plan for Microsoft, similarly banks that offer special incentives to students, is to establish a large scale market of well qualified, high earning graduates that it can use to make money from later on. Whatever the business model they have in mind, we must not allow Microsoft to become dominant in this field. Given the recent bad press relating to how large organisations can abuse our online data (e.g. Facebook, Google) we should be quite fearful of storing so much academic material with any commercial organisation that can change privacy and cost settings as it likes and has unlimited financial might to fight the courts.

We hope that you share our concerns regarding Microsoft's aggressive launch; maybe it is too new for people to see the real long term impact of the offering. As far as we are aware live@edu is not yet available in the UK, possibly as the necessary hardware in Aberdeen (the cloud centre) is not complete. It will come online next year however, and we hope resulting cloud services are priced fairly to reflect real operating costs.