SBA in ISV Lovefest

Yesterday in Redmond. CRN has some morsels. The COO fantasizes:

"I hope you place your bet today with us as a company. We're actually quite obsessed with this opportunity," Ayala said. "I don't think we'll do 600 million customers [right away] but I hope we do 40 million," he said.

SBA is a USA only product. There are 300 million people in the USA, and they aren't all accountants. I predict a subscription model with weekly drops and lots of churn.

VP O'Hara notes that

"Our goal is transparency."

Good. Because that's what they'll have, shipping managed code.

Don't run to the corner software emporium yet, as it hasn't shipped yet, but it will with bundled with Office.

The latter product will include the usual Office applications as well as updated Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager.

That's an updated BCM, Outlook remaining very much the 2003 model.

The task and contact management application takes aim at Act and other PIMs, and will sport tight links to the accounting functions as well, Microsoft has said.

That's very passive of them and judging from the beta, well, its probably not a violation of the NDA to note this is probably usage #9 or #10 of the word "tight".