Over the last few years, Microsoft has entered the ITSM markeplace, both through their monitoring efforts (MOM/SCOM) and their upcoming service desk?   But are they are real player and will they be?  I'm not so sure.

Its certainly true that MS have made a lot of traction with the monitoring solutions, especially at the low end of the market.   Basic server monitoring is a commodity and they have been able to compete effectively on price.   At the end of the day, this isn't really a sustainable model in a commodity market because somebody else will come in and do it better/cheaper.   MOM/SCOM also has a reputation for struggling in enterprise class deployments so if something else were available with the right price point then MOM/SCOM would likely end up like the dodo.  

I think part of the problem is that MS seem to be in a position that the market do not understand their strategy (if they have one) for solving business problems in ITSM.   Providing a cheap and cheerful monitoring solution is not that, especially as cheap solutions from MS are rarely cheerful.   One only needs to think to MS Works or home editions of windows.  

Their service desk has still not hit the market, but has their time to market mean that they've missed the mark?   I'm sure they'll get some decent market share just through price again, but is that sustainable?   I'm not so sure.   Will it be Saas?  will it introduce groundbreaking new technologies?   Will it bundle workflows of all the best practices for a service desk?   Its doubtful that it will do all these things.  

At the end of the day, it ultimately seems that there is not a cohesive strategy for helping organizations improve their ability to deliver business services.   Its also not clear why they didn't just acquire the functionality that they wanted.    Until they can get their act together, I just don't see MS being an influential player in this market, let alone dominating.   It would be interesting if some of the bigger ITSM vendors started giving away server monitoring for free (e.g. IBM, BMC, CA, HP, CPWR etc) and making their money more on the business level solutions.  Something like this would pretty much stop the MS momentum in its tracks.