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It's a well known principle that large vendors usually enter new markets by making acquisitions, and over the weekend, Microsoft made a bid to buy Yahoo. Obviously, the acquisition would give Microsoft an entry into all sorts of markets, but CMP's ChannelWeb Network points out that the acquisition could be a "sign of software services times."

The article raises some interesting points -- Yahoo could bring a different product mentality to Microsoft and accelerate the software giant's move into SaaS, "jumpstarting" its entry into the field, said one executive in the article.

Seeing this news, and reading CMP's article, the idea makes perfect sense. Microsoft in the past has been often criticized for staying mum on SaaS plans and for not being more aggressive at moving into the field. The company has even been maintaining a party line that the right way to do SaaS is to have add-on services to locally installed software. But if they wanted to enter the pure-play SaaS field, I can't imagine a better strategy than to buy a company like Yahoo. The move would position Microsoft well to compete with Google also, a conclusion that seems to be floating around in all the media coverage of this acquisition.

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