
Microsoft Acquires Calendar App Sunrise for North of $100M - jonas21
http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/04/microsoft-sunrise
======
aresant
Very interesting.

A key feature of Sunrise is ""Users can access their calendars from Google,
iCloud, and Microsoft Exchange, as well as connecting to a wide range of other
third-party apps. "

Microsoft clearly understands that data-portability is becoming a major
feature / factor in purchasing decisions.

Google, on the other hand, keeps trimming portability - particularly with
MSFT.

In august, for instance, they killed Google Calendar Sync which made for
simplified syncing with Outlook Calendar. (1)

If portability is what's driving this acquisition and strategy I am excited to
see what's coming next.

(1)
[https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/6054804?hl=en](https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/6054804?hl=en)

~~~
qeorge
I'm an Exchange user with a Nexus 4, and the most recent Android update has
really made my life tough.

First, they _removed_ the normal email app, forcing me to use Gmail. I really
dislike the Gmail app.

Next, they _removed_ the normal calendar app, and replaced it with Google
Calendar. I preferred the old one, and I don't use Google Calendar, I use
Exchange.

And of course, I lost about 80% of my contacts (also stored on my Exchange
account).

I've since switched to Nine[1] and turned off Sync on my exchange account (via
Android settings), and that's fixed a lot of my problems. I can't recommend
Nine enough.

Its frustrating. I liked the old "vanilla" Android. I just want an OS that
stays the way I configured it, instead of changing its interface and removing
applications at random.

Anyone else have this experience? What's the option? Cyanogen? I just want a
phone that works; I don't want to spend my whole life on this.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ninefolder...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ninefolders.hd3)

~~~
stusmall
The two apps you mentioned are open source. You could just grab them, build
them and load them. Here are links to some of the code you'll need:
[https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Emai...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Email/)
[https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Cale...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Calendar/)
[https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Exch...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Exchange/)

I've never built them outside of a whole platform build so you might (read:
probably) will hit issues. This could be a fun project for someone and it
sounds like there is demand.

~~~
eridal
The f-droid store provides exactly what you described:

[https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=aosp&fdid=or...](https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=aosp&fdid=org.sufficientlysecure.standalonecalendar)

------
justin
Congrats to the Sunrise team! They built the calendar app I always wanted Kiko
to be. Pretty cool to see startups succeed in this space.

~~~
loceng
What's Kiko? Not sarcasm.

~~~
sakunthala
The guy you're responding to is Justin of twitch.tv. He was in the original YC
batch making a calandar known as Kiko

~~~
txu
thanks for pointing out. i don't remember the name Kiko but the logo looked
familiar somehow. 2005, wow.

------
sz4kerto
We can expect something similar to what happened to Acompli: rebranding first,
quick release then a probable tighter integration with MS products.

It's incredible though that a calendar app is worth >$100M.

~~~
bigdubs
It's not the app itself as much as the users of said app.

~~~
ryanburk
I would say it is probably both. calendaring tech is actually much harder than
most people believe. both for usable design and efficient implementation. I
say that having worked on the outlook.com/hotmail team a few years ago.

and interestingly this is the second calendaring acquisition microsoft has
done, having bought jump.com back in 1999.

------
habosa
I see some comments like 'how can a calendar app be worth $100M?' but I'd
suspect those people have never used Sunrise.

When you first download Sunrise you think 'wow, I can actually _enjoy_ my
calendar app!'. It's beautiful, fast, works on every platform and with every
calendar provider.

Then you integrate it with all of your other services and you see how calendar
can rival email as the center of your digital life. If you think about it, we
should be checking our calendars to find out what we need to do, not our
email.

Congrats to Joey (shoutout to HackNY!) and the rest of the team. This is a
great reward for building a great app in an essential category.

~~~
ranman
Mega congrats to Joey who did a ton of work. I hope he decides to stay in NYC.

------
cheriot
Does anyone know what's different/interesting about their calendar? The
company home page and app store pages don't bother with a product overview.

~~~
tdkl
Integration with various services like Trello, Todoist, Evernote, Asana etc.
in one calendar.

I hope this acquisition means we'll finally see Exchange support on the web.

------
sergiotapia
Tried to use it, but god damn!

"Sunrise Calendar will receive the following info: your public profile, friend
list, email address, birthday, work history, education history, events, groups
and current city and your friends' birthdays, work histories and education
histories."

Yeah, not gonna happen.

------
tdicola
Wow what drives up the valuation that much, is it a big userbase, lots of
investors to pay back, or something else?

~~~
richardlblair
It's going to be user base. Microsoft needs users, and so you look at what the
users are worth to you and offer that number.

~~~
majani
500k-1m users (According to Google Play doesn't seem like much. It seems more
like a strategic buy to me, the way Microsoft has been trying to push the
boundaries of late with cloud productivity tech

------
mcmancini
As with Acompli, Sunrise looks nice and has some nice features, but I can't
get over the privacy/security problems. I'm interested to see how Microsoft
can improve things.

~~~
richardlblair
> privacy/security problems

It's a calendar app. This stuff already syncs like crazy as it is. I would
never consider a calendar secure, and would never put confidential information
in it.

~~~
qq66
A calendar can't be useful without information on who you're meeting and
where. For some people, that is highly confidential information.

~~~
richardlblair
Sounds like paper and pen is good for you. :)

~~~
mcmancini
That's an idiotic response.

Think of, for example, medical offices: patient names are PHI. Assuming
Microsoft does with Sunrise that it did with Acompli, I could easily see a
small medical office thinking, "hey, this calendar is really cool and it's
from Microsoft, so it's okay to use".

Should they have read the FAQ and seen that it's not HIPAA compliant? Of
course. I can also see easily how Microsoft's reputation in business could
lead to the assumption that their new acquisitions are business-grade, in
spite of their consumer origins.

To bring it around to my original point, I'm interested to see how Microsoft
can improve these apps to the point where they meet the expectations for
Microsoft's business products.

~~~
richardlblair
> That's an idiotic response.

You're inability to sense the sarcasm makes your entire response idiotic.
Typical HN bullshit.

------
harisamin
Met one of the founders at a google business growth event. Really well spoken
and nice guy. Good for them. Happy for the team :)

------
tw04
I think this was the wrong purchase. Sunrise has no ability to dial conference
calls from the calendar, the #1 feature for business users. And based on their
response to my RFE, they have no plans of implementing it. I don't understand
why they didn't go for tempo calendar. Sunrise looks nice, but the feature set
is severely lacking compared to its competitors.

Oh internet warriors, I'd love to hear why my opinion is "wrong" rather than
trying to bury a legitimate comment that applies directly to the discussion at
hand.

~~~
fpgeek
Their development roadmap could easily change after the acquisition. More
importantly, Microsoft already has plenty of people who have a lot of
experience adding enterprise features to products. It makes far more sense for
them to buy the calendar company that is best at the things they don't have,
rather than the one that has more of the features they can straightforwardly
add.

------
Raphael
I would have made a calendar app if I had known it would be worth that much.

Edit: It features the JQueryUI date picker. Funny how such value can come from
free software.

~~~
trustfundbaby
I guess the lesson is to build the things that interest you whether an
acquisition is coming your way or not. I work at a big company that acquires a
lot smaller companies (much smaller deals though) and all the guys we pick up,
were just trying to scratch their own itch, and got an acquisition for
executing and filling a key hole in our business.

You really just never know.

------
gtirloni
Just noticed they require read _and_ write access to public _and_ private
repositories for GitHub integration. Is it really necessary?

~~~
hkailahi
I was pretty sketched by this when I was looking at it over the summer. I'm
also curious on their reasoning.

Does anyone on here use the Github integration? What do you get out of it?

~~~
way66
hello - pierre from sunrise here we wish we could use a better scope just for
milestones in github but unfortunately in order to have milestones and issues
in Github API we need to ask for the private repo.
[https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes](https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes)
feel free to ask Github about that too :)

------
SeanKilleen
One of my most indispensable apps on iOS. I use it multiple times per day. I
hope the excellent integration remains. My guess is that Sunrise will stay on
its own or become the next version of Outlook's calendar on iOS (which is fine
by me as long as it remains free and usable with my Google Calendar as well.)

Congratulations to the team!

~~~
yaeger
Do they still do this? :

>Upon first launch, Sunrise invites you to create an account, then asks you to
add a calendar. The first option, “iCloud Calendar”, brings you to a screen
where the Sunrise app itself, in its native interface and code, solicits your
Apple ID (iCloud) email address and password. […]

Cause that doesn't sound to appealing... I am already on edge about "logging
in with facebook" on 3rd party sites even though that login widget comes
directly from facebook and not the site itself. But to flat out make your own
textboxes where you ask the user to enter their AppleID and password? That's
just wrong.

~~~
gshutler
As danbee said, it's the only way to do it. You should be able to set up an
app-specific password via Apple's site first and provide that instead.

------
walterbell
We need support for CalDav open-source servers, e.g. owncloud, zimbra. Nov
2014 status was "not yet":
[https://twitter.com/mathur_anurag/status/434729199144689665](https://twitter.com/mathur_anurag/status/434729199144689665)

~~~
amirmc
We need to make it trivial for anyone to run their own core infrastructure
(mail, contacts and calendar). I'm working towards this using unikernels -
[http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-
nymote/](http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/)

~~~
walterbell
Is the vision that these would be run at home and/or in the public cloud? Home
offers more legal protection, but NAT hole punching requires a public
rendezvous server. What would be the process of porting the services in
ownCloud to Nymote/Mirage, do they need to be rewritten in ocaml?

------
nilkn
While I'll always be amazed to see apps like this selling for such huge sums
of money, I have to say Microsoft has good taste in apps. First Accompli, now
Sunrise. They're basically going down the list of my favorite third-party
Android apps.

~~~
jbigelow76
Queue up the chorus of rumors (which are starting to seem non-rumorish lately)
of Microsoft eventually enabling Android apps on Windows Phone (and listen for
the wailing and gnashing of teeth of loyal .NET Xaml WP devs everywhere).

------
vassvdm
Congrats Pierre, Jeremy and team!

------
dmix
One reason why: to integrate with Cortana
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Cortana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Cortana)

~~~
r3bl
How exactly do you think that they will incorporate Sunrise with Cortana and
why is it any different from what they can do now with Cortana and Exchange
calendar?

------
bmoresbest55
I just started using this app. I hope that they don't shutdown the service and
make it Microsoft only. Keep with the way Skype is going. Fingers crossed.

------
xe4l
This acquisition likely had a bit to do with the access sunrise has to so many
non-microsoft calendar accounts.

------
frio
I'm not surprised. The calendar in the new iOS Outlook app is almost 1:1 with
Sunrise's UX.

------
ForFreedom
MSFT should integrate sunrise into Outlook(Accompli) and provide it as a stand
alone.

------
desireco42
While congrats and good for them, it seems that some companies have money to
burn.

------
eriksie
Best calendar app for android.

------
hobonumber1
I use Sunrise and I hope they dont shut this app down, but I'm pretty sure
they will.

~~~
r3bl
Dude, read the article:

> We’ve heard Microsoft will keep the Sunrise apps alive as stand-alone
> products, while using some of the startup’s technology for its own future
> products.

~~~
Cowicide
What people hear MS will do and what MS says it will do doesn't really mean
too much to me. It's the actions that count.

I remember when lots of people told me how great it was going to be when MS
bought Virtual PC for Mac (from Connectix) back in the day...

After MS touched the code, it was the first (and only) app to ever give my Mac
a kernel panic. Then, it got even "greater" when MS discontinued Virtual PC
for Mac entirely. MS bought it and killed a great app for Mac.

Will Sunrise avoid getting borged and ruined by MS? I hope not, but I'm not
counting on it, either.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "back in the day..."

Times change. Look at some of their recent moves. It would be unusual for them
to shut this down entirely. Probably a rebrand and then continued growth is
what'll happen.

~~~
Cowicide
> It would be unusual for them to shut this down entirely.

Right, but what they have done is shut down development on certain platforms.
For example, they'll continue to develop Sunrise for Windows Phone, Windows OS
but not for Android and/or make it unusable on Android, Mac, iOS, etc. by
degrading the code.

They have a solid history of doing this. There's also a solid history of
people telling me not to worry about it and being proven wrong over time.
Again, color me skeptical.

------
slykat
Anyone concerned they will pull gCal support to drive customers towards MSFT
products?

~~~
NeutronBoy
Uh, this is the Microsoft who integrated Dropbox into Office 365 as a first-
class citizen, alongside OneDrive.

They've discovered that one of the ways to success, aside from vendor lock-in,
is to make your product integrate with as many other products as possible

~~~
slykat
Yea I guess I'm still getting used to the new MSFT (partnerships, open source,
ec.)

