Filed under “stuff that happened while I was away” is this fairly important announcement that GSK is to deploy 100,000 seats of hosted services from Microsoft (they’d previously been on Notes).

As ZDNet reports, it makes Google’s 15,000 seats at Genetech look small by comparison. Of course, size isn’t everything, but as Ron Markezich (Corporate VP of Microsoft Online Services) says: “If a customer like GlaxoSmithKline comes over to Microsoft Online Services, then any customer in the world can.” There’s a real benchmark being set here.

Given further reports of GMail issues today (and then those more major issues from the other week), I think that it has to make one wonder whether Google is up to the rigours of delivering enterprise software.

It’s certainly clear that GSK think that Microsoft Online Services are able to deliver the enterprise capability they require. There’s a video of Bill Louv (CIO of GSK) talking to Ron about the drivers for the decision here.