News & Views

July 2010 from The Washington Post – “Ballmer structured the keynote around the theme of Microsoft moving to “the cloud” — that is, “cloud computing”, in which programs live on Web servers accessible from any device with an Internet connection instead of being confined to individual computers…

A cloud-computing strategy also requires a modern Web browser that can run anybody’s Web application. The current release of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer does not qualify as such — undercutting Ballmer’s claim that “we very much embrace” Web standards — so he had to talk about its upcoming Internet Explorer 9 instead…

Ballmer closed the keynote by all but commanding attendees to buy into its cloud-computing vision — “If you don’t want to move to the cloud, we’re not your folks” — before pledging that “the next 12 months will be some of our most exciting, phenomenal and incredible times together…”

180 View – Microsoft does not yet have a solution for ERP in the clouds but you can bet they will soon. I read an article in Computer World on August 31, 2010 entitled “Microsoft to build giant data center in Va.” and the closing paragraph was “Microsoft has other large data centers in Chicago; San Antonio, Texas; Quincy, Washington; and Dublin, Ireland. They support what Microsoft hopes will be a growing online services business, including hosted enterprise applications and its Azure cloud development platform. “

May 2010 from CAmagazine – “…One of the distinctive features of cloud computing is that data can be localized, shared and stored in several countries, depending on what the service provider decides. When a company opts for cloud computing, it relinquishes control over its information channels. Accordingly, the different laws in countries where the data circulates can make it difficult for an organization to ensure adequate protection of information. For example, in the US laws such as the USA Patriot Act and the Stored Communications Act have an impact on data confidentiality…”

180 View – When you read that “the USA Patriot Act and the Stored Communications Act have an impact on data confidentiality”, it’s not clear on the extent of the risk. There is probably way more risk that an employee will expose confidential information by throwing out confidential papers, theft of a laptop, loss of a USB key…

March 4, 2010 from TechCrunch– “Earlier today, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave a speech at the University of Washington where he said that the company was going “all in” with its strategy to move Microsoft products to the cloud…”

180 View – This is a big change in direction for Microsoft and just as it takes an ocean liner time to change direction, so will it take time for Microsoft to move to the cloud or SaaS.

December 22, 2009 from Forbes – “…Over the past year, cloud computing has captured significant attention of CEOs, CIOs and IT personnel alike, as businesses began to investigate the value of moving certain workloads to a cloud model. Facing mounting pressures to provide better services quickly, while reducing costs, many IT decision makers found the economics and capabilities of cloud compelling. Now with analyst firm Gartner’s recent proclamation that cloud computing is the number one technology in its annual “Top 10 Strategic Technologies” list, clear that 2009 marked the maturation of this emerging form of computing…”

180 View – When you read the article, you may have some doubts about the “maturity” of the cloud which is still changing shape with the recent introduction of private vs public clouds and open source vs proprietary interfaces.