{"id":2078,"date":"2011-05-03T07:00:54","date_gmt":"2011-05-03T15:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=2078"},"modified":"2011-05-03T07:00:54","modified_gmt":"2011-05-03T15:00:54","slug":"cloud-computing-microsoft-plays-catch-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/cloud-computing-microsoft-plays-catch-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Cloud Computing: Microsoft Plays Catch Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reminiscent to the browser wars<\/a> of the mid-90’s when Microsoft was late to the Internet browser game but ultimately managed to best the Netscape Navigator, Microsoft has now woken up to the cloud, and has decided to focus huge amounts of money on cloud technology in an attempt to make up lost ground.<\/p>\n

A decade ago, in 2000, Bill Gates wrote a now-famous memo<\/a> to Microsoft employees outlining a shift in focus: “Today we must make a similar bet on using software to improve the way people experience the Internet\u2014an even more important revolution than the GUI.”<\/p>\n

In 2005, Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft and technical successor to Bill Gates, wrote about how Microsoft must change to compete in the world of the internet. \u00a0“This model has the potential to fundamentally impact how we and other developers build, deliver, and monetize innovations.”<\/p>\n

Now both Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie are gone from the role of technical lead at Microsoft. \u00a0In March 2010, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that Microsoft was “all in” for work on the cloud. \u00a0Ballmer later, in \u00a0a letter to employees wrote that “We need to be (and are) willing to change our business models to take advantage of the cloud. We must move at cloud speed<\/em>, especially in our consumer offerings.”<\/p>\n

This year’s financials at Microsoft show that they are going to try to be serious about the cloud. \u00a0Microsoft has allocated a budget of $9.6 billion<\/a> on research and development over the next year, and 90 percent of that budget — $8.64 billion — is going towards cloud computing. \u00a0That’s quite a sum of money. \u00a0But to properly spend that much money, Microsoft needs a good plan. \u00a0One question is, “who is left to lead and architect a plan”?<\/p>\n

Derrick Harris on GigaOm <\/a>commented that “What Microsoft absolutely cannot afford to do is to get Windows Azure to a place where it\u2019s good enough<\/em> \u2014 in terms of software or hardware \u2014 and then grind innovation to a slow crawl. Cloud computing is about constant innovation \u2014 take a look at AWS\u2019s rate of feature rollouts \u2014 and it\u2019s possible Microsoft could get complacent as its service provider partners like Dell, Fujitsu and, possibly, Rackspace start offering Windows Azure as a service and do the brunt of the work of attracting customers.”<\/p>\n

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Reminiscent to the browser wars of the mid-90’s when Microsoft was late to the Internet browser game but ultimately managed to best the Netscape Navigator, Microsoft has now woken up to the cloud, and has decided to focus huge amounts…<\/span><\/p>\n

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