Steve Ballmer on Microsoft Cloud Strategy includes 1 surprise

My blog would not be complete without a reference to the speech of Mr. Steve Ballmer on the strategy of cloud computing for Microsoft. The presentation was given at Washington University on March 4, 2010.

In general I is a very generic view on Cloud and SaaS with some references to Bing, Mapping, Xbox Live and Azure.

The surprise (to me) came in the Q&A: If I listened correctly Steve suggested that Azure would become available for 3rd parties. At 1:20h a question is asked about private clouds, the next question was about privacy and regulatory aspects. The answer that Steve gave indicated that somebody could obtain an "Windows Azure-Cloud" (in a container) and create his own private cloud.

Steve made it absolutely clear that "the cloud" will not be owned by 4 to 5 companies worldwide. Steve ends his speech by saying that there will be a 'customer version' available.

2 Videos of Microsoft Courier available

News03-05-10courier:

Remember I blogged about Windows Phone 7 Series? I also mentioned a Windows ‘Slate’ – obviously that was not the right term. The good folks at Engadget have now posted information on Microsoft Courier. Although the video shows some exiting new interface features – I bet you some of those features are also in the Windows Phone 7 Series making the combination of the two devices very strong. Courier is built on Tegra 2 and runs on the same OS as the Zune HD, Pink, and Windows Mobile 7 Series. In the second video you will see it has a camera. I really liked the suggestion of the commenter in the video; it is “an infinite journal”.

I really believe Microsoft is up to something here – this feels way better than iPad – see for yourself:

 

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