Microsoft's Cloud Computing Strategy

The Seattle Times has a very interesting article today titled, "Details about Microsoft's cloud computing expected at conference." By conference they are referring to the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles this week. Indeed many of my coworkers are there already.

Microsoft will be outlining their strategy and since I don't own the pieces I won't talk to the plan which btw includes Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

I was talking with my brother who was visiting last week and he mentioned he couldn't get a piece of email we were talking about because it was on his computer at home. My first thought was, "rookie mistake bro."

When it comes to flat-out convenience and portability there are a lot of options out there. Your email should be available to you from any computer at anytime. And if you have files that you share other than email you can tap into free services like the Windows Live SkyDrive to share files.

If you have a workgroup like I do with the various bands that I run, you can't beat the group software that allows you to run a mini forum with file sharing. I get over 200 emails per day from my job and around 50 from Hotmail, my free home email service. Have all the conversation for the various bands contained in the group services helps me keep track of it; I no longer have to create yet another folder to archive the traffic.

To take advantage of these services, I recommend you start by looking at what your friends or workplace use. No sense in investing in a service if you are the only one using it unless you want to be an agent of change. (Read, this will take a lot of your time to effect change.) There is a lot of goodness out there and by learning to tap into the services you can save yourself a lot of time.