Microsoft’s future is cloudy

cloud

Is Microsoft late to the cloud or early? I read the NY Times today who posited that Microsoft is late to cloud computing whilst the cover story of The Economist is “The Battle over cloud computing” and acknowledges that Microsoft has in fact been cloud for some time with services like XBOX Live.

Both of the articles talk about the battle for the cloud and focus largely on Google and Apple. In doing so, The Economist in particular focus on the battle for the consumer cloud. It doesn’t do justice to the scale of the landscape with Amazon and IBM at the very least worth a seat at the table, perhaps both more so than Apple right now.

Meantime, Marc Benioff trots out his now laboured (and incorrect) view that everything at Microsoft revolves around Windows on the PC. Marc really ought to stop listening to his own rhetoric and take a look at Azure. Even better, come to the PDC or just read a bit further in the NY Times piece.

The reality is neither article really in to the details of the changing landscape of computing as much as I would have liked. The Economist gave a degree of analysis but not enough…when I bought the magazine I was expecting a much more in depth review given it graced the cover of the edition. Half a dozen pages or so is just scratching the surface of what it coming with cloud computing and as I mentioned earlier, Amazon has a bigger role to play here as does Salesforce and companies like PayPal.

As cloud computing goes, it’s very very early days so plenty of time left for my to write my own piece perhaps :)