Ballmer Talks Up "Windows Cloud." Don't Believe It. (MSFT)
No one really knows yet what the heck Ballmer means by "Windows Cloud." Is it the front-end of the EC2 rival "Red Dog" Microsoft is rumored to be working on, or something else altogether? Steve was very light on details, promising specifics at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference on Oct 27. But he did give a few clues, and here's what Windows Cloud is not.
- It's not another "Internet Tidal Wave" paradigm-shift moment. Even as he announced Windows Cloud, Ballmer said Windows 7, the succesor to Vista, is on track. Not surprising, given the PC is still a Microsoft cash cow.
- No meaningful change to that other Microsoft cash cow -- MS Office. Maybe users will be able to do "light editing" of Office files on the Web, Ballmer said, but serious manipulation of Office files will still be grounded very much off the cloud and on the PC. (Hey Steve, we can already do "light editing" of DOC and XLS files with Google (GOOG) Docs!)
- And here's the weirdest part: If Microsoft really sees the cloud as a threat that can "obsolete" the company, why did they just ink a deal with Amazon?
More likely than not, Ballmer means some sort of very limited Internet-based extensions for Office or Outlook, perhaps something like Apple's (AAPL) MobileMe, but more, y'know, "cloud-y." That will let Ballmer use that hip word "cloud" in press releases while actually preserving Microsoft's core business, which centers on PC-based computing -- the very opposite of the cloud.
Last week Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison said "the computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion" and made light of cloud computing as a meaningless buzzword. Ballmer isn't making him eat his words.
See also:
Larry Ellison: Someone Explain To Me This "Cloud Computing" Thing My Company Is Committing To
Amazon Welcomes Microsoft To The Cloud
well more likely than not, you just took one quote from ballmer and built a negative & speculative story out of it rather than, um, you know, doing some reporting or legwork.
hard to say if that's bias or just laziness, but either way this article was totally useless.
Ya know dig a little you will find MS has had a "cloud" effort going since 95. And check out exchange... woohoo looks like cloud to me on that one. Or maybe this Live Mesh, now that is "cloud" computing isnt it? Or folder share? or maybe Sync Toy2. All of these allow for transfer of date from a remote source to your mobile, laptop or desktop. There did your investigating for ya.
Man these "journalists" are just .......
It's almost like a shamanic dream sequence...
http://businessmindhacks.com/post/microsofts-branding-mess-revisited-is-live-really-dead