Microsoft To Follow google Into The Cloud ?

Cloud computing companies say the process is like pulling down applications and data from an amorphous cloud -- This involves universal access to get information and services from anywhere, and everywhere. The pie in the sky promise is cloud computing provides the ability to serve massive IT services through the Web. For that we will have to wait a while. IT departments have been notoriously jealous about company data and sharing that data with a on-line hosted service may not work for them.

The strict definition of cloud computing is to access processing power from a hosted service via a high-speed Internet connection. Elastic Cloud Compute and Simple Storage Service, two services from Amazon.com, and Sun Microsystems network.com, are examples of this model. It's a buzzword label for a subset of grid computing that includes utility computing and other approaches to the use of shared computing resources. Cloud computing is an alternative to having local servers or personal devices handling users' applications.

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It's been rumored for a while now, Microsoft will embrace cloud computing, the same way google has done with it's google apps suite of online applications. Mostly it involves a form of team collaborative working where contributors do not have to be co-located. google has had this for some time with their google docs offering. But now, google has stepped it up recently with their google sites offering, and Microsoft needs to respond or get out of the way. The 'sites' product rolls into it the jotspot purchase which adds a wiki flavor to the collaborative.

Microsoft has been rumored to be on this path ever since a beta of Microsoft Office Live Workspace was announced back in the October 2007 time frame. it looks like it's real and going to be rolled out soon. I doubt that most individuals will part take of the service, it's mostly geared towards a business or corporate setting. I have been browsing around the offerings and it looks good for team use, not so good for those seeking an online wiki for researching things like articles. But I may still bite.

The real promise here is realized with the changes coming to the desktop, laptop, phonetop -- The future of ASUS Eee PC and similar devices is going to mushroom. I am not a big fan of the iPhone because of the costs involved, but it and handhelds of similar ilk surely can work with these offerings. When everything is done on-line 'in the cloud' the processing needs of the desktop is greatly diminished. The daily mobile warrior will be happy. Security should be greatly improved with the advent of online storage and limited usb storage on the local machines. Not foolproof by any means, and encryption is still best, but better than the backup and storage regimen of most users.

Word is it's going to be real soon now. Time is short.

Here's what Ballmer recent said in an interview with News.com:

"We can have service-based offerings that essentially line up with our information worker infrastructure products--Exchange and SharePoint, Office Communications Server--if we have instances that sort of line up to what people do, development and deployment applications, database applications, etc. That is more value. We can help people reduce management costs, deployment costs, operations costs, data center costs...Somehow, if we can help our customers avoid cost and complexity that they have and give them all the value we give them today, there ought to be a trade in there where we get to make a little bit more money and our customers get a lot more value...."

"Well, in the enterprise, I think the stuff that we might expect to see actually move most quickly is probably some aspects of the desktop infrastructure, for lack of a better term. We've announced some customers--I don't know who's public and who's not public, though. But we've announced some customers for our Microsoft online offerings for Exchange, for Office Communications Server, for SharePoint, and I certainly show a lot of demand there. That's probably where the offer is clearest and the demand is highest.

Somebody might say, well, what about CRM? You see some (CRM), but you see it more in pockets. You see it more departmentally. It's not quite the same, enterprise-driven demand that we're seeing for some of the information worker productivity infrastructure."

Microsoft Watch has more here.