by Simon Quicke1 October 2008
The end of this month will see a series of significant
announcements from Microsoft about cloud computing.
Speaking to resellers at an event in London, Microsoft CEO
Steve Ballmer, indicated a new operating systems, he dubbed Windows Cloud,
would be unveiled as well as a host of supporting services at its Professional
Developers Conference at the end of the month.
In a speech that was designed to encourage resellers to move
towards its vision of software plus services Ballmer said that partners were
key to helping customers make the transition from on-premise software to the
options which included partner and vendor hosted.
“Software plus services will bring us into a world of change
and it is exciting to embrace it intelligently to find new opportunities,” he
said.
He said the traditional software market was already changing
as a result of the increasing number of embedded applications in smart phones
and PCs and those hoping they could avoid change would not be able to do so for
much longer.
“Everyone agrees we have to take advantage of storage and
computing resources that live in different places,” he added.
Ballmer hinted that it would be prepared to help resellers
make the move to a new licensing model: “We will work with you to make it a
transition you can manage financially.”
Ballmer also used the partner event to tell resellers that
it had made improvements with Vista dealing
with compatibility concerns.
He also added that some of the reasons why the compatibility
issues emerged, because of the need for greater security, would not be repeated
with Windows 7.
