It’s early March at the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston, and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is working the audience more like a football coach giving a halftime speech than the chief executive of the world’s largest software company. Ballmer, known for his animated speaking style, is pushing the possibilities of cloud computing. He refers to “the cloud” as “the most important technology shift of our generation.” Ballmer describes the technology as the power to connect […]
Microsoft
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If Microsoft’s lukewarm comments about VDI or its repeated “concerns” about the cost of desktop virtualization haven’t told you anything about the company’s stance, a look at Microsoft’s licensing rules should help you nail it down. Microsoft really doesn’t like desktop virtualization. The reason? Because customers might get the idea that virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) can solve two problems, both related to the vendor’s most profitable product line, at once: * The high cost of […]
By now, most IT professionals are familiar with server and application virtualization. But Microsoft says it’s time to get ready for the next layer: server application virtualization. This new capability is now available in beta as part of System Center Virtual Machine Manager, and will hit general availability later this year as part of the larger System Center 2012 release, Microsoft said this week. Microsoft isn’t the first vendor to virtualize server applications, but it […]
BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion and Microsoft are teaming up around a cloud computing strategy through which the two tech titans integrate cloud services and solutions. RIM said Thursday that cloud computing has always been a major component of its BlackBerry business, whether it’s real-time push, security or the backend architecture and RIM’s 2011 BlackBerry Product roadmap will focus heavily on the cloud. “Cloud has been our business for years,” Alec Taylor, RIM’s vice president of […]
Steve Ballmer, pacing the stage at the CERAweek energy conference in Houston Wednesday night, touted cloud computing as the wave of the future. He pushed Microsoft’s Kinect system for its Xbox 360 console. He brought an actor on stage to demonstrate how Kinect’s sensors register the body motions of its users without the need for a handheld device like Nintendo’s Wii and showed how friends using Kinect can interact with each other in cloud-based cyberspace. […]
The head of Microsoft Ireland says Ireland could become a global leader in cloud computing, but only if the country seizes the initiative and gains first mover advantage over rivals. He said Ireland needed every advantage, including low corporate taxes, to compete for foreign investment. Microsoft Ireland MD Paul Rellis was addressing an audience of 120 business leaders at a Dublin Chamber of Commerce members’ briefing at the Four Seasons Hotel in Dublin. The US, […]
Microsoft today named some of the country’s top “cloud-friendly” U.S. cities. The rankings are based on the results of an extensive survey in which 2,000 IT decision makers nationwide discussed how they are adopting and using cloud computing. The forecast for cloud computing across key U.S. cities calls for new lines of business, more need for IT services, and potential job growth, according to a new survey released today by Microsoft. Microsoft released the results […]
A growing number of small-business owners are expected to try cloud computing services next year, hoping to trim costs and stay up and running if disaster strikes. Cloud computing refers to any service that operates over an Internet connection, allowing immediate access from any computer or mobile device with Web access. Business owners can access software or store information—such as customer contacts, accounting data and presentations—and leave the technical maintenance to the cloud provider. As […]
Once upon a time, a few decades ago, computers were extraordinarily expensive, room-filling machines – the kind decked out with whirring tape reels, flashing lights, and banks of switches. You didn’t pull up a chair up to use one; instead, using a process called timesharing, you accessed it via a remote terminal at the same time as a bunch of other folks. The PC revolution changed all that, but only for a while. Today, we’re […]
When we first heard about cloud computing, public clouds got most of the attention. But as IT managers looked at the security risks of having data outside the corporate firewall, they turned their attention to private clouds, which analysts and various surveys suggest will get more enterprise investment in the next few years. But private clouds have their share of challenges too. There are management issues and operational processes to figure out. And, of course, […]
Many companies may have e-mail, virus scanning or CRM running as a service over the internet, but most organizations are only just starting out when it comes to cloud computing, according to Microsoft. The software giant’s lists ways the nascent cloud market will change in the next few years. Cloud-centric hardware Servers, microprocessors and client devices will evolve as purpose-built systems to address the new paradigm of cloud computing. For example, diskless laptops that store […]
The New York Times has an interesting article about hybrid clouds: If you’re tackling your company’s computing needs, you’re going to have to get your head in the clouds. But which ones? You’ve likely heard of cloud computing – shared computing resources available over the “cloud,” or the Internet. But it turns out there’s more than one way to cloud. When most people talk about the cloud, they mean a public cloud — big server […]