Peering through the clouds

Cloud computing - something you're going to hear a lot more of this year and two stories already today from ZDNet. The first from Phil Wainewright offering up the view that Ray Ozzie is heralding a huge shift for Microsoft and that in five years’ time, the company will be unrecognizable.

 

Microsoft must reverse its software-plus-services mantra and put services at the forefront of its vision. Even chief strategy officer Ray Ozzie admits cloud computing will be cheaper than on-premise servers. He's already preparing for the painful transition ahead.

Josh Greenbaum and Dan Farber are already treading this beat so these guys are going to be interesting bellwethers to watch as more of our Software plus Services story emerges. Meantime, Larry Dignan discusses HP's entry in to cloud computing this week - taking advantage of their existing datacentres to compete with Amazon and others. I like his cloud providers table but think this will change dramatically this year. Expect to see some big names added - and I can't see IBM sitting in the sidelines for too long.

For all of these companies it introduces change - particularly for those with a significant channel - and that means anxiety for some. Some fear change, others embrace it. Some think this will grow the market and others think it'll move the market to the big vendors. I'm in the former camp though it's going to take time and patience to help explain all of this. A new era is beginning and to quote Ray Ozzie:

 

It’ll be cheaper to put apps in the cloud than to run them on your own servers

If I were an ISV I would be beside myself with excitement and would be booking my ticket to the PDC right now. I'd also be having a very close look at SQL Data Services and BizTalk Services.  Everyone is getting excited about words like mesh and horizon but these two are sleepers that could be huge.

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