Microsoft to Google: Get Off of My Cloud - BusinessWeek

Good Sunday morning! Cloud computing- where is it in the hype cycle for you?

My little consultancy makes use of Google Apps so we're comfortable with the concept at some level. But then we're frugal (those of you who've worked with me will recall that "my favorite price point is free") and tech-savvy. That said, email, calendaring, and document sharing is our lifeblood and we require a reliable, easy-to-use service which we get from Google and I suspect we'd get with Microsoft's Live Office...or Office Live or whatever it's called.

The latest announcement from Amazon.com regarding their Cloudfront initiative continues the launch of successively more complex services available to anyone, not just the big guys. In some ways, it's an incredible democratization of computing. We've moved from email for the masses a la Hotmail, Yahoo mail, Gmail, etc to some fairly sophisticated office suite replacements to what, when I was at Getty Images, was a key to delivering revenue- caching content cose to the buyer. No, Amazon's Cloudfront isn't a replacement or real alternative to the likes of Akamai...yet. I also don't foresee a day within the planning horizon for most IT shops (3 years) where their ERP system will be in the cloud but it does seem clear that more and more ancillary functions can be moved to the cloud...and soon.

An example- need to archive large amounts of data in "near-line" or off-line storage but struggling to get the CapEx approved in the current economic environment? Is if feasible to use EMC's Atmos service? Certainly EMC knows a bit about reliable storage for the enterprise. What hinders you from considering it?

Bottom-line: The savvy CIO or CTO should be actively working to figure out how to take advantage of this trend now because it's got the potential for real cost and time-to-market benefits.

Agree/disagree?

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COMPUTERS November 21, 2008, 9:49PM EST text size: TT
Microsoft to Google: Get Off of My Cloud
The world's top software maker plans to build about 20 state-of-the-art data centers as it tries to outpace cloud computing rival Google, BusinessWeek has learned

By Peter Burrows

TECHNOLOGY
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(Via .)