To me the public cloud resembles elements of big government. Liberals say you must put all your trust in Uncle Sam, and Uncle Sam will take care of you. No thanks. Government is a necessary evil, and public clouds should be seen to some extent as such, and continually viewed with suspicion. I think MS' cloud strategy should be similar to those of democracies: individuals and organizations should strive to have their own private clouds (keeping as much power [in the form of private information] as possible in their own hands). I have no problem with public data for most everyone being hosted on public clouds. Even then, it would probably be better if public clouds generally offered back up services of customer data to their private clouds / networks.
People must realize that private information is a very important component of their power and liberty. They should always strive to keep this in their own hands for their own well being. As long as this world is imperfect, people should never trust anyone or entity with private information - except those who they know personally and trust.
Guest post Louis Naugès has been a proponent of cloud computing and office automation for almost two decades and is co-founder of Revevol, the first authorized Google Apps reseller and one of the most successful. Based in Paris, he blogs for ZDNet France and has translated an abridged version of this recent post for publication as a guest post here. Read on for a controversial and eclectically illustrated perspective of why, for Microsoft, it may be more a case of ‘all over’ than ‘all-in‘ when it comes to the cloud.
Why this title? Have we not heard from top-level Microsoft officials the praises of Cloud Computing, around their Azure solutions?
This text is anything but an anti-Microsoft pamphlet. It’s an analysis — cold, objective and financial — of the potential impacts of the Cloud Computing Tsunami on the finances of Microsoft.
The Cloud decade has began in 2010; though it will take some time before we are able to visualize all its impacts, we can already see some first results:
- The ‘Sale’ sign, put by Microsoft on Office 2010, a product not yet available.
- Microsoft has also released the prices for Office 2010 in England, with a 30% price reduction over the 2007 version.
- And this is just the beginning …
Almost at the same time, Steve Ballmer gave a one hour long conference at University of Washington, explaining that “Microsoft has over 70% of its developers working on cloud solutions”. In an internal email to Microsoft employees, he said that: “As a part of this, I request that you do the following:
- Watch the speech on demand here
- Learn more about our cloud offerings and how they relate to our overarching software plus services strategy here (unavailable outside Microsoft network)
- Review your commitments to ensure you are landing our vision with customers and partners.“
So, now, you have two opposite views:
- Steve Ballmer’s, which explains why Microsoft “loves” the Cloud.
- Mine, which explains why Microsoft really hates the Cloud.
More: Microsoft’s revenues threatened by the cloud …
Microsoft sources of earnings in 2009
For over 10 years, Microsoft has tried everything to diversify: Xbox, BING search engine … Xbox Image. Despite all these efforts, and tens of billions of dollars invested in R&D, the results have not been obvious.
The arrival of Ray Ozzie as the number two of the company remains one of the keys to the possible success of Microsoft on the Cloud. A long article in InfoWorld presents in a positive way efforts made by Ray, while remaining skeptical about his ability to counter Google.
This graph shows the distribution of Microsoft’s earnings by product lines, over the past three years. These numbers don’t lie! At the end of 2009, all Microsoft earnings came from historical products: Office, Windows desktop and Windows Server solutions. All other divisions around the Internet or gaming platforms are losing money or just balancing their accounts.
The US stock market has taken into account this situation; Microsoft is no longer regarded as a growth company, but as a cash machine. With quarterly earnings between $5 and $8 billion, Microsoft is still one of America’s most profitable companies.
The performance of Microsoft’s share price has not really been outstanding over the last 10 years! Today, at the beginning of 2010, it has lost value compared to January 2000.
This is even more striking when you compare it to Google and Apple; over the same period their share prices have respectively increased by 400% and 700%.
So why worry? In early 2010, the situation is anything but a disaster, as evidenced by the good numbers published by Microsoft at the end of December 2009:
- Quarterly profits remain high, exceeding $8 billion.
- Windows has more than 90% market share in PCs and Windows 7 is better accepted by the market than Vista.
- Office is still dominant on desktops of every organization.
- Windows Server has gained good credibility in the computing centers.
.
.
. I just 
