Welcome to another round of featured news items from around the web. Each week, we handpick articles for our community related to cloud and enterprise technology. We welcome your suggestions for next week’s round-up— share your links in the comments section or tweet a link to us at @msproductivity.

Could the Cloud Really Replace Offshore Outsourcing?

The cloud is changing much about how IT is done. But has it changed or possibly even eliminated the need for offshore outsourcing? In the short term, the answer is no. That's mostly because the cloud is not yet in full play. However, given the current momentum behind the cloud, change is inevitable and the impact on offshore outsourcing is unavoidable.

Microsoft Forecasts a Hybrid-Cloud Future 

To address that issue, the IT team may decide it needs a way to offer a private cloud aimed at the business, and to manage the public cloud services that departments are using. IT teams using Microsoft Azure, System Center and Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012 will be able to offer public and private clouds to users through a new tool called System Center App Controller, which Microsoft previewed earlier this year as Concero, and announced at its Worldwide Partner Conference in July. Microsoft says the tool is designed to allow a business team to build its own system on a private cloud, scale it out to Azure if it needs more resources, and take it back inhouse without worrying about incompatibilities — and IT can manage all these processes in the same way.

The Cloud Power eBook: Your Guide to the Cloud

The Microsoft Cloud Power eBook will give you a clear-eyed view of your options in the cloud. In this quick read—full of valuable videos, case studies, and white papers—we'll show how you can protect your data and applications in the cloud. And we'll explore how you can move to the cloud on your terms by extending your current infrastructure.

15 Incredibly Useful (and Free) Microsoft Tools for IT Pros 

We've dug through the jungle that is Microsoft Downloads and found 15 of the best free tools you've probably never heard of.

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Understanding the Service-Concept in VMM 2010 - from Kristian Nese, follow him on Twitter here: @KristianNese

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