If you're reading this post, you're probably interested in the cloud and hopefully in Microsoft Online Services and BPOS in particular. I wanted to take a couple of minutes to highlight some of the great things happening with Microsoft's cloud offerings and also provide you with pointers to some Cloud information resources that I find useful.

First, I want to make sure that you saw the big news this week about the State of Minnesota selecting Microsoft's BPOS cloud offering for their communications and collaboration solution. In a related blog post, Gopal Khanna, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Minnesota talks in his own words about his thoughts on some of the criteria that Minnesota focused on when making their decision, including security, scalability, and cost.

It's exciting for me to see that Microsoft is delivering on the requirements that customers are looking for as they consider taking advantage of the benefits that cloud offerings deliver.  You can also find information on other customers that have adopted our offerings on Microsoft's Customer Evidence site.

Keep your eyes on the following resources to make sure you're aware of all the cool stuff happening in this space.

Here are the resources I follow and some examples of what they have to offer.

Microsoft Online Services Team Blog

• BPOS just released the Microsoft Online Service Health Dashboard. If you're an administrator with a company that already has a BPOS subscription, you can see the status of the service in your datacenter for the current day and week. For more about this, see Morgan Cole's blog post.
• An excellent source of summary information about the cloud in general, and BPOS in particular are Josh Topal's weekly This Week in BPOS News posts.

Why Microsoft Blog

• Have you been keeping up with the Why Microsoft blog? I love reading this blog, because it constantly reminds me why we're working so hard on Microsoft Online Services. I think that Andrew does a great job of reviewing some of our competition and comparing features and functionality with a humorous view. Check out the Bigger Than The Beatles and Google's Crush on Office Get Serious post as a fun example.

Microsoft News Center

• Have you seen how Microsoft Office 2010 is embracing and extending the cloud? Check out the Microsoft Launches Consumer Subscription Offering That Combines Microsoft Office and Windows Live OneCare article on the Microsoft News Center. Search for Microsoft Office Subscription for lots of other articles about this.

We live (and work) in exciting times!