Today Microsoft launched our newest cloud service, Office 365, which delivers Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft Lync Online together in a predictable monthly subscription. You can find full details on the announcement here and also more information...

Today, Fujitsu and Microsoft announced the upcoming August 2011 availability of the Fujitsu Global Cloud Platform service, which marks the first official production release of a Windows Azure platform appliance delivered by Fujitsu. The new service offering has already been running in Fujitsu’s...

I wanted to share another post from my colleague, Mark Miller, this time summarizing a recent WIRED cloud computing event in New York City. The full text of Mark’s recap is below and it also includes a couple links to videos from the event. Let me know if you have any comments or questions. Thanks...

I wanted to share news of an announcement this morning at SAPPHIRE NOW , SAP’s business and technology conference being held in Orlando, Florida this week. The announcement states that SAP and Microsoft will work together on making application development and cloud management easier for developers...

Couple of interesting updates on the Windows Azure front that I came across yesterday on Redmondmag.com and Mary Jo Foley’s All About Microsoft sites. Redmondmag.com covers the announcement from CA Technologies that they’re bringing their ARCserve backup and recovery solutions exclusively...

I wanted to share a blog post from Microsoft’s CIO, Tony Scott, where he provides some insight into 5 lessons he’s learned along the path to deploying cloud computing solutions at Microsoft. Tony shared this information with an audience of fellow CIOs at a Forbes and Microsoft CIO network...

It’s been a little over a week since the public beta of Office 365 became available, and there have already been some great comments on it from the press and customers. For those not familiar with Office 365, it’s an always-up-to-date cloud service which brings together Microsoft Office...

CIOs understand the concept and even the building blocks of private cloud. But as I attend shows like the Microsoft Management Summit 2011 , which happened this week in Las Vegas, there's a certain kind of question I'm still being asked. In one form or another that question continuously revolves around...

During his keynote today at the Microsoft Management Summit corporate vice president Brad Anderson discussed Microsoft IT solutions to help companies streamline PC and device management and better empower productivity in today’s modern enterprise. He announced the general availability of Windows...

“There’s no rocket science here. It’s all about due diligence.” This is the first of a two-part interview, with it originally being posted on the Microsoft Enterprise Viewpoints blog at this link . In Part 2 , we conclude with developer challenges, writing scalable...

I saw a brief article this morning on the Washington Post site about a government related cloud computing commission being formed to help provide recommendations to the federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, and the commerce secretary, Gary Locke. The Post story touches on the U.S. federal government’s...

I was having lunch with a colleague yesterday and we were talking about the logical evolution underway in IT, which began a couple of years ago with the broad availability of server virtualization technology like Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V . With the advent of cloud computing as an infrastructure...

This week Microsoft held its U.S. Public Sector CIO Summit in Redmond, and while we’re used to rain this time of year in Seattle (and most of the year for that matter….), the forecast at the event for the Public Sector was mostly cloudy - cloud related technology that is. With all...

Interesting note in a blog post from Julia White of Microsoft, highlighting a Wall Street Journal article regarding Cisco pulling the plug on their Cisco Mail offering. In her post, Julia points out that Microsoft is "doubling down" on email and collaboration tools with our Office 365 offerings, further...

With the RSA conference occurring this week and cloud computing being such a high interest topic, the two worlds of cloud and security are receiving increased visibility in the trade press. The Cloud Security Alliance , which Microsoft is part of, also held their Cloud Security Alliance Summit this week...

I was reviewing some of the social media activities coming out of the RSA Conference sessions today, including a talk by the U.S. Federal Government CIO, Vivek Kundra, in which he touched on the U.S. Federal Government and their work with cloud computing. As part of this talk Kundra noted that...

One of the capabilities delivered by true cloud computing solutions is the power to dynamically scale up and down based on the needs that applications and users are placing on the service. This also correlates to one of the key benefits that businesses can realize when investing in cloud computing as...

21apps is a Microsoft BizSpark Partner and a SharePoint business value, solutions and platform consultancy from the United Kingdom. In this guest blog, Ant Clay, Chief Strategy Officer of 21apps, shares his excitement around the launch of Office 365, specifically on how SharePoint Online and Office 365...

While many customers are still in the education and evaluation phase when looking at ways that cloud computing can deliver benefits to their companies, there are certainly examples of how prominent businesses are already taking advantage of the new platform. Some of these real-world examples are featured...

I recently saw a great article by Greg Shields on TechTarget , called Defining the Hyper-V Cloud . (You'll need to register [free] to read it, but TechTarget is an excellent third-party source for IT insight, so it's well worth the effort.) In it he not only describes the Hyper-V Cloud programs , but...

I’ve blogged a couple of times in the past ( here and here ) about Tony Scott, Microsoft’s CIO, the areas that he focuses on, and what’s happening within Microsoft related to cloud computing. While Microsoft is a world leader in delivering software solutions to business of all sizes...

Many of the conversations around the benefits of cloud computing are related to reducing hardware and energy costs, gaining operational efficiencies, or reducing time to deployment/market for applications. There are other benefits however that are often overlooked related to the environmental impact...

This week longtime IT journalist Charlie Babcock of InformationWeek posted a story called "4 Companies Getting Real Results from Cloud Computing." It's a good article that profiles organizations that "are way past testing the cloud. They've seen the shortcomings, and are still looking ahead to what's...

There were a couple interesting cloud-related stories I saw that I wanted to highlight as the week raps up. Recently, Yahoo needed a cloud service provider that could help them quickly release their newest Flickr app for Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7. They wanted a dynamic platform that would help...

The following is a guest post from David Greschler, Director Virtualization and Cloud Strategy at Microsoft 2010 saw the rapid rise in popularity of businesses considering cloud computing solutions as a way of helping reduce costs, gain efficiencies, as well as a variety of other benefits. Unfortunately...