Posted by: Adrienne Hall, General Manager, Trustworthy Computing

There’s a lot of buzz around cloud computing. My experience tells me that buzz begins to translate into wider adoption when customers are shown the tangible benefits for their organization.  

To help parse the buzz, we’ve worked on this blog to highlight the benefits of cloud computing especially as it relates to core trust elements of security, privacy and reliability. In particular, we’ve focused on the efficiency and implementation of security measures that becomes possible in cloud computing environments. For example, by outsourcing the security updating process to cloud providers, IT resources are freed up to tackle other business objectives.

Yesterday, Satya Nadella, president of Microsoft Server and Tools Business, made a similar point during his announcement of a release candidate for Microsoft System Center 2012. In Satya’s presentation one section connects to this example: “IT leaders tell me that private cloud computing promises to help them focus on innovation over maintenance, to streamline costs and to respond to the need for IT speed. We are delivering on that promise today. With System Center 2012, customers can move beyond the industry hype and speculation, and progress into the here and now of private cloud.”

There are two elements of this statement that I think are particularly important:

  1. With Microsoft’s private cloud solutions customers can focus on “innovation over maintenance.” In today’s economy, solutions that enable an organization to move from staying afloat to getting ahead are critical. For example, by shifting maintenance tasks to a cloud provider, organizations can focus more on their business and creating their next-generation solutions.
  2. With System Center 2012 customers can move beyond the hype. As a private cloud management solution that empowers customers to build and operate private clouds for the delivery of applications across both private and public platforms, System Center presents a great deal of flexibility for customers. This flexibility isn’t ephemeral; it’s tangible and measured in increased speed and dollars saved.

With solutions like System Center 2012, the notion of the cloud and its capabilities becomes much more concrete. As a result, “the cloud” becomes less about buzz and more about a specific solution for your business.