Microsoft Shows It Can Play Catch-Up Ball in the Cloud

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Eric Lundquist.

The major innovation Microsoft has brought to the technology business is the ability to play a good game of catch-up ball. From graphic interfaces to email to Web browsers to the entire Internet, the company too often sits out the first innings of big technology shifts, sputters about in the middle innings and finally, finally gets its act together before game’s end.

While late-innings closers are much valued in baseball and sales, being known as the catch-up king has never won plaudits in the tech space, where being first is valued more than being right. The TechEd event here showed Microsoft at its best in finally aligning the big trends in cloud computing with the needs of its existing customers and coming up with a package of products and services for the cloud computing era. I’ll run through some of the main product introductions, but first to the big vision…

"Consistency" was the word heard time and again to describe the strategy behind the coupling of on-premise and cloud-based infrastructures. The idea, which would be instantly apparent to any non-techie, is to provide a seamless experience for users and administrators wherever the computing resources reside…

Read more from the source @ http://www.eweek.com/cloud/microsoft-shows-it-can-play-catch-up-ball-in-the-cloud/