Microsoft, the sleeping giant of the cloud

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Eric Knorr.

We’re accustomed to thinking of Microsoft as a lumbering giant encumbered by its PC legacy. But think about it: What other company in the world has such a massive collection of software and services to offer through the cloud, not to mention the cloud infrastructure to deliver it? Microsoft has the resources to crush it. The question, as usual, is how well it can execute.

Brad Anderson, corporate vice president of the Cloud and Enterprise division at Microsoft, helps oversee a big chunk of the private and public cloud portfolio: Windows Server, System Center, SQL Server, Windows Azure, and Visual Studio. InfoWorld Executive Editor Doug Dineley and I spoke with him for over an hour last week. In particular, our conversation focused on the connection between Windows Server and Azure, although we began by addressing the commitment Microsoft has made to its public cloud…

Gearing up for dominance

The Microsoft reorg changed the name of Microsoft’s Server and Tools division to the Cloud and Enterprise division. But according to Anderson, little changed in terms of responsibility, except that Global Foundation Services became part of his group. These are the guys who are responsible for Microsoft’s entire data center infrastructure, including Azure data centers…

Read more from the source @ http://www.infoworld.com/t/cloud-computing/microsoft-the-sleeping-giant-of-the-cloud-229125