14 DAY TRIAL // Cloud is the future, it seems, and Microsoft is set to take full advantage of it. Web applications represent one way to go, but there are also a series of other cloud offerings that its customers can benefit from. Lately, the Redmond-based company has been focused on moving its applications and infrastructure to the web, and will continue to follow this trend.
“We’re as serious about the cloud as we are about evolving our businesses,” Kurt DelBene, in charge of Microsoft’s Office division, says, according to the Wired.
“We always look a little askance when we get the question, because it always seems odd to us. Particularly as engineers, we say: ‘[The cloud is] the way the world is moving.’”
Office 365 is one example of how Microsoft is determined to address this need for cloud computing. Windows Azure is another.
The former is meant to provide users with all of the features that Microsoft’s Office Suite has to deliver, while the latter was designed to enable easy design and deployment of applications across the web.
With offerings like these, Microsoft shows that it can adapt to the needs of customers and end-users.
“We’ll support you on-premises. We’ll support you in the cloud,” DelBene notes. “We’ll support you when you go cross-over and want some of your users in the cloud and some of them on-premises.”
The line between local apps and web apps is becoming thinner still, especially with companies like Google coming up with their own suite of productivity software connected to the cloud.
Office 365, for example, offers Exchange, Lync and SharePoint. Google’s Apps suite also includes all that customers need to stay productive.
Microsoft also aims at making its web apps easily upgradable and at offering all that Google would. Not to mention that they would match the local apps that are available for its users.
Similarly, Microsoft is advancing its Windows Azure offering to provide as many people as possible with the ability to easily build and host their own applications. The company is also trying to bring parts of Office 365 onto Azure, which should widen the service’s usability.