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Though the new mobile-first, cloud-firstMicrosoft is more open and plays nice with everyone, it also wants to knock the socks, shirt and hat off of the competition. And, if CEO Satya Nadella is right, it has everything it needs to do so.
While mobile, as Microsoft now defines it, is “not about the device” whether it’s a sensor, small screen or large screen, but about “powering mobility with intelligence,” the productivity and collaboration tools are all Microsoft (Office 365 and Dynamics).
And when it comes to the cloud, Microsoft may have one few others can match. We’re not talking only about a super-charged, hyper-scale cloud in the heavens, but also about a new Azure-like appliance that Enterprises can deploy in their own data centers. It has been designed specifically to handle big data workloads (32 cores, 450 gigabytes of RAM and 6.5 terabytes of local solid-state drive storage). Officially named the Microsoft Cloud Platform System (CPS), powered by Dell it is, in essence, an “Azure consistent cloud in a box” with pre-integrated hardware from Dell and software from Microsoft.
Betting on a Hybrid Future
If you want to know how the “Microsoft Cloud” aka Azure is different from the others (Amazon and Google), “We’re the only one that delivers private, public and hybrid,” said Nadella.
In a world where the way of the future is looking increasingly hybrid, Nadella and his Cloud lieutenant Scott Guthrie may have made the right bet because starting next month companies will be able to run software in their private data centers and in the cloud.
“The enterprises of today and tomorrow demand a cloud platform that is reliable, scalable and flexible,” said Nadella.
Given that more than 80 percent of the Fortune 500 already leverages Microsoft’s cloud to some extent, going “all Microsoft” via the appliance for on prem and Azure for Cloud, may pave the way for cloud-shy companies for years to come.
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That being said, Microsoft is also raising its cloud play worlwide to 19 regions, each of them with 600,000 servers, so that enterprises can run faster and be closer to its cloud than any others.
Not only that, but the company has opened up its platform so that it can run most any software, not just Windows. The company made a point to put its hand out to the open source crowd, professing its own love for Linux.
On a day where IBM fessed up to the fact that its cloud business was hurting, Microsoft showed up strutting its stuff, not only about its cloud but also how it enables productivity and collaboration in the enterprise via Office 365 and Microsoft Dynamics.
