TAG | Steve Ballmer speaks and he’s excited! |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Thursday, 06 November 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 3 Ballmer said that no matter how Microsoft or competitors described it – be it SaaS, software plus services, on demand or grid computing, “everyone agrees we're working on a new way to write programs”.Featured Whitepaper
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“Rich client and client services – spans the PC, Internet, phone, the TV someday, and the server. An integrated programming model – build apps that take advantage of all those sources of computing. User experience is fundamental. People say it's all about the function. Then people say after a new program comes out – no - it's about the UI.” “When we built Office 2007 – we revamped the UI – more people are able to do more things than ever before. People who fall in love with Facebook partly fall in love with the UI.” “Social computing – what we have all learned – it's not just the notion of computation and storage – part of our programming platform... it’s also our notion of people. How do you write a program that lets people engage in something simply?” Ballmer then explained that “every time there is a new opportunity or trend – what do we do? We write a new OS. Windows desktop, Windows Server, Windows mobile.” “Cloud computing? We'll write a new OS. Its name will be Windows.” “That's how you get Windows Azure – bring a consistent programming platform across these devices. People who have expertise in visual studio – write an app that is distributed across these platforms.” “We launched Windows Azure. What is it? A new instance of windows, it runs .Net and Win32 programs, it lives in the internet cloud and provides new facilities for hosting, geo-replication, management and you can really manage something remotely. Why do we say today is liberation day?” “One of the greatest burdens of developers today is the overhead – in dealing with all the operational backend – whether inside the IT dept or someplace else - to run your code. We want to make it easier for you to write a program and have it self manage.” “As you write your program you'll write it in a way that will describe its operational characteristics. We can then manage it, move it around, different virtual machines, different geographies. It’s a form of empowerment for the developer – describe your program and how it runs – and we can give you an instant ability to run and execute that program on a global basis.” Ballmer then made reference to Amazon and Google’s cloud computing platforms, but effectively ridiculed them for being far simpler than Microsoft’s efforts which revolve around “creating a platform” - a Visual Studio based dev environment that can run in the cloud, server, phone or PC. Azure would have “a lot of the other infrastructure that you count on in the Windows environment”, including SQL Server and Sharepoint services in the cloud. “Is it a hard or easy problem?” asked Ballmer. Continued on page 3, where you'll also find the link to the webcast so you can see the event for yourself, plus two more Microsoft directors on "Understanding Microsoft's cloud computing platform" and "Amazing software experiences for Windows and the Web". |
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