Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
- Windows Azure for service hosting and management, low-level scalable storage, computation and networking
- Microsoft SQL Services for a wide range of database services and reporting
- Microsoft .NET Services which are service-based implementations of familiar .NET Framework concepts such as workflow and access control
- Live Services for a consistent way for users to store, share and synchronize documents, photos, files and information across their PCs, phones, PC applications and Web sites
- Microsoft SharePoint Services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services for business content, collaboration and rapid solution development in the cloud
Clearly, the Azure platform is Microsoft’s way of competing against Google’s software-as-a-service offerings, Amazon’s cloud computing platform and competing operating systems such as Linux and Mac OS X, with Ozzie saying in true Microsoft-like style that “it lays the foundation for the next 50 years of computing.”
We’ll no doubt all be hearing plenty more about the Azure platform to come, but there’s plenty of information online if you’d like to know more.
You can read Microsoft’s details on making “software-plus-services a reality” here, watch the keynotes of the PDC 2008 event here, and visit the PDC 2008 online virtual event site here.
To register for the Azure Services Platform community technology preview, visit Microsoft’s Azure site and take at peek at the cloudy new vista Microsoft has in mind for us all.
Finally, we should all expect to see more of Microsoft's software being delivered through the Azure service, meaning software like Microsoft Office and others will eventually be delivered online, as Google Docs is today, but with much more of the rich functionality we're used to in our desktop software.
Once again, Microsoft is betting the company on an initiative and path the rest of the world is already moving towards, and clearly hopes to redefine what it means to feel blue - or in this case, Azure!
David Bass
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