Behind the Cloud scene with Microsoft IT

I’ve blogged a couple of times in the past (here and here) about Tony Scott, Microsoft’s CIO, the areas that he focuses on, and what’s happening within Microsoft related to cloud computing. While Microsoft is a world leader in delivering software solutions to business of all sizes and to consumers, we’re also a big consumer of our own technologies, delivering IT services to our employees around the globe. The previous pieces I’ve highlighted with Tony talk about ‘dogfooding’ or the practice of using our own technologies, many times prior to the general availability of those technologies to customers.

 

Along these lines, I came across a series of cloud computing content listed on the Microsoft IT Showcase site, with videos hosted on the TechNet Edge site. These include an interview with Tony titled “What Does the Cloud Mean to the CIO”, in which he discusses conversations he’s had with other CIOs and their interest in utilizing the cloud for Platform as a Service solutions. One example he provides is how a customer was able to use Windows Azure to quickly integrate a business they were acquiring so the two could jointly share information. Windows Azure provided the scalability and platform to quickly develop a solution to merge and share their information, much faster than their previous isolated infrastructure silos would have allowed.

 

[View:http://content5.catalog.video.msn.com/e2/ds/5017eae4-30c6-467a-bc08-6e00f2e31a33.wmv]

 

Some of the other videos available at the site provide information on Microsoft IT and a broad set of other cloud topics, including “How Microsoft IT is Integrating Operations with the Cloud” and “Cloud Computing: What Customers are Discussing with Microsoft IT”, as a couple of examples. I urge you to check out these videos and some of the related videos at the site to get a behind the scenes look at Microsoft IT and cloud computing.

 

If you have questions or want more information on Microsoft and cloud computing in the enterprise, I urge you to check out the Cloud Power site as well to get started. Let me know if you have comments or questions and I’ll work to get back to them as quickly as possible as well.

Thanks - larry