Weekly #WhyMSFT Round-Up 9/23/2011

Each week, we round up industry news and articles that you might have missed. Enjoy this week's selections.

SBS Looks to Cloud Services -- Moves from Novell GroupWise to Office 365
“We are moving 1300 users off GroupWise which has been in use a long time. The decision was driven through the selection process including an extensive evaluation by different business users.”

An Inside Look at Cloud-Based Microsoft Office 365
We caught up with John Betz, Microsoft's director of online services, to get the skinny on what web-based computing will mean to Microsoft--and to the businesses using it.

Aptec Becomes First Distributor for Office 365 in the Middle East
The distribution agreement will see Aptec offering the Microsoft Office 365 cloud service to resellers in the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait, with the intent to extend the agreement to other GCC countries and Egypt in the future.

Ballmer Lays Out the 7 Most Important Products for Microsoft
Steve Ballmer just finished a short surprise appearance on stage at Microsoft's Build conference and laid out Microsoft's seven main product areas.

Steve Ballmer: We are "reimagining Microsoft"
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today said the overhaul of Windows is part of a larger goal to transform the whole company, making every one of its businesses optimized for new hardware form factors and cloud services.

Build 2011: Windows 8 Scales the Cloud Down to Fit in a Tablet
Whatever form the Metro apps delivery system takes in the final shipping version of Windows 8 .., its most impressive and maybe the most important aspect is the inclusion of apps that learn what functions they can provide to the user from the cloud in real-time, and then manage those functions locally on the user's behalf. Put more simply: adaptive apps.

Poll: Are Google users the customer or the commodity being sold?
“Google's core business is advertising. We are not the customer; we are the commodity being sold. If Google provides hosted storage, they will do so in the same way they provide other services; with full transparency into the user's data.”

If you have a blog post or article you want to see in next week's round-up, tweet a link to us at @whymicrosoft or post it in the comments below.