Weekly #WhyMSFT Round-Up 3/9/2012

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

Microsoft to Offer Government-Only Cloud Option for Office 365
Microsoft will offer U.S. government agencies the option to host their Office 365 suites in a dedicated "cloud community" reserved only for government customers, the company said on Thursday.

SharePoint's Mark Kashman on Cloud vs. On Premise Solutions
As the way people work has dramatically changed over the past few years, the need to collaborate with any person, from any device, no matter their location, is greater than ever before.

Video Blog: Leveraging Office 365 for Project Collaboration - Consistency
This is the first in a series which will show you how to use Office 365, Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Project Professional 2010 and Windows Phone 7.5 technologies to put together a streamlined project management system that encourages effective collaboration and will yield a more complete, standard and workable solution than your on-the-fly project managements have yielded.

Cloud Services Provider Intermedia Now Offering Microsoft Office 365
"With Intermedia's Office in the Cloud suite of plans, and now Office 365, we offer businesses a number of choices so they have the cloud service solution best tailored to their needs," says Michael Gold, president, Intermedia.

A Review of the Windows 8 Beta
With Windows 8, Microsoft has sweated the details, embraced beauty and simplicity, and created something new and delightful. Get psyched.

Microsoft Wooing Startups to Its Platforms with Free Software, Business Advice
Those enrolled in the software giant's BizSpark program said it has kept them away from alternatives.

Cloud Will Create 14 Million Jobs, Study Says
Cloud computing technologies will be responsible for the creation of almost 14 million tech and related jobs worldwide by 2015, a new study claims. The study, by Microsoft and IDC, also predicts that annual cloud industry revenues will total $1.1 trillion beginning in that year.