Cloud computing, accessing computing storage and processing remotely, rather than from a local computer or server, is getting big time support from Microsoft.
Microsoft’s Azure appliance, was announced this morning at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, D.C., where the company is meeting with the thousands of partners who resell, deploy and support its products. Microsoft says it plans to let businesses and partners run Windows Azure in their own data centers.
Microsoft launched Windows Azure commercially earlier this year, running Azure servers in its own data centers.
Cloud computing can use software that lives on the Internet rather than on desktop computers. But companies are slow to move their data from their own servers to Microsoft’s data centers, explains the Seattle Times. With the new Azure Platform appliance, Microsoft hopes to create a stepping stone to the Microsoft cloud. Theoretically, it could save companies the cost of managing and running servers since it can be stored on servers Microsoft runs.
Microsoft is playing catchup to Amazon Web Services, Google’s App Engine, Rackspace Cloud and others.
Cloud computing represents a change from Microsoft’s traditional PC and computer server software, raising the risk of cannibalizing those businesses, but Ballmer said this morning that he believes “smart” local machines such as Windows PCs will continue to play a key role, working in conjunction with cloud-computing services.
