What Cloud Means to Marketing Forecast - Nick Carr The Big Switch

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 00:37:15 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The gorilla in this nascent market is Google. It has been spending billions of dollars to build huge data centers, or "server farms," around the world, enabling it to run all sorts of consumer software and store enormous quantities of personal data. Combine that processing muscle with the company's dominance of web searching and advertising, and you have a juggernaut capable of redefining the software business on the media model.

Tags: cloud-computing google grid-computing microsoft server-farms

Posted by: garyedwards

Linux Today - OOXML/ODF: Just One Battlefield in a Much Bigger War

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 02:17:32 -0000

excellent discussion of why the ISO standardization of OOXML is so importnat to Microsoft.

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

If the OOXML format in its current form cannot get made into a true ISO standard, it could lock Microsoft out of any future plays in what could be the biggest IT revolution to date.

Here are the pieces of the puzzle that fit together for me:

"Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time."

"Structured data." And what's a good way to contain such data? In well-built structured data file format of course. Like, for instance, the Open Document Format (ODF). And who has a vested interest in ODF? IBM certainly does. And so does Sun. And these two companies, along with Google, Microsoft, and I'm sure many others, realize that if cloud computing does indeed take off, then it will be the file format that makes the whole thing work.

Which is why Microsoft feels it must get their format standardized. Even with tactics that ironically have started to attract the attention of the EU again. How else can they get a piece of the cloud pie?

Tags: cloud-computing grid-computing odf ooxml openxml

Posted by: garyedwards

OpenDocument's feed | Diigo Group

What Cloud Means to Marketing Forecast - Nick Carr The Big Switch

Linux Today - OOXML/ODF: Just One Battlefield in a Much Bigger War