Group items tagged

By building on open source, we're able to avoid proprietary storage and networking products, alongside proprietary software.

Second, we announced the API's and file formats for Sun's Cloud will all be open, delivered under a Creative Commons License.

Microsoft is very clearly in the midst of an enormous push into consumer software solutions but its business sales remain its primary source of revenues. And from a mile-high view, all of Microsoft's IT-related businesses are profitable or highly profitable, with the exception of Windows Mobile, which Ballmer described as "somewhat unprofitable." Microsoft's consumer-oriented businesses, meanwhile, are doing notably poorly, almost across the board.

From a competition perspective, however, Windows has no real competition today beyond pirated copies of Windows. Even on netbooks, over 90 percent of installs are Windows. But Microsoft sees Linux being more competitive on the PC desktop going forward because it believes that Google will port its Android mobile OS to the PC.

People have always misconstrued the real market forces that are eating away at Windows. This has nothing to do with the Mac, which remains a niche player in yesterday's market. The future of computing is online, and as the box you use to get there becomes less important--or becomes a smart phone--Windows matters less. Netbooks, of course, are a real issue for Microsoft. It's strength in this market is key for the future. But it's a smaller future, from a revenues perspective. That's true across the board, and not unique for Windows.

The program works with IBM and Google on their Cloud Computing University initiative, and is designed to look at the infrastructure requirements to make leading-edge cloud computing system

Whereas with the Web we could, from any point on the web, see pretty much everything else, with the Cloud we will not be able to know what’s taking place in the system, just as we cannot see today what exists inside of clouds. They are murky, dense objects that reveal almost no depth at all.

While everything on the outside appears to be as it was before, what’s happening on the inside of the new cloud-computing systems will be completely different. And I have, as of yet, to see a comprehensive analysis of how our privacy, our data security and our online lives will be affected by such a system.