Microsoft expected to unveil its own cloud service
Steve Chiotakis: Today, Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer will unveil the software giant’s new Office 365 service. It’s all those things Microsoft Office is known for — word-processing, email, PowerPoint and the like. But it takes a big swipe at Google and its foray into cloud computing.
Marketplace’s Mitchell Hartman reports.
Mitchell Hartman: Microsoft wants us to ditch our desktops and hard drives — and do more computing online. And with a billion computers already running Microsoft Office, the message to computing rival Google is like that Stones song.
Rolling Stones’ “Get Off My Cloud”: Hey, you, get off of my cloud.
Microsoft’s pitch to business customers: jump on our cloud instead. For $6 a month per user, you can lose the headache of running servers, access your data and applications whenever you want.
Jim Yin covers Microsoft at Standard and Poor’s.
Jim Yin: People are becoming more mobile, they don’t necessarily have to be tied down to a single desktop either at work or at home.
Google jumped on the cloud first, but that’s never stopped Microsoft, says business consultant Gene Marks. Remember Word Perfect, Lotus, Netscape?
Gene Marks: They let other people come up with the ideas, they wait until it attracts a market — and then they pounce.
But if they pounce too hard, they could crush their cash cow: sales of regular old Windows and Microsoft Office.
I’m Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.
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