Steve Ballmer, the Chief Executive of Microsoft the software giant, told a gathering of corporate executives at the 14th annual CEO Summit that the future of computing is in the “cloud” and that Microsoft is heading that way.
“We’ve been betting and investing in the cloud in some ways for about ten years, and in earnest, and in a way that I think is market impactful, we’ve been investing for about six or seven years” said Ballmer.
Cloud computing means that the software and the content is stored online rather than on your own device which means that the content can be accessed from a number of different devices and is always accessible no matter where you are.
“In some senses I think that the best way to think about the cloud is it’s a place where we will all work, we in the tech industry and all of the IT people who work for companies” said Ballmer.
“We’ll work to fuse the best of what we think of as the PC today, the phone, the TV, the Internet, and the corporate data Center. And it’s a land of opportunity”.
Ballmer was obviously excited about the future prospects of cloud computing not just for Microsoft but for everyone.
“There is incredible opportunity in the cloud, incredible opportunity” he enthused. “There will be more inventors creating more interesting innovations and having better access to customers globally, whether they want to bill a business, sell advertising, charge a subscription, the opportunity, and the opportunity for companies like ours to build the infrastructure to enable that is quite high” he said.
Ballmer also spoke about how Microsoft had built its business on software but with the cloud, it enables customers to get their stuff quicker, cheaper and easier and to share information better between suppliers and their vendors in terms of product design information.
“It’s a phenomenal opportunity to change the way things work, and we’re fusing concepts that come essentially from these multiple areas” said Ballmer.
Another area that Ballmer touched on was the issue of privacy which is one of the downsides of cloud computing.
“I get asked a lot about privacy” said Ballmer. “I have to say, maybe in the sense of the old expression, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The guy who runs the software company, everything looks like a software problem. Privacy, is there some absolute standard of privacy that everybody believes in, probably not!”
Cloud computing might make life easier in a lot of ways but the price for that is the increased risk of privacy invasion. Such is life eh?
