Ballmer talks cloud, cloud cloud at WPC 12 July, 2010 By Mark Cox

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"The cloud really will create for all of us, new opportunities and new responsibilities," Ballmer said. "Before the cloud, there were classes of customers that were hard for us to serve -- small businesses, branch offices, foreign subsidiaries."

Ballmer also emphasized that the cloud drives server advances that drive the cloud, and that lessons learned in the physical scale of deployment in Windows Live and in Bing is being brought back to where partners and enterprise customers can have the same infrastructure.

"We started here with servers, built cloud infrastructure, and brought it back to all of you through Windows and SQL Azure," Ballmer said.

"We want to give not only a virtualized infrastructure that is second to none, but a full cloud infrastructure that you can use to serve your customers, to be able to build applications or host solutions that should be consistent with the cloud infrastructure platform. Windows Azure, Hyper V and System Center are key in this."

Ballmer also stressed his view that the cloud's future is with rich, smart devices, not with thin clients.

"The cloud wants smarter devices," he said. "I don't believe at all that people in clouds will use just thin clients. Time and time again we see the advantage of the rich client, with PCs and SmartPhones... rich is what consumers will want. We will support thin client infrastructure. We are supporting VDI. But we will drive these smart client devices to be easier and easier and easier to manage. Rich devices are higher performance. They can do more for the user without latency. They save bandwidth."

Ballmer stressed that Microsoft is making a big investment in devices designed to be smart in the context of the cloud, and that IE 9 is an important step in that, focusing on why even in the world of the cloud you want to be able to exploit local graphics and local processing power.

"We are really pushing forward here with Windows 7-based slates and Windows 7-based phones," Ballmer said. "We feel all of the energy, vigor and push to innovate to drive hard to compete."

Ballmer said that partners need, and will receive, a broad range of these devices from Microsoft's hardware partners, and said these devices are likely number one on the list at this WPC.

"You need to see a range of slates and a range of phones -- a consumer oriented device but one which fits and is managed with today's enterprise IT solutions. There will be many form factors and price points, but they will run Windows 7 and its applications and they will run Office. We are hard core about this. I've heard from a lot of partners this is an area where you really want to know what's coming. A lot is coming in the next several months and we need to prepare to get after it together."

Ballmer repeatedly beseeched partners to support and follow Microsoft's aggressive cloud strategy.

"What is it that brings us together?" he asked. "All of you have options in how you choose to allocate your time. But no matter where you are coming from, there are a number of things you look to us for. You come here to evaluate -- are they all in? Are they driving forward? Can we bet on Microsoft? If we don't build good stuff, you can't drive it, and if you cant drive it, we can't have great success. Microsoft will do its job in continuing to drive the kind of demand that justifies your support and interest."

Ballmer said that 10 years ago, when he took over as CEO, most people said Microsoft was not ready for the enterprise, and nobody says that today.

"We can be better but if you look at the percentage of desktops and servers that you are managing and your customers manage with your support, that's growing. The explosion in market share for Hyper V is amazing."

Ballmer re-emphasized that Microsoft is determined to lead with cloud infrastructure.

"When we first started talking about the move to the cloud, many of you said 'Just Don't Do It.' It was a scary move, the cloud does change and makes us reinvent our business models, yours and ours - but it's a change that's inevitable. & We will continue to tweak and tune and support you and drive this move to the cloud together. There's nobody better to bet on than Microsoft.