Microsoft’s ‘Cloud Operating System’

There was a lot of buzz in the blogosphere ^[1] yesterday about Steve Ballmer announcing that Microsoft will roll out a Windows “cloud operating system” in four weeks at the company’s Professional Developer’s Conference. It’s not entirely clear why this became a big story yesterday, as Microsoft has been talking publicly for several weeks about rolling out its cloud developer platform at PDC.

Microsoft’s platform was originally known as Red Dog ^[2]. Microsoft’s Bob Muglia discussed the offering’s rollout at PDC back on Sept. 8 ^[3], but referred to it as a service platform. Ballmer discussed the new developer platform in a presentation in Silicon Valley last week, as noted by Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat ^[4]:

(Ballmer) said he couldn’t talk Project Red Dog now but Microsoft would reveal it in about six weeks at its next developer conference in Los Angeles. It’s a cloud-computing service that Microsoft will launch for application developers. Presumably, Red Dog is Microsoft’s answer to Google’s App Engine and Amazon’s web services.

Suddenly this week the Red Dog/services platform became the “Windows Cloud.” And a thousand links were launched. The Register ^[5] quoted Ballmer as saying that the platform remains unnamed but “let’s just call it for the purposes of today ‘Windows Cloud.’”

Will the name stick? The combo of “Windows” pedigree and “Cloud” buzz seems to have done just fine so far.

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URL to article: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/02/microsofts-cloud-operating-system/

URLs in this post:

[1] buzz in the blogosphere: http://www.techmeme.com/081001/p76#a081001p76

[2] Red Dog: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/04/09/red-dog-microsofts-developer-cloud-platform/

[3] Sept. 8: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/web_services_browser/microsofts_services_platform_takes_shape.html

[4] VentureBeat: http://venturebeat.com/2008/09/25/steve-ballmer-dishes-out-the-charm-in-silicon-valley-hints-at-red-dog-pledges-to-spend-billions-on-search-business/

[5] The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/01/steve_ballmer_windows_cloud/

[6] Rich Miller: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/author/richm/

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