Everything you Ever Wanted to Know About Cloud, But Were Afraid to Ask!

Do you know what today is?  It’s the first Monday in April! 

“So What?”

The first Monday in April marks the beginning of of what I am calling “The Season of the Cloud.”  I will spend the next 90 days delivering just one message on behalf of Microsoft. 

I have talked to thousands of IT pros about concepts related to the cloud and their responses are surprisingly similar.  There is a large amount of fear out there.  Is this the end of the system administrator as we know it?  Is this the end of IT as we know it?  Paas, SaaS, IaaS, ITaaS?  What does it all mean?  What’s the difference between a public cloud and a private cloud?  What exactly is Windows Azure?  What is the difference between SQL and SQL Azure?  What is an App Fabric? Most importantly “What’s in it for me (and of course the business I represent?)

If you have asked yourself these questions then stick around and I will attempt to answer them for you.  I will start from the beginning, and we will build from there.  I will use lots of different resources, and we will have some fun along the way.   Let’s start with a short video segment from David Greschler the Director of Virtualization and Cloud Strategy at Microsoft.  He and his team will host a virtual conference on April 7th to discuss the Technology Roadmap for cloud.  I would highly encourage you to attend. 

Microsoft Cloud from Microsoft Technology on Vimeo.

I would highly recommend that you spend some time at this event.  It will give you a good introductory context to the technology, and a good idea where Microsoft is headed.