Reflecting on the cloud

I just listened to Bob Muglia’s keynote from our WorldWide Partner Conference and it’s one of the best keynotes I have seen in while from Microsoft. In particular, the section on the Windows Azure Appliance and how customers like eBay and partners like Dell are taking Azure in to their data centers. It really helped to bring this nebulous world of “the cloud” to life, at least for big business and partners. There is work to be done on the consumer cloud story but I feel we have a solid story to tell there too. More on that soon.

It’s not cool and it’s not sexy so it wont show up on Techmeme or in discussion with your friends but the technology that Bob and his guests talked about will impact us all. It’ll keep our favourite websites up and running and allow businesses like eBay to focus on their customers and worry less about the technology. I know that sounds incredibly boring compared to the latest shiny gadget but honestly, it’s a big deal for the people and companies building the services you love.