BANGALORE, INDIA: " It’s an exciting time to be in IT, with cloud computing providing much more efficient hardware, much faster application deployment, and lower operational costs. And at Microsoft we are focused on helping IT managers mind the gap," said Bob Muglia, president, server and tools business (STB) at Microsoft in a blog.

Microsoft’s entry into the cloud, in a major way in 2008 with its Azure diversified the cloud platform market.

According to Vikas Arora, group director, cloud services, Microsoft India, "We offer the most interoperable platform, thus enabling optimal use of customers existing IT investments. Microsoft has the largest partner and developer ecosystem to help customers through every step of the transition and long term management process."

"We have always ensured that our product launches are supported by a comprehensive ecosystem readiness program, so that our customers receive the right support when they choose to deploy our solutions. We have a roadmap, and we get all the pieces in place before we announce commercial availability, and this might take different durations in different markets. For the Windows Azure Platform in India, we already have 3,000 partners trained through 270 trainings in fifteen cities and touched around 22,000 developers," says Arora.

Offerings

Microsoft sources say that its Services plus Software strategy and product offerings make the transition to the cloud smoother by enabling easier deployment and management. It’s most trusted and widely used products Windows, MOSS, Office, SQL and Exchange are available for the cloud.

With a well laid out strategy, Microsoft is present across three layers on the cloud:

Software as a service (SaaS): Microsofts SaaS offerings include online services which includes BPOS and Hosted Dynamics

Platform as a service (PaaS): It is clear that PaaS is huge differentiators in the cloud because the high level abstractions provide considerable value add to developers, increasing their productivity and enabling them to build entirely new classes of scale-out, highly available applications that adhere to the characteristics of the cloud application model. Microsoft offerings here are Azure and SQL Azure.

Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS): Here, Microsoft offers Windows Server 08 R2, Hyper V, System Centre, SQL Server 08

By building on the same security principles used to manage risks to Microsoft software development and operating environments, Microsoft has created an online Information Security Program that result in continuous improvements to security for the Microsoft cloud computing environment.

The coordinated and strategic application of people, processes, and technology allows Microsoft to adapt to the rapid changes happening within the cloud infrastructure and in the marketplace for online services while still maintaining commitment to delivering a trustworthy computing experience for customers.