Microsoft forecasting clouds - for everyone.

[Boozad]

...The era of cloud computing is here. There is no longer any real argument about that. Any remaining questions are more of the “when and how” variety, not the “why and who” type.
And yet, despite nearly unanimous agreement around its potential, some businesses have open questions around how best to proceed.

No two companies’ cloud journeys are the same, just as no two businesses are the same.
Some will start with storage and move on to line-of-business apps. Others will experiment with new platforms first before migrating existing infrastructure. And others will do all of the above right out of the gate. There is a right cloud and a right first step for every business.

In the past few months, we’ve highlighted a number of ways people can tap into the cloud’s nearly unlimited potential for business transformation. We’ve talked about the future of productivity – for everyone and every device – in a mobile-first, cloud-first world. We’ve shown a roadmap for the next generation of platforms on both devices and in the cloud. We’ve discussed the amazing insights that lie inside the data generated by a world of ubiquitous computing.

Read more: Forecasting clouds - for everyone. Microsoft blog.


Taking the company I work for as a solitary example, I'd say there certainly isn't a 'right cloud for every business'. Migrating from Cincom to SAP brought the company to its knees for over three months, I can only imagine what moving to cloud based computing would do the place.

United Technologies isn't a small company by any stretch of the imagination, and they've only recently moved to 100% Windows 7 on the thousand or so computers at our plant alone. Windows 8 was never an option for them, and I seriously doubt cloud based computing ever will be either.

 

[ThrashZone]

Microsoft Blog,
I wouldn't expect anything less

 

[Boozad]

Neither would I mate to be honest. It just really gets on my nerves how they think everything can be cloud based, surely they can it's just feasible in a massive amount of cases.

 

[ThrashZone]

Most of them just see the dollar signs mate that point to cloud services,
They see a possibility for monthly-quarterly-yearly steady revenues,
With allot of devices with limited storage the deck has been stacked
All assume unlimited data is not a pricing problem,
Cheers.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Many small business computers don't even connect to the internet. Why would they want to go to the cloud?

 

[lehnerus2000]

The "Cloud" is a scam.

 

[andrew129260]

And dangerous

 

[jimbo45]

...The era of cloud computing is here. There is no longer any real argument about that. Any remaining questions are more of the “when and how” variety, not the “why and who” type.
And yet, despite nearly unanimous agreement around its potential, some businesses have open questions around how best to proceed.

No two companies’ cloud journeys are the same, just as no two businesses are the same.
Some will start with storage and move on to line-of-business apps. Others will experiment with new platforms first before migrating existing infrastructure. And others will do all of the above right out of the gate. There is a right cloud and a right first step for every business.

In the past few months, we’ve highlighted a number of ways people can tap into the cloud’s nearly unlimited potential for business transformation. We’ve talked about the future of productivity – for everyone and every device – in a mobile-first, cloud-first world. We’ve shown a roadmap for the next generation of platforms on both devices and in the cloud. We’ve discussed the amazing insights that lie inside the data generated by a world of ubiquitous computing.

Read more: Forecasting clouds - for everyone. Microsoft blog.


Taking the company I work for as a solitary example, I'd say there certainly isn't a 'right cloud for every business'. Migrating from Cincom to SAP brought the company to its knees for over three months, I can only imagine what moving to cloud based computing would do the place.

United Technologies isn't a small company by any stretch of the imagination, and they've only recently moved to 100% Windows 7 on the thousand or so computers at our plant alone. Windows 8 was never an option for them, and I seriously doubt cloud based computing ever will be either.

Hi there

I know all about SAP migrations -- it's a system designed for "External Consultants" !!! good pay reasonable gigs. Where these go horribly wrong are when this stuff is handed over to 3rd party Consultancy companies" and the company tends to lose "Ownership" of the project. I think anybody whose worked as a SAP external consultant knows the companies I'm talking about - these same 4 or 5 are all over the place --and where it fails completely is when a major part of development particularly is offshored - without developers having decent access to the functional and business consultants. Offshoring something as complex and as large as SAP is a total recipe for disaster -- and I've seen enough of this in over 40 years of working with these types of complex systems.

The Cloud is another pitfall waiting to happen -- by all means run your Virtual Desktop infrastructure etc - but a business needs to have the developers ON SITE IMO -- without that it's 100% fail EVERY TIME.
Hardware etc can be "clouded" and so can bog standard things like say pay rolls but developing / research -- no way (doesn't matter if the development is done on a "Cloud" platform but a lot of people seem to think that the whole process (100% of it) can be handed over -- again I say from my experience in over 40 years of this stuff it's a 100% FAIL.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Layback Bear]

Just a thought. Let me know what you think.

Microsoft is wanting and hoping everybody is going to go to the new tablet or what ever the next thing is called.
Therefor their will be limited hardware for the user and that is is one of the reason for clouds.
You will only need enough hardware to access the internet. Kind of one stop shopping if you have a COA.
Out sourcing all over the world, plus not know where in the world anything is stored or coming from to me is very frighting.
Another reason I can think of is Counterfeiting.
Every time one logs into a cloud for a operating system or programs like Office Microsoft will be able to check for COA. Hundreds of millions of Microsoft system and products are counterfeited. Microsoft will try anything to try and slow that down.

Just remember that Facebook is a cloud and people there get (took) mores time than Marilyn Monroe did.

 

[Gator]

I've been wanting to try to get the CompTia Cloud Essentials book and try to take that test. Seems like if thats where everything is going, its a good thing to have.

 

[HammerHead]

Cloud = $$

This too shall pass.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

The "Cloud" is a scam.

How is it a scam?

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

And dangerous

It's no more dangerous than the internet itself as long as one uses it sensibly.

 

[andrew129260]

There is no way to use cloud storage sensibly. Once in the cloud, it is out of your hands. You are not in control of your data. Unless you mean only uploading things you do not care about or things that are not private, in which case it is useless anyway.

 

[ThrashZone]

All one has to do is read all of the disclaimers and figure out businesses will opt out,
Microsoft has always been more delusional on services like this than anything,
Sell-Sell-Sell,
Cheers.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

There is no way to use cloud storage sensibly. Once in the cloud, it is out of your hands. You are not in control of your data...

That's why you should use only reliable services (not freebies), upload only encrypted data, and don't depend on it as your only repository of data. For that matter, you should never have your data in only one place, be it the cloud, HDDs, flash drives, ODDs, clay tablets, whatever.

 

[ThrashZone]

There is no difference between a free 25 gig Onedrive account and a paid for 25 gig Onedrive account,
Besides the costs,
The disclaimers of loss of data are identical,
The same terms of use are identical on all cloud services free or otherwise,
Cheers.

 

[andrew129260]

There is no difference between a free 25 gig Onedrive account and a paid for 25 gig Onedrive account,
Besides the costs,
The disclaimers of loss of data are identical,
The same terms of use are identical on all cloud services free or otherwise,
Cheers.

Exactly.

I have external drive backups and internl drive backups. But I would not trust storing it in the cloud.

 

[Wrend]

"Cloud." Sounds kind of ethereal and mystical... and largely rubbish.

Sorry, but the term just bothers me. Too nondescript.

I do back up some nonsensitive data on Google's servers, mostly music for streaming on my phone.

That being said, my main computer is my "cloud." I backup and store my mobile data on it over the internet, use it as a server for games, a mainframe of sorts for my mobile devices to access as terminals, crunch data for scientific research on it, game on it, do video and audio recording and editing, and use it as the centerpiece in my home entertainment system. It's up doing "stuff" pretty much 24/7/365.242. And all this is at no extra and ongoing cost other than the electric bill.

So, point being, the joke is on them, designing my mobile devices with limited non-expandable storage capacity.

My only worry is running out of enough room for my installed apps.

But yes, I do fork over a little more for unlimited data. Can't win them all, I guess. :huh:

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

There is no difference between a free 25 gig Onedrive account and a paid for 25 gig Onedrive account,
Besides the costs,
The disclaimers of loss of data are identical,
The same terms of use are identical on all cloud services free or otherwise,
Cheers.

The difference is a free account is far more likely to disappear with little or no warning whereas paid accounts are far more likely to be stable. Onedrive is not the only cloud service available.