Only it will be millions of computers connected to 5 'clouds'. Is this The Matrix in real life?
Ozzie describes five separate target customers for its web services. First are consumers, who will be offered entertainment, commerce, and communication. Second are "information workers," who will be offered collaboration tools: "Seamless Office scenarios that span the PC, the Web and even the phone. Documents that go wherever you want them, news scenarios, sharing scenarios, meeting scenarios, note-taking, presentation scenarios that use PCs for what they're really good for: for document creation and editing and review. That use the Web for what it's really good for: publishing and sharing and universal access."
Third are IT staffs, whose main benefit from the shift to utility computing will be cost savings, says Ozzie: "For enterprise IT in the short term, this is mostly going to be about moving IT infrastructure to the cloud, either in whole or in part. Things like e-mail or content management, information sharing, and so on." The fourth target customer group consists of business managers, who will gain greater speed and flexibility in deploying IT resources as applications turn into services. Finally, there are the software developers, who by drawing on the utility computing grid will be able "to run applications and store data at very, very low cost [and], for all practical purposes, with infinite capacity that's shared with other people like themselves."
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Microsoft's forecast: cloudy
