A: Most of the research done in Microsoft Research and Development Labs worldwide is focused on cloud computing. Early adoption trends and strong forecast suggest that cloud is going to become an integral part of enterprise IT in the coming years. There are a couple of different ways by which we see the evolution of cloud models.

We see the cloud increasingly host certain services within the enterprise like email and SharePoint collaboration. A lot more of similar ‘not-so-critical’ services will move in the cloud in the next couple of years. These services will be run by a group of people responsible to keep the software on the latest technology. This becomes an inexpensive subscription model for many enterprises.

A: Windows Azure Platform is Microsoft’s product in the Platform as a Service (PaaS) space. If you have observed, over the last two years, we have already launched several products and solutions in India across other layers as part of our Cloud Strategy for the enterprises.

These include hosted Dynamics, Offce Web Apps, Microsoft Online Services (comprising Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Offce Communications Online, and Offce Live meeting), Windows Server, SystemCentre and the Dynamic Data Centre Toolkit. With the launch of Azure, our cloud stack is nearing completion. All of our popular products are now cloud-ready, and we have a clear future roadmap to provide anytime, anywhere access across diverse devices be it PC, mobile or Internet.

There are a lot of interesting features and one that stands out is the ability of the solution to scale up on demand. For example, let’s look at enterprise performance review application. Twice a year Microsoft needs to conduct performance reviews. For other organisations, this may vary to a small degree. As the pattern of usage indicates, most of the year this application is quiet or not used on a regular basis. Hosting such an application on the cloud makes sense because it helps you save on both cost and resources. You can also scale it up when there is a rise in demand and scale down when the
demand recedes.

There is yet another interesting and noticeable feature that allows developers to run and test an application on their local computers before deploying it on production servers. So we do not have to use multiple testing, debugging, and production environments before deploying new applications or updates. This helps organisations drastically reduce the time taken for go-to-market.

A: Collaboration is defnitely one of the most important areas for enterprise computing. Our customers are validating this fact through the huge deployment of SharePoint across geographies. We have around 217,000 SharePoint sites that are operational. This shows that the value exists and people are using it collectively. Even internally Microsoft uses Share Point extensively to boost productivity and facilitate collaboration.

SharePoint, which mixes documentcentric collaboration with social features, is our fastest-growing server software product. The software can be used for things like fle storage, portals, intranet and Internet sites. Social computing is an interesting feature added to it. The platform allows enterprises to add applications seamlessly at their convenience.

We are also expanding the software to encompass content management and social business capabilities. Our new SharePoint Server 2010 will have a greater emphasis on social networking that will be shipped in the frst half of this year. This will improve our blog and wiki capabilities, as well as add a Facebook-like user profle feature. It will also extend the content management features that we began adding to SharePoint 2007. These features will take collaboration to the next level.

A: It is clear that not only technology companies but enterprises across industries are seeing a signifcant growth in the CIO’s role. From being a partner to the business, I strongly believe the role of CIO will evolve to become the operator for the business in the coming years.

ashwani.mishra@9dot9.in