Cloud Computing: Microsoft’s integration agenda

The software giant is sharpening its focus on integrating public and private clouds for a whole new bundle of services

Art Coughlan, cloud and enterprise business group lead in Microsoft Ireland
Art Coughlan, cloud and enterprise business group lead in Microsoft Ireland

A good barometer for measuring cloud evolution is Microsoft. From being inextricably linked with old guard vendors who had the most to lose from the cloud, the software giant is successfully transitioning its applications to a software-as-a-service model, most notably with Office 365. At the same time it has developed a hyperscale cloud platform, Azure, that is giving Amazon and Google some healthy competition.