Is Microsoft Azure a Last Ditch Effort?

Make no mistake about it, cloud computing scares Microsoft. It might seem like they are jumping on the cloud computing bandwagon with Microsoft Azure, but they've been dreading this day for some time now.

You have to understand that Microsoft built an empire out of MS-DOS. When Microsoft Windows was a failure in the marketplace, they leveraged their popular operating system and forced hardware manufacturers to install Windows. And when they set their sights on the browser market, they put an Internet Explorer icon on the desktop and demanded manufacturers remove any other browser icons.

Now here comes cloud computing whose big selling point is client independence. That's right, Mac or IBM, Windows or Linux, desktop or smartphone, cloud computing will give you the same benefits no matter how you are connecting to the cloud. Of course that would scare the bejeebees out of Microsoft!

At least they aren't hiding their head in the sand. Not only are they rolling out Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing platform, but they are also planning to cut the bloat out of Windows by releasing a slim downed Windows 7. This new version of Windows won't come with all the applications we are used to ignoring. Instead, we'll get the opportunity to download only what we need or use a Live version.

But the real question is whether or not the tiger will change his stripes. Microsoft has a long history of trying to leverage one technology to sell another, and they are no strangers to building proprietary applications in order to push out the competition. But this type of philosophy can easily backfire in a cloud computing world where people are given a legitimate choice.

Microsoft is certainly saying the right things. They describe Azure as welcoming "...third party tools and languages such as Eclipse, Ruby, PHP, and Python." But will they deliver on the promise, or are they just paying lip service to the idea of an open web?