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So does "Windows Cloud" = "Windows 7"???

It would stand to reason that would be true since all the unique apps from Windows Vista are moving to Windows Live.

One question remains:  How will they differentiate differing versions of Windows 7?  Does this mean that Media Center will be a downloadable add-on too?  What about DVD Maker?

What if they did that, and just put the corporate stuff into all versions of Windows?  The Tablet PC stuff is already there, so it would allow them to simplify Windows into a single SKU....

Is this the target that they're after?

This is fascinating. I particularly like the (seeming) concept that the cloud based approach will be in addition to installed software, whereas mot competitors are all about the cloud replacing traditional software.

With the current state of high speed broadband availability around the world, Microsoft's current concept makes much more sense for many more users.

According to the article from TG Daily, "Windows Cloud" isn't really an OS, but a development toolkit for building S+S apps.  It's also separate from Windows 7.

Pingback from  Windows Cloud OS … And some new Office Live stuff

While it's nice to hear that Microsoft is looking at alternative ways of delivering its software, the whole cloud computing concept is a lot of nice ideas, but not going to be reality for a long time.

At the moment, high-quality broadband internet remains spotty even in big cities; I live in the outer boroughs of New York City and my Verizon service is fast, but still prone to outage issues. My friends who have Time Warner fare not that much better. And there's a wide swath of the country (Qwest and REA country) that is still struggling to get high quality broadband of any kind.

Meanwhile a main justification for cloud computing -- too many programs taking up too much space on hard drives -- is only so if capacity is expensive to acquire. But it isn't. You can buy a decent laptop with 250 gigabytes of hard drive space for $600 -- or $2.40 per gigabyte; you're getting more hard drive space for less money per gigabyte then you did five years ago (when a decent laptop with a 60-gig hard drive was priced at $1,200). You can buy a 1-terabyte external hard drive for $175 down at your local Best Buy or 17.5 cents a gigabyte; an external hard drive with just 80 gigabytes of space cost about $100 four years ago.

And let's not forget that one can get portable versions of memory-intensive programs such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver; this allows you to get your hands on programs you want yet don't often use -- and still save on hard drive space.

There may be plenty of benefits to cloud computing. But at the moment, it's more a theory than reality. And with the other trends happening in computing, I'm not even sure that the people outside of a few power users and some companies will even be interested in it. By the time the cloud becomes robust for users, it may already be passed by.

Interesting stuff...to add to Sevenmack's comment, another reason that cloud computing won't be mainstream for a while is that regulated industries such as healthcare and finacial intitutions will not be moving that direction anytime soon. Especially financial institutions; as I do not see the regulatory bodies loosening up anytime in the future, considering the state of the world economy.

--tayme

For many years, I have been using cloud apps for hospital stuff. It's necessary and seemless as it would be impossible to implement all the need apps and keep them updated on hundreds of computers. So this [cloud computing] is a great need for large institutions. But how would an OS be implemented? Could you use it with other OSes or do you need a dumb terminal? Could you access the cloud Windows OS on a Mac? Inquiring minds want to know.

Once again, let me quote my email sig...

'If "Web 2.0" was the equivalent of replacing the dumb terminals of "Web 1.0" with smart terminals then Live Mesh is the equivalent of replacing those terminals with a peer to peer network of personal computers.'

Right now, our use of the Internet is equivalent of terminal/mainframe or terminal/minicomputer computing in the 1970s. Even down to the same kind of "standards" work that was done to make the DEC VT-102 escape codes into the ANSI Standard terminal and people arguing over whether the industry should move in the direction of the VT-220 or the LSI ADM3a.

What's coming is an actual paradigm shift equivalent to what happened between 1975 and 1995. We're somewhere in the equivalent of the 1980s. If past really is prologue, hang on for a fun and bumpy ride.

>>it's just a new marketing term for doing business on the Web. Funny how you never hear the term "Web 2.0" anymore, isn't it?<<

MS hasn't led a paradigm shift for 15 or 20  years now.   The odds are very against them doing it.

FYI, Amazon is preparing to offer Windows in the cloud this Fall:

http://aws.amazon.com/windows/

Sevenmack, from what I make of it, the main idea behind "cloud computing" is the whole 'Anything, Anywhere' concept, that your data, and apps are available from wherever you are. It has nothing to do with hard drive space.

I've also gto a theory, (Mikegalos, could you offer some insight on this?) that the whole WinFS structure of "you don't need to know Where your files actually are, only WHAT they are", was some attempt at getting prepared to a future in which your documents may reside physically on either your laptop, your desktop machine, your phone, at work, on a server, etc. finding and opening documents, pictures etc would be transparent to the user, regardless of where the data physically was.

Is that kind of idea correct, Mike?

While it would be amusing to spend the day arguing over "first mover" versus "industry driver" and what constitutes "paradigm shift" and the meaning of "led", it would distract from the important point.

What you will have on your desktop, on your lap or in your pocket in a decade will bear as little resemblence to a stand-alone OS with a browser as what you have on your desktop, on your lap or in your pocket today resembles a VT102 or ADM3a or 3279 terminal.

The model is changing, not the implementation details.

gorath

The concept of having a transparent, fully integrated system that you talk about has been a key vision of Microsoft since the days of "Cairo" and it's certainly a part of where we're heading. You can see bits of it in a lot of technologies, some that shipped, like Active Directory and Live, and some, like WinFS and Cairo, that didn't make it out the door as products but that lent technology to other products.

@Doc - Are the apps that you are using related to any matters that involve privacy(HIPPA) or is any patient data being stored in the "cloud"?

--tayme

All the p[atient data is available through the cloud. All places must obey HIPPA  and use HIPPA compliant services, password, etc...There are many hospitals in Philadelphia that are not affilated with each other, but share patient info [incompliance with HIPPA] to deliver better care. Paitent lab results and imaging studies are available as well as consultaions and charts, so that there is some continuity when patients get labs, imaging studies and consultations from multiple nonaffiliated centers. It's all in the cloud, but everyone signs privacy agreements out the wazoo. The firewalls are pretty tough and I havee never heard of any compromise. My 3 hospital system locks everything down pretty well too.

>>What you will have on your desktop, on your lap or in your pocket in a decade will bear as little resemblence to a stand-alone OS with a browser as what you have on your desktop, on your lap or in your pocket today resembles a VT102 or ADM3a or 3279 terminal.<<

Thats like saying the Sun will rise tomorrow.  Its going to do that regardless of what MS does.

Some might say "despite" what MS does...

"Thats like saying the Sun will rise tomorrow"

No, that would be if we all switched to Java terminals.

:-)

For Average Joe the cloud stuff isn't that important and may never be. A lot of people simply aren't or don't want to be that mobile. Communication such as email, text etc being cloud enabled makes sense for most other uses people have their own office setup or fixed place and work from there.

I wouldn't want to rely on high speed, always on , always up network connection when I don't actually need one. Even running something over a home ethernet network is far too unresponsive.

This is something that is very much being led by the big, interested parties  trying to get better, recurring licensing returns and less piracy.

Certainly Gorath, an aspect of cloud is that you can actually do much of your computing without having to lug around a laptop (or the access everything anywhere). But the other driving force behind the concept is the hard drive space issue.

In theory, at least according to those who are fans of cloud computing, applications take up so much space on the hard drives (and take so much time to install and update over time) that it becomes a burden for the user. It is especially true if one is talking about a medium-sized enterprise without the IT staff to manage all the applications, hard drive space and long-term storage.  And the increasing use of hard drive storage for photos, videos and other media means that, no matter how much space you acquire, you will never really have enough for either media or apps. And ultimately, your hard drives get damaged or die out, which means that you will either lose important data or have to figure out a way to get the data off the system in order to move to a new computer or hard drive.

What cloud computing promises, besides the ability to access applications at any time is the ability to offload the management of storage off to someone else with the capacity to do so. Essentially, what people do now with Gmail (store e-mails that they can access years later) or with the My Briefcase functions you get when you use AT&T Yahoo's DSL service. Not only can you access your data anywhere, but it will be stored easily and can be managed cheaply. No external hard drives and smaller laptops to boot.

The problem with that aspect of cloud is that it assumes that storage is the most expensive and hardest-to-manage element of computing and IT services. I've already demonstrated how cheap it is to get storage. And managing storage capacity isn't so hard either: Get Memeo for backup purposes or simply copy or move to the external hard drive. And for $9 a month, you can buy Web server access and offload data into that. And the access anywhere problem is being solved now through portable software; you have a portable external hard drive or a USB stick and you can store the important software you need and carry it around.

Scooby

You're still thinking of cloud computing in the "terminal/server" (Software as a Service) model.

While that's what Google and others keep proposing, that isn't what SteveB is talking about. In fact, it's just about the antithesis and I think you'd find that his statements pretty much agree with every objection you've made.

sevenmack

You're talking terminal/server computing and calling it "cloud computing".

That is NOT what Ballmer is discussing.

@Doc - Is that infomation truly "on the cloud" meaning that it is stored in a single location that all parties access...or does each party have an individual data store that is just updated periodically? When I think of "the cloud", I envision a single data store, accessible via the interwebs, that can be accessed anywhere, from any terminal/pc. Of course, the hosting "system" would have multiple layers of security built in. This is why I am saying that in today's age of governance, it will be a while before the regulatory bodies will approve this type of system...I am not saying it will never happen...only that it will be highly scrutinized before approved.

--tayme

tayme

You might want to take a look at Microsoft's HealthVault project (currently in beta) which is designed to do exactly that kind of shared (yet regulatory compliant) medical records storage and integration.

There's information available at http://www.HealthVault.com

@Mike - I work with various regulators and compliance issues on a daily basis, so I have seen it...I wonder how widely used it is as of yet and what the regulators think of it at this point. From what I understand...the jury is still out on it, as it should be...it is in beta. The financial industry is even more regulated, and that is about to increase...

--tayme

tayme

No question that right now HealthVault is in the "build up an ecosystem" mode.

If Live Mesh develops as I think it will, then there will be a concept of apps and data being synchronized to any PC. It will work offline and online. If Microsoft is smart, you will be able to buy a cloud office that follows you, not any particular machine. That is what I hope.

Actually Mike, I have a pretty good idea about the cloud computing space and I'm talking in general, not just about Ballmer. There's a wide variety of models for cloud, most of them not necessarily reflecting what MSOFT may be attempting to do.

Perhaps you should pay attention instead of shouting off ad hominem as you usually do. And you do: Even I, a longtime reader and a general MSOFT fan, sometimes finds you to be a little more shout and talk than listen and discuss.

Tayme, that's exactly what the hospitals are doing. The info is in one central location [Gibbsboro,NJ] that can be accessed anywhere. Some hosts are even in another state, which is how some hospital systems sue third party sources, instead of keeping the info at home. Most of these no longer exist, but many have started this way. Security is paramount. We often need our private office IT to work with hospital IT to overcome limitations of each others'  firewall.

Healthvault is a great project. It seems like a big step to allow patients to have access to thier own data. Currently, in most hospital systems, they do not. Mostly because of security reasons, and partly due to fear of bandwith limits. Healthvault will help consultants get instant access to the patients data, rather than attempting to find it from multiple, and even unknown sources, since many patients may forget where they had it done. Errors will be reduced. Delays will be avoided. There will be nurses to boink....woops, I started derepressing my past!

>>You're talking terminal/server computing and calling it "cloud computing".

That is NOT what Ballmer is discussing.<<

Ellison has the best line on this Cloud computing mania:  It's just like the colored iMacs...computing hidden under something fancy...in this case -- a name.

>>>"The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can't think of anything that isn't cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?<<

news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-10052188-80.html

@Doc - So, you can walk into an Internet Cafe in France or an Apple Store in New Mexico(if there are any there) and access the data without opening a VPN? Or have you had circuits installed to connect to the site(s) where the data is? If its the latter...I would not consider that "cloud", just WAN connectivity.

Do nurses still like to boink the Docs???  ;-)

--tayme

I think there is still some way to go before "Cloud Computing" crystallizes, if it ever does.

I am not sure how Ballmer is portraying it apart from the snippet in the article but there are a lot of presumptions about how people WILL work. e.g.

"and you don’t have Office, you’ll want to be able to do something quickly"

Will you? Can you not write it down on a bit of paper, note on your phone, pda etc and fix it when you get back. No connection required.

We'll see how it pans out over the next 5 years no doubt.

There's a great video somewhere that I think shows the difference between what Mike is referring to (MS's view?) as a vision of cloud computing, in one specific example.

a kid jumps into a pool, and his mother (presumably) takes a photo on her phone, the it goes into slow mo, to show that photo appearing on a relative's wifi digital photo frame, on another relative's (father, I think?) gallery on his laptop at an airport, on a new photo popup on a friend's xbox, etc etc.

The video then cuts back to the kid just falling into the water, and resumes normal speed, suggesting that all this takes place instantly, if you have a photo on one device, it's available on all of your cloud-connected devices, right there and then.

It's a fascinating thought, and I believe the vision Mike is talking about also extends to applications, and other media as well.

Imagine if you had a music player in your car that had wifi capabilities, so that whilst it's parked in your drive, it syncs with your media library, so that any music you have anywhere, is now also available in your car.

Or, another scenario that MS has hinted at, that whichever machine you log onto on a future verision of windows (although I think they were gesturing windows 7) has YOUR desktop background, YOUR apps, YOUR documents, YOUR settings, YOUR screen DPI, as if you were sat at your own PC at home.

The idea that everything is not only available on a server somewhere in the 'cloud', but is also on any machine you have access to, and is synced whenever a connection is available, so that it becomes available offline as well.

I think that's the key difference between what MS would like, and what Google's apps give us.

At least that's how I understand it. How far away this is, or even if we'll ever see it, is anybody's guess.

We can access from anywhere, without a VPN. And nurses, well I'm married with children now, so my life is basically over. That's why I post here.

I was told that HIPAA requires specific pasword measures, but I have yet to find any place consistantly using the same policy, so I think HIPPA gives suggestions, rather than a specific policy, such as a minimum of 8 characters to a password and a required password change, or expiration every quarter.

Cool...I didn't know that was happenning much yet. I am not in healthcare, so that would be why I was unaware and used the wrong acronym for HIPAA...

As for the life being over after being married with children....just wait, one day they go off to college or to make a life....then the fun (read boinking) returns (he says with a sheepish grin).

--tayme

I did actually used to manage nearly a petabyte of storage at a large healthcare facility...but gave up the support role, including the pager and moved out of that industry about 2 years ago...no more 3am calls = more boinking time!

--tayme

My "cloud" exists within my own secure "biodome" - Exchange 2007 (with Outlook Web Access) and Windows Sharepoint Services running on Windows Small Business Server 2008.

It's software+services, and a lot of my remote computing is actually done on my HTC Touch Diamond now, since I can access my email, documents, and even invoice customers for on-site work with Windows Mobile.

@gorath, yes fascinating and some of it done today, like those picture frames that have an email address that you can email pictures to.

All great stuff BUT.....Sevenmack nailed it.  That vision requires bandwidth that might common in 20 years.

Cloud computing has some great features.  I think it can be used by many people, but that I think corporations cant/wont trust their data outside their walls, at least the vast majority.  I think joe user is mostly tied to their home system and they might use some features, in the cloud the still like their stuff at home.

Hosted services such as Exchange/Sharepoint are the real extent of cloud computing today.

There are already some versions of the MSOFT idea such as Sling Media's "Slingbox" offerings. It isn't even a new idea; it's been talked about in one form or another throughout this decade. And it's a great idea.

But one of the problems I have mentioned earlier -- scattershot broadband -- still remains a problem. Although you can find WiFi hotspots in even the poorest urban neighborhoods, the systems are often locked to outside users. Even seemingly unsecured systems may not be; think T-Mobile or AT&T hotspots, which are technically open, but you must pay for in order to access the 'net. If you, say, try to stream music files from home through your car stereo, you may not get reception for miles.

This could change in urban areas if Wi-Max becomes widely available. But even then, you still have thousands of miles of suburban and rural areas that are sparsely populated; there won't be a lot of WiMax spots available. The roll-out of 3G also makes the concept promising; but, again, the value of the concept will depend on the level of roll-out. Given the credit crisis, which will restrain the ability of cellphone operators to borrow in order to complete capital projects, this may take another few years.

Again, it's a great idea and hopefully, MSOFT will pull that version off; the Google version -- which is nothing more than high-concept timesharing -- has a number of flaws. But, again, there are obstacles to making it work. And ultimately, by the time cloud becomes fully functional in either form, time may have already passed it by.

There are already some versions of the MSOFT idea such as Sling Media's "Slingbox" offerings. It isn't even a new idea; it's been talked about in one form or another throughout this decade. And it's a great idea.

But one of the problems I have mentioned earlier -- scattershot broadband -- still remains a problem. Although you can find WiFi hotspots in even the poorest urban neighborhoods, the systems are often locked to outside users. Even seemingly unsecured systems may not be; think T-Mobile or AT&T hotspots, which are technically open, but you must pay for in order to access the 'net. If you, say, try to stream music files from home through your car stereo, you may not get reception for miles.

This could change in urban areas if Wi-Max becomes widely available. But even then, you still have thousands of miles of suburban and rural areas that are sparsely populated; there won't be a lot of WiMax spots available. The roll-out of 3G also makes the concept promising; but, again, the value of the concept will depend on the level of roll-out. Given the credit crisis, which will restrain the ability of cellphone operators to borrow in order to complete capital projects, this may take another few years.

Again, it's a great idea and hopefully, MSOFT will pull that version off; the Google version -- which is nothing more than high-concept timesharing -- has a number of flaws. But, again, there are obstacles to making it work. And ultimately, by the time cloud becomes fully functional in either form, time may have already passed it by.

Oh I realise that most of that stuff is a pipedream for now, trust me my location makes me more than aware of bandwidth problems!

But, the slingbox, and streaming to your car are again, different to the solution proposed by MS.

I was suggesting that your car player had storage, so that it synced with your pc, not that it streamed it directly.

Again, with the slingbox, that transmits video over the internet, it doesn't make that video available if you go offline.

The MS solution (as I understand it) is that everything is synced, so that once your car, for example, has synced with your home pc (or mac, of course, hopefully, but I tend to use the term PC, to mean a home computer, running windows, nix, or osx), that music is now available anywhere you go in your car, because it has a local copy of it.

All devices would synchronise when a connection was available, and the local copy would be available for playback afterwards if, or more likely when, you lose internet connectivity along the way.

Do you understand what I'm trying to explain? (I'm not the most articulated of people, I must admit!) it's not streaming, it's syncing. You don;t need connectivity to use what is already synced.

While I'm fascinated by the concept of a cloud specific Windows, I also have to agree with some of the skeptics here. Especially here in the U.S. where broadband still has a long ways to go in terms of both availability, dependability, and consistency. I'm fortunate to live in the suburb of a major metropolitan area where DSL, Cable, Fiber Optic, Satelite, and Mobile 3G(Soon 4G) is available. We now have a slew of hotspots available. Just head 45 minutes from Dallas up to Denton, Texas and its a whole another world up there. I will grant, because of the two major and minor universities, Denton is more hooked up than some small towns like Commerce, Texas. Compared to Japan and South Korea, the U.S. broadband is spotty and sluggish.

I wouldn't want to be dependent our existing networks for extensive apps coming off the net. How easily servers can be brought down, if enough people are demanding bandwidth. For example: The U.S. House server easily became overloaded when a huge segment of voters weighed in on the bailout. Imagine if a bunch of people are using a service that requires lots of bandwidth. Yet many of the main ISP's like Time Warner and Comcast are switching to tiered GB services. (I hope that people are switching off Time Warner Roadrunner and Comcast High Speed, until they give up on tiered access.) Its ideas like a cloud based Windows, media like YouTube and iTunes, the eventual merging of live television and the Internet, and everything else out there that makes me question both tiered access and Software as a Service.

Something will have to give here and getting ISP's to give up their cash cows will be like trying to break into Fort Knox. They are looking to nickel and dime everyone to make profit and pay those expensive CEO and chief financial officers salaries. So unless we see a major change here, I'm not sure how a cloud based Windows is to suceed in the short term. However, if the Internet evolves as many are theorizing, it could be highly successful. Who knows? Perhaps in 15 to 20 years, this Windows Cloud could be what 2000, XP, and Vista are today. Household names.

I was just thinking yesterday of how useful it would be to have some capabilities in your own car, including the ability to alert your cell phone when your car alarm is activated, catching the criminal in the act [then running ouitside and lifting up by his throat to watch his eyes pop out. That would be cool]. I guess that WiFi would not work over long distances and through some thick walls, but I guess that the car could call someone or alert a company through satellite. Does that 'Onstar' do it?

@gorath:

You've pretty much got it right.  As bandwidth and coverage becomes increasingly closer to infinite, syncing will become less and less relevant.  For now, it's a real world problem that affects still a wide array of internet users.  Syncing makes sense now though.

Also, Microsoft's plans are to still provide internet-connected rich applications on the desktop, not just within the web browser.  That's where the "*software*+services" part comes in, in comparison to "software-as-a-service".  As I mentioned, over time, bandwidth (and programming languages) will allow much richer web applications to become available through a thin client.  Microsoft is more sensible in addressing bandwidth issues and development obstacles by still relying on the client OS now though.  It's baby steps - but very carefully calculated steps, not "Godzilla stomping aimlessly on Tokyo" steps.

"Does that 'Onstar' do it?"

It can.  It depends what kind of plan you have though.

Business security systems can also do the same.  There are even WiFi security cams that allow you to remotely monitor your premises.  Logitech has a system that even supports Windows Mobile smartphones:

www.logitech.com/.../&cl=us,en

I've been looking at the possibility of using those for my own shop.  The biggest issue is that it doesn't support Windows Vista 64-bit though, which is kind of a drag.

Lol, the car alarm thing reminded me of an episode of an UK car/talk show called "top gear", where the main host was telling of his misadventures with his new Ford GT.

He was driving it to work, when all of a sudden it died on him, and he got a call from Ford, alerting him that his car had been stolen - He even had a hard time convincing them that he really was the owner of the car, and that he was sat in it right now, trying to get to the BBC studios!

godzirra...did you say GODZIRRA?!?!?! AHHHHHH!!!!

I love Bob and Tom!!!

Go Cubbies!!!

--tayme

Yep tayme, hospitals are not known for being great employers. They can be a good first job or stepping stone in a career. They seem to heading straight for the cloud. But don't some of our personal practices as well, such as on line gaming or even on line picture storage, processing and printing services? Entertainment perhaps, since we can DL movies to rent and buy? Are these examples of the cloud use in personal life as well?

Ahh, Top Gear. :-) My friend is a huge fan and I've watched a few shows. He kept showing me videos when the WiFi on the Bolt bus worked during our trip to NYC.

O/T:

BTW, doc, my Exchange mail does not work on the iTouch because we use VPN to connect. GMail and Yahoo work. I really hoped Live Mail would work too.

The remote application is awesome. I wish someone would make a (free) app to control Vista MCE.

I would say that Google is "Godzirra" here.  For a company that is trying to stomp on the competition with their shear size, they seem to be doing so at a very clunky rate.  I mean, have you really seen Android?!  Icky poo!

Functionality and UX just flew out the window when they came up with that one.

Ballmer is wrong.  It's not a 1.0 product at all - it's not even as feature replete as the original iPhwn.

And honestly, who really wants to sign their intellectual property, nay their entire online life, away to Google, by using Chrome??!

@Doc - Oh, yeah...I love the "cloud". Live Mesh rocks for keeping important files sync'd and stored offline. But ask any of your non-geek friends about the "cloud"...the response will likely be something like "Oh, yeah, that cumulonimbus to the west looks like an anvil". Most of the non-geeks that I know don't even know how to put their 360, Wii, or PS3 on a home network...or even that you could. Most of them don't know how to download a song to put on an iPod. Most of them have no idea that they can record TV using Windows Media Center, let alone use a beta of IPTV. So, yeah...for us geeks on sites like this...we get it, but Joe Six-Pack don't.

--tayme

"Most of them have no idea that they can record TV using Windows Media Center, let alone use a beta of IPTV."

True. Lot of my friends were surprised to see Vista Media Center being used to watch TV. My colleagues and my co-workers think I'm a freaking tech geek and come to me for advice about iPods (docks etc.) and Windows. I was surprised that so many of my colleagues had heard about VMWare, though.