Ballmer: Why Microsoft is committed to cloud computing

"China Entrepreneur Network" cloud computing equipment and large data centers connected, so that people can break through the constraints of resources, on the near unlimited platform to information. So for the past 15 years, cloud computing has been the focus of Microsoft's attention. That's why we're spending 9.5 billion of dollars this year on research and development--more than any other company in the world, most of which is on cloud computing. Today, 70% of Microsoft's 40,000 engineers are working on products and services related to cloud computing.  This percentage will rise to 90% next year.  The following five aspects shape our cloud computing work, explaining the impact that cloud computing will have on human life: cloud computing creates opportunities and responsibilities: providing opportunities for anyone with an idea to connect with a global audience, and providing accountability for privacy at anytime.  Cloud computing helps people learn, make decisions, and act by understanding the direction of individual effort and providing information and applications that are consistent with your intentions.  By creating connections in the most convenient and productive way, cloud computing will enhance social interaction and professional communication.  Cloud computing will lead to smarter devices that are perfectly accurate to where people are and what they are doing.  Finally, cloud computing will drive the progress of server technology and in turn promote the improvement of cloud computing itself.  Another driver of our obsession with cloud computing is that we believe that cloud computing will create huge opportunities for Microsoft's future growth.  Cloud computing will greatly expand the number of users, so we can provide more products and services, which will increase Microsoft's revenue and profits. With the advent of the cloud computing era, up to the largest enterprises, down to the smallest size of startups, can be based on driving innovation and access to global customers need to automatically deploy computing capacity. With cloud computing, the company's ideas can meet the needs of any market, regardless of size. This means that business success is no longer limited by computational power.  On the contrary, success will depend on imagination, professionalism and executive power.  At the same time, the Government will be able to provide new services through cloud computing, to improve education, health care and safety, the researchers have been able to gather, share and analyze information more quickly, thus contributing to scientific progress, and those billions of people who have not yet enjoyed the results of the information revolution will be able to connect with the global knowledge-based economy in unprecedented numbers.  For example, NASA is using Microsoft's cloud operating system Azure to enable the public and researchers to better interact with the 100,000 of images that Mars probes send back, a process that will inspire the next generation of scientists and explorers to support future space exploration, allowing us to better understand the universe. These examples show how real and powerful cloud computing is today.  But what is even more exciting is not what cloud computing can do now, but what technologies and innovations the world's smart people will use to create in the future. No one can predict exactly which new industries will be created, or which traditional challenges may eventually be surpassed.  We can only be sure that this wave of change and the forces of convergence will bring dramatic and positive changes to the world. (This article is from the Forbes website contains the blog, the contents of the abridged compilation: Dubow)