back to article Ballmer begs partners to love Microsoft clouds

Steve Ballmer wants to rally business partners around Microsoft's flagship internet and mobile initiatives, but in the process, he reveals just how far Microsoft has to go and how much the company relies on decision-makers outside of its control. Opening Microsoft's annual Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles on Monday …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    My impression?

    "Ballmer shows partners to have 0% affinity nor experience when it comes to the current ICT market".

    iow; "Look at us, we're running after the facts!".

    Which is IMO an utter shame because on other fronts MS really seems to be getting their act together.

  2. json

    Didnt he get the memo?

    ... there's no money in them thar clouds for MS partners!!! seriously what kind of value added can resellers provide? point the users to the correct URL?

    1. LaeMing
      Go

      Premium Hyperlinks!

      Better than standard hyperlinks.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Gimme a break

    I'll get in the clouds when the infrastructure is in place to allow me to whenever and where ever I happen to be. As it is, I'm only allowed access to my own information when a quality connection is available and that is not a frequent event, though I haven't tried 4th generation smartphone service. Still, web on a smartphone is punishing so the preferred method is still landline, followed by hotspot on the run. But those are amazingly inconsistent as well unless, I guess, you've got a T1+ corporate but who wants to work on personal stuff at the office. I use wireless hotspots alot with my laptop and it still amazes me how complicated it is to get a radio station. That's all it amounts to, picking up a radio station 50 feet away. What's the big deal? I have yet to try a wireless client besides Atheros that reported the parameters of the connection correctly or did what the buttons say they do. I just bought a new Cisco AE1000 and now I can't get it to go as fast as my built in Atheros,which is dependable, but underpowered.

    Yeah, MS and others will get cloud customers when they convince the cloud access providers to get their heads out of their......clouds.

    Why do we pay so much for access when the entire city could get internet free by putting a transmitter atop a radio tower and paying $500 a month for electricity. AT&T wouldn't connect it to the hardwired web. Fine, then the web becomes radio towers and transmitters in every city and interconnects through repeaters for long distances. You can shoot a wifi signal 100 miles or more with the right equipment. We should put AT&T out of business once and for all before it starts charging $1/minute for long distance again after it inhales the rest of it's competitors and forces the concentration ratio up to 100% like it's mama had in the 70's before it had competition. BTW, what does the anti-trust department at the Department of Justice do? Three major players does not provide a market with competitive behaviors. The cereal and car companies proved that along time ago. Anything for Big DaddyBucks, eh Big Brother. Let's put up a global web with 5000 watt radio beacons before the FCC convinces the Congress that it has authority over the web even though Congress hasn't given it to them.

    Once they do that, they'll have police powers and our 5000 watt beacons will be limited to 2 watts. That won't reach the bottom of the pole. You know, the towers wouldn't have to use the wifi freq range for inter-tower transmissions, just local distribution. Short towers, pre-fab bolt together cheapies 100 feet tall on government easements so the existing tower owners couldn't hold us up. A million bucks would do a town of a million easily. That's $1 down and a prorated share of maybe a penny a month. Instead, we're paying $200 down and 20,30,40,50,60,70+ a month. Gimme a break.

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge
      FAIL

      Broadcast only?

      "Let's put up a global web with 5000 watt radio beacons before the FCC convinces the Congress that it has authority over the web even though Congress hasn't given it to them"

      And for the return link over the same path loss you will have how much power from your laptop?

  4. Asgard
    WTF?

    58% ... of what exactly?

    "58% of companies are working with cloud"

    Hey Microsoft, specifically define "working"?

    Is it, Customer "oh I used a search engine" ... Microsoft "well you are a cloud user now" ... In other words, how low has the bar been set for inclusion in this 58% of companies are working with the cloud?

    I bet the bar has been set really low, so the figure sounds much higher than it really is to make people think they too should join Microsoft's cloud.

  5. D. Suse
    Big Brother

    It's the Patriotic thing to do!

    I am sure the world will beat a path to Microsoft's cloud, knowing that all their data will be handed over to the US government (aka the media MAFIAA) as soon as they ask for it. So it makes perfect sense to use Windows phones and Windows cloud services, as this will result in some savings of tax dollars (as no expensive court costs would be incurred by the government when Microsoft just hands over all your data). This will no doubt make Uncle Sam and the MAFIAA very happy indeed.

    I think there is a reason Microsoft is now happily working with China.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      Title

      Every American company will hand your data over to the US gorvernment when told to, it's the law. You really think Amazon, Google, Oracle etc. won't do this?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      US Patriot Act vs European Law

      Been reading this story on ZDNet...

      http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/patriot-act-vs-european-law-what-are-the-likely-outcomes/11365?tag=content;feature-roto

      Quote from story

      "The European Parliament is debating its own laws, to determine whether the Patriot Act is a threat to European data.

      A senior Microsoft executive has already stated that in, short, the Patriot Act does not allow them to guarantee the safety or privacy of European data."

  6. Levente Szileszky

    Seriously: he's a bussiness-beancounter guy...

    ...why would anyone believe his promises especially after these atrocious past few years of BPOS (previous online service bundle)?

    Also, the guy is either really out of his mind or full of sh!t:

    "VMware, Oracle, Google, and Amazon have merit, he admitted, but he says they're unique, specific, and limited. "We think you want to mix and match between the public and private environments," Ballmer told his conference audience. "We are the only company out there that's investing in on-premises and on the cloud. The amount you learn from working [in] both environments to work in the other is dramatic.""

    RRRRIIIIIGHTTTTT, Amazon and others are "unique" proprietary while you are SOOOO OPEN...

    And apparently he never heard of OpenStack development group or Rightscale platform etc.

    Well, that's what you get when a clueless guy speaks for the company.

  7. David Hicks
    Devil

    Nokia support them?

    Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!

    Nokia think your phone platform is just peachy do they Steve?

    Could this be because the guy in charge is fresh out of MS academy?

    This is the worst case of cart before horse. There's an MS guy in charge, so Nokia like MS software. This does not count as a testimonial any more than my mum saying I'm such a handsome boy.

  8. Mostor Astrakan

    Part of the problem...

    Part of the problem is no doubt that the company who owns the disks that store your data will happily hand over the data on said disks to whoever asks nicely enough.

  9. Herby

    Enthusiam?

    Maybe Steve Ballmer needs to start throwing chairs at those partner meetings. Might start something.

    This also begs the question: Why Microsoft? No compelling reason to go there. So, why bother!

    1. Alan Bourke
      FAIL

      Maybe I run a business ...

      ... and need to run business software, and a decent mail platform. That's one reason.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Vim?

    Sorry, I'm an Emacs guy.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Emacs?

    JOE is where it's at.

  12. jake Silver badge

    Taking the "P" out of "PC"?

    Seriously ... MSFT (and AAPL, at ali) spent how many decades making computers "personal", and now they want to move computing back to the data center?

    How daft do they think we, as a population, are?

    (Don't answer that; I'm depressed enough ... )

  13. David 61
    FAIL

    Lost Cloud data

    We're MS Partners, but almost exclusivelty sell Linux based solutions (who, in their right mind wouldn't!?)

    Anyhow, we got a call form MS asking us about selling their cloud services.

    I said "Didn't MS loose a load of cloud data recently?" (T-mobile and others)

    MS Guy just put the phone down... didn't even try and defend the product!

    So, I have absolutely no confidence in MS and their cloud products. As far as I'm concerned, all their products are clunky and un-reliable... but hey ho, they keep us in business!

    1. Alan Bourke

      "LOSE" ...

      FFS.

  14. paulc
    WTF?

    pay people to use it...

    it's the only way Microsoft can get people to use their services... they paid people to use Bing by giving them vouchers when they purchased items found using Bing searches... they paid Nokia to switch to WP7... no doubt Boeing and American Airlines are being paid to use Azure...

    Paid not in so many words, but paid as it Microsoft gave them money back in other services etc. provided they used it...

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sorry but most of you are wrong!

    Much as Ballmer has been a waste of space the past decade the laws of probability have now sided in his favour. When he says "We are the only company out there that's investing in on-premises and on the cloud. " well he is exactly spot-on, and this will allow the benefits of both to roll in onto the balance sheet. I for one have turned away from Google Apps that promised so much and delivered so little, and the toys of Apple are fun for a while until you need to do some serious business (I mean hard core business rather than graphics and music). And much as i like and and admire the Linux community the desktop and Office compatibility is still way short of most business requirements.

    1. Levente Szileszky
      Stop

      RE: Sorry but most of you are wrong!

      "When he says "We are the only company out there that's investing in on-premises and on the cloud. " well he is exactly spot-on, and this will allow the benefits of both to roll in onto the balance sheet."

      Ohh YEAH: hours and hours of system-wide, total outage, then another and another... outage after outage at least every few months, for the past few YEARS - ever since they have laucnhed BPOS... that's the benefit? Or you meant the benefit on their balance sheets by not running an enterprise-class service?

      So far Microsoft proved that they are literally UNABLE to provide any enterprise-class hosted service. period. Most likely they simply did not have a clue how to do it, they have never launched any product without huge, show-stopping bugs so they are just learning QA101 but apparently it takes years for them...

      Be my guest if you want to be a beta tester but if you were my CTO and you'd keep arguing that MS is capable I'd replace you after the 3rd outage, that's for sure.

      Speaking of BPOS: I looove the name! It's so quintessentially Microsoft! Who other than MS would would go for such an obviously bad name? :) Clearly shows how the incompetency at the top... or maybe they knew what they are launching hence the fitting name? :D

      "I for one have turned away from Google Apps that promised so much and delivered so little,"

      Pleahhhse. Google APps is far from a perfect business collab suite, that's for sure but their email platform is literally rock-solid when compared to MS' terrible service track record and Google offered shared, cloud-based collaboration on documents for years now, let alone their 30-40 other products in the Google Apps suite.

      Not liking them is fine - I've pretty pissed numerous times at their awful, antisocial geek-styled, dodgy support people with absolutely no clue about preemptive approach - but let's stop with the nonsensical cliches, please. Some might don't like the Gmail UI - I am not in love with it but certainly *hate* that junk Outlook UI -, their recent transition was a mess, app marketplace is mostly nothing but companies utilizing Google Apps API for logins and so on but as far as promises and delivered features go Google Apps (and Zoho) are most likely far ahead of everyone else.

  16. Dest
    Alert

    How Stupid Do They Think People Are?

    Even people who know next to nothing about computers have friends and family who advise them on what is the best course of action.

    This is not the 1990s anymore when most people just believe all of the talking points of whatever slippery salesmen like Steve Ballmer tell them.

    I think that Microsoft really stepped in it this time, that's my prediction.

    They expect people and businesses world wide to hand over all of their confidential data so that spy and government agencies can sift through everything they have.

    Yeah, it's the law so they have to comply.

    Of course if you are not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about, right? That is what they tell you,isn't it?

    In addition to that who is going to develop anything for the "Cloud" when people will probably have to purchase it from a Microsoft on line store.

    How are they going to get paid? Is Microsoft going to do it?

    Here is an idea, go to any on line game and write an app for it and see if you can get it installed and get someone to pay you for it.

    That is what the "Cloud" is like.

    So where is the incentive to develop anything?

    Well some files are kept on the local machine right? But they have to pass scrutiny so that they are signed off on as "safe" or "trusted".

    You will probably have to buy everything from a Microsoft on line store.

    That applies to drivers for hardware too.

    I am just waiting to see how many developers sign up for that.

    Some will of course but I am betting that most won't.

    That is the wall that Microsoft is up against now.

    Developers are likely to just go and develop for something else.

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