“We’re not moving towards the world of thin computing, we’re moving towards the world of software plus services. And the software plus service model will bring the best of the desktop, the best of the Web, the best of the enterprise, and the best of devices together.”
The third thing I talked about was embracing disruption [Web version of Microsoft Office]. And there is a big disruption going on in our business. And some investors will say it’s scary, it’s this, it’s that, are you going to embrace it? We have no choice. Ten years ago people were talking about our embrace of the Internet revolution. The transformation of software to be software plus services is a phenomenon that we are embracing, we need to embrace, and frankly, any company who thinks their core competency is software better get to getting on this dimension.
Now, when I talk about it I talk about it quite broadly. I’m not talking just about consumer stuff, or just about advertising. I’m literally I literally believe that every piece of software, the basic core value, and the way software gets created will change over the next three, five, ten years. So every piece of software will have a client component, a server component, and service component from the cloud, that all gets managed and orchestrated out of that cloud infrastructure.
People tend to get, I think, weird and extreme about this, in my personal opinion. Some people say, Does that mean all computing moves to the cloud? Does all storage move to the cloud? Does everything essentially become a Web browser? I think that’s wrong-minded. I think what the world actually wants in this transformation is what I would call the best of the four existing models of computation.
Each one of these today, you could call it model of computation, or model of user interface and computation, but there’s the PC, or the desktop. It’s got the richest user experience. You get online and offline access. You get personal control, and the ability to integrate, and mix, and match in the most flexible and arbitrary form. Nobody wants to give that away.
The Web, or online, you can just click and run anything, there’s no installation. You just click and run a Web site, click and run an app, because this was designed with the cloud from the get go, anywhere access, and searching, and finding, and collaborating on things tends to be fairly built into the software. And there’s a focus on low-cost, and scaled operations, which I think does drive down net-net the cost of computing.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/office/steve-ballmer-thoughts-on-web-based-microsoft-office-products/1005/
