Garth Fort, General Manager of Microsoft's Security and Management Division, discusses what is new with applications management in this new world of the cloud, the ongoing need to optimize the development and operations relationship, compelling applications management capabilities in System Center 2012, and applications categories customers can start giving cool technologies like service templates and SAV a test drive on.

Tony Scott, corporate vice president and CIO at Microsoft, discusses how Consumerization of IT is changing the way we do IT at Microsoft, in particular in the areas of devices, security and management, employee productivity and application development.

When it comes to plotting a cloud strategy, CIOs should stop thinking about labels and start looking for configurations that best fit their applications, says analyst Alistair Croll, founder of and principal analyst at BitCurrent and the content chair for Cloud Connect, the industry's largest cloud computing event.

As we begin a new calendar year, we’ve been excited to read analysts’ predictions that 2012 will be the year that many companies truly embrace cloud computing. Today, Microsoft is the only cloud provider which offers the full spectrum of cloud services spanning public, hybrid and private clouds.