Microsoft’s “Software+Services” vision combines the best of hosted and on-premise software to deliver compelling experiences for our customers.  It’s about giving customers a choice and having integration across multiple devices and delivery methods to build flexible and optimized solutions for all customers.  We call this approach ‘software + services.’ 

More powerful devices, expanding data storage capacity on devices and in massive data centers (“the cloud”), and the growing ubiquity of broadband networks have given rise to a new generation of software that resides on the Internet, is downloaded quickly when it’s needed, and is consumed directly within a Web browser.

Today, by combining elements of these Internet services with client and/or server software, we can deliver solutions that provide new capabilities and deliver new levels of utility, convenience, and flexibility. This “software plus services” approach offers an ideal balance between… the ubiquity and connectivity the Internet provides, and the rich interactivity and high performance provided by software that runs on a device with a powerful processor.

A good example is the Exchange experience, in which users can access email, contacts, and calendar on the PC through Outlook, in the browser through Outlook Web Access, on the phone through Outlook Mobile, and in the case of Exchange 2007, via voice through Outlook Voice Access, all of which are synchronized on the back end. And from a delivery perspective, Exchange can be deployed on-premise, hosted by a partner or hosted by Microsoft as a service.