We believe cloud computing represents the platform for the next generation of business. Cloud computing is driving the transformation of the IT industry across the entire stack, offering dramatic improvements in business agility, operational efficiency and IT maturity with significant cost savings:

• Hardware Model - Incredibly powerful and efficient hardware at a fraction of the cost.
• Applications Model - Developers can rapidly create highly available, secure cloud applications.
• Operations Model - Operations can keep cloud applications available 24x7 with “9-to-5” management.

Only Microsoft has the spectrum of assets across developer tools, management, identity and security, server and cloud to achieve the consistency between private and public cloud solutions. We use the following approaches to lead innovation in the cloud:

• Invest in the entire cloud stack - infrastructure, platforms, applications - with a service centric focus.
• Ensure applications run consistently across on-premises (private cloud) and off-premises (public cloud).
• Provide unified management for applications/services across on-premises and off- premises.
• Similar flexibility and agility across cloud environments whether you’re using your own assets, working with service providers (hosting partners), or deploying into Microsoft’s datacenters (e.g. Windows Azure).