Software-plus-services is an industry shift that combines services on the Web with client and server software to deliver more compelling opportunities and solutions.  Microsoft is dedicated to helping its partners and customers - consumers and businesses – take advantage of this approach to maximize choice and flexibility across PCs, the Web, mobile devices, on-premises servers, and cloud-based services.

The Azure Services Platform is part of this vision, providing the power of choice and flexibility in developing, operating, migrating, and managing applications that exist on the internet or devices to provide the best experience for users.  The services platform enables this by utilizing common languages, runtimes and frameworks – a common toolset that spans from the service in the cloud to a server, and from the PC to the browser to the phone.

The Azure Services Platform is strategic to Microsoft’s vision of Software-plus-Services and overall services strategy by offering customers, developers, and businesses a transformation in connecting devices, business, productivity, and software.

This approach provides a broad canvas to imagine and create innovative solutions that would be constrained by using just one approach.  Developers can now take advantage of Microsoft’s strengths in on-premises operating systems and couple them with the Azure Services Platform cloud capabilities.  This enables the delivery of unique and user-centric applications and opens the doors to a new generation of technology across a connected web, social, and device mesh.

Software-plus-Services is the next logical step in the evolution of computing.  It represents an industry shift toward a design approach that is neither exclusively software-centric nor internet-centric.    The pairing of the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live is so archetypal to this formulation that it is often overlooked.

The winning recipe for Xbox 360 starts with one part Microsoft Game Studios software, in the form of immersive, blockbuster in-house game titles like Halo and Gears of War.  To that is added hundreds of third-party titles that represent the full gambit of gaming genres.   And then added to the mix is a wide range of accessories like the wireless racing wheel that let you enhance your gaming experience.  

But the real magic of Xbox happens when you connect your console through broadband internet to the Xbox Live service.  Whether you want casual gaming, fast-paced arcade action, new game content or multiplayer combat scenarios, Xbox Live delivers something for everyone.  What’s more, you can chat with all your friends from the comfort of your own living room—strategizing before a game, teaming up in game or just socializing while doing your own thing.  With the Xbox LIVE Vision you can even video chat while you game face to face.

Xbox Live Marketplace lets you download new game content, try out game demos before you buy, watch trailers of upcoming games, try and buy great arcade titles, purchase new themes and gamer pictures to customize your Xbox 360 experience, and much more.  You can also download and watch the latest movies and TV shows in full high-definition.

Together, Xbox 360 and Xbox live are one way that Microsoft is delivering on the potential of Software-plus-Services for customers.   And, with the New Xbox Experience coming November 19th, this pair is poised to get even better.

Microsoft’s vision for Software-plus-Services is to power simple, seamless, integrated experiences that let people engage with their devices, and each other, according to their own individual passions.  In recent years, Microsoft has applied that vision to many of its products, but nowhere is it more simply and elegantly exemplified than with Zune.

Zune is hardware, it is software and it is a service.  At the heart of Zune is a portable music player that ranges in capacity from 4 to 120 gigabytes of storage.  All Zune players are wireless, which let you sync your player from anywhere on your home network or browse and buy music from any wireless hotspot.  When combined with Zune's built-in FM tuner, you’re able to buy songs you hear on the radio and download them directly to your player.

Zune software offers the perfect way to manage your music, videos, pictures, podcasts and audio books, no matter where they live on your computer—or home network.  That includes MP3s you've bought from other online retailers or ones you’ve digitized from your own collection. When you use the software for the first time, it will find all your media, and you can tell it which folders to monitor for new additions.  Zune software gives you a robust way to keep your media organized and displayed that simply can’t be matched by a Web-only solution.

As a service, Zune offers a world-class retail experience for purchasing media as well as a free online music community powered by what you and your friends are listening to—know as Zune Social.  The Social features thousands of artist and album pages for you to explore and learn about new music.  It also is your musical identity to the rest of the Zune community—allowing you to customize it and embed your profile—known as a Zune Card—on other social networking sites including Windows Live.  Together with device, software and service, Zune delivers aptly on the promise of Software-plus-Services from Microsoft.

The PC is central to how people work, play and stay in touch. But our lives revolve around much more than the PC – the information and services we use should transcend any single device – wherever we go, our digital lives should follow.

That’s why Microsoft is delivering experiences that seamlessly connect the PCs, phones, cameras, game consoles, video and music players people use every day, through the greater sum of rich client software and high-speed internet services.

Over the years, Windows has begun to dissolve the artificial barriers between devices, people and information – delivering new capabilities and unprecedented choice to a billion people and businesses around the world.  Now, as the power of devices increases and the ubiquity of the Web unfolds, Microsoft’s Software-plus-Services strategy is helping Windows leave even more walls behind.

Through the combination of Windows, Windows Live and Windows Mobile, Microsoft is delivering the platforms, tools, infrastructure and solutions to enable new kinds of applications and services that extend from the server, to the datacenter, to the cloud – and from the browser, to the PC, to the phone and beyond.

With this work, we hope to empower the world’s software innovators and unleash a new wave of software and services that truly deliver on the promise of the digital lifestyle, with experiences that go wherever people’s lives take them and simply work wherever, however and whenever they want it.

As the world of work becomes more complex and dynamic, the technology we use to get things done is changing dramatically.  The single-purpose tools and discrete devices we use are giving way to solutions that weave all our applications, services and devices into a seamless whole.  This shift reflects our growing demand for choice – the freedom to decide where we work, how we work and how we share that work with others.

For years, Microsoft Office has broken down the walls between the diverse applications and services we use at work every day.  With Microsoft’s Software-plus-Services strategy, even more walls are soon to disappear: within organizations and teams, and between rich applications and powerful Internet services, and between the PC, the phone and the Web.  As Microsoft Office evolves, the powerful and familiar interface you know today will no longer be tethered to the desktop – it will follow wherever your work takes you.

This power of choice emerges from seamless connections within the Microsoft Office System and how it leverages robust services both on premise and in the cloud. Whether it is Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Exchange Online for email, Office SharePoint or SharePoint Online for corporate collaboration, Office Communications Server or Office Communications Online for real-time text and voice messaging or Office Live Workspaces to access your work from any computer on the web – Microsoft Office provides a combination of Software-plus-Services that is truly greater than the sum of its parts.

Microsoft’s Software-plus-Services strategy envisions a world where rich, highly functional and elegant experiences extend from the PC, to the Web, to the devices people use every day.  These experiences are about much more than look and feel. They connect across services and devices.  They are reliable, scalable and secure.  And they are seamlessly connected to our digital lives, in every aspect.

One way this strategy comes to life on the Web with Microsoft Silverlight – technology that powers rich, connected experiences that work wherever the Web works. It enables developers to create compelling, exciting, discoverable experiences that reach more than 90% of Internet users around the world.  Silverlight enables experiences such as high-definition video, on-demand streaming, deep zoom, and vector graphics.

Silverlight is part of a continuum of technologies – from .NET, to Windows Mobile, to the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) – that are enabling developers to create experiences that transcend the many devices in our digital lives, offering a consistent and compelling experience on the PC, on the phone and on the Web.

Microsoft Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live is a convenient service that makes it easier for developers and designers to deliver and scale HD video as part of their Silverlight applications.  The service offers Web designers and developers a convenient solution for hosting and streaming cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences and rich interactive applications that run wherever Silverlight runs.  Combined with the ability to create content with Microsoft Expression and other third party Web tools, designers and content publishers can integrate Silverlight into any web experiences.