Microsoft Heads into the Clouds w/ Dell

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2008/oct08/10-29SSTools.mspx

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/29/dell_does_azure_servers/

It finally happened. Microsoft announced it joined the party. At Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference it unveiled Azure, its new cloud O/S and other developer services. Developers will be able to host and build online services. Azure is expected to compete with Amazon's EC2. I can't say that I completely understand how this works but this is ceratinly a change for Microsoft. It also sounds like simple versions of its office suite will also be available for free. Microsoft? Really? I'll have to find out more information about all of this.

It is also interesting to note that Dell was picked as the sole provider of the hardware infrastructure and data services for Microsoft. The unit of Dell that will be providing the service was specifically created in 2006 to "chase the cloud-computing -Web 2.0-utility computing opportunity." This unit is still small with only 200 employees but it is chasing 30 customers (including Google). It sounds like this deal is pretty big for this unit and I'm sure for Dell overall. Is this move sort of like what IBM has done? Piecing out of the personal computer business into corporate network/hardware and business services/consulting? It will be interesting to see what this amounts to for Dell and Microsoft.