As expected, Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie began his first day keynote speech at PDC 2008 (he'll be back for Day 2) by staking his company's new claim to software as services. "The Web has become a key demand generation mechanism," he said in his characteristic high-flying style, "becoming Web services' front door."
IT developers are finding themselves now needing to work more closely together, Ozzie said, preaching to the choir. Companies are finding themselves adding spare capacity to their main infrastructure, including adding spare data centers, in an obvious lead-up to the need for consolidation. He spoke of the problem that IT workshops find themselves facing, where their core applications are intensely "inwardly-facing."
"Is this cloud thing materially different than things we have known in the past?" Ozzie asked rhetorically. "The answer is, emphatically, yes."
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