REDMOND, Wash. — Nov. 1, 2010 — Today, Microsoft takes its cloud computing investments a step further by kicking off a global “Cloud Power” campaign, which gives customers considering the cloud much-needed information about the potential benefits for their business as well as advice on how to get started.
Microsoft has repeatedly made its commitment to the cloud very clear and has made repeated updates to its cloud offerings. For example, last week at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Microsoft announced several new updates to the Windows Azure platform – the most comprehensive operating system for Platform-as-a-service – that will help customers create rich applications that enable new business scenarios in the cloud.
These announcements followed the announcement in October of the new Office 365, which brings cloud productivity to businesses of all sizes, helping them save time and money and free up valuable resources. And back in July, Microsoft inked major deals with fellow tech giants HP, eBay, Dell and Fujitsu to deliver the Windows Azure platform appliance, a new offering that brings the Windows Azure platform to their datacenters, making it easier for them to deliver cloud services to customers and other partners.
The “Cloud Power” campaign focuses on three key scenarios: public cloud, private cloud and cloud productivity, said Gayle Troberman, chief creative officer for the Central Marketing Group.
October 31, 2010
Gayle Troberman, chief creative officer for the Central Marketing Group.
“Making sense of all of the options and helping customers harness the power of the cloud in the manner that best suits their business needs is the goal of this effort,” Troberman said. “Whether an organization is just starting to explore the cloud or is at the right point in its IT evolution to start making major investments, we have the right products and the unique expertise to help.”
Microsoft offers customers a solid blend of real world experience – the company has been offering cloud services for well over a decade – as well as the only set of solutions that spans Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). This unique combination provides customers with choice, flexibility and functionality when they transition to cloud computing. The company’s cloud customers already include seven of the top 10 global energy companies, 13 of the top 20 global telecom firms, 15 of the top 20 global banks, and 16 of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies.
On the new Cloud Power site, customers talk about their experiences with Microsoft’s cloud technologies. A case study on 3M, for example, demonstrates how Windows Azure helped the company speed up its development environment. “With Windows Azure, we get a highly scalable environment, pay only for the resources we need, and relieve our IT staff of the systems management and administration responsibilities of supporting a dynamic infrastructure,” said Jim Graham, a technical manager at 3M.
Microsoft Online Services helped Coca-Cola better engage its employees, another case study showed. “John Brock, our CEO, challenged us to identify better ways to connect all our employees,” Kevin Flowers, director of Enabling Technologies, said in the case study. “Microsoft helped us launch from a legacy infrastructure to a solution that provided better business value to all our people.”
The new campaign has an international focus. Microsoft will run a series of educational events that will help businesses around the world learn more about cloud computing. Events will be hosted by Microsoft subsidiaries and tailored based on local business needs. More than 150 such events are already planned for the coming months.
“Cloud Power” also appears in a new ad campaign that begins today, and includes print, online, radio, and TV. Over the next several weeks, the ads will roll out globally in magazines and newspapers, on billboards and airport signs, and during TV programs such as Monday Night Football tonight. The ads will hit on three of Microsoft’s core cloud computing technologies: Office 365, Windows Azure and Windows Server Hyper-V.
Visit the Cloud Power campaign site.
Learn more about Windows Azure, Office 365, and Windows Server Hyper-V.
