Steve Ballmer: The Cloud Crusader or The Anti-Larry? Take Your Pick.

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, declared "For the cloud, we're all in." Later he added, "Literally, I will tell you we are betting our company on it." And every tech publication from CIO.com to InfoWorld picked up the story. And why not? No one questions Microsoft's resources. Execution? Well, that's another thing. But, clearly, Ballmer is rallying his company around cloud computing and positioning Microsoft as a crusader for the cloud. It's quite a contrast from Oracle's Larry Ellison.

If you want a taste of Ellison's love/hate relationship with cloud computing check out Dennis Howlett's ZDNet article, Oracle's flip flop on SaaS...err..cloud. The jist of Howlett's article is that Larry isn't making it easy on his customers because they can't understand Oracle's long-term plans. Perhaps, this is fodder for the likes of Microsoft.

Consider this from Ballmer:

"The cloud fuels Microsoft and Microsoft fuels the cloud. We have 40,000 people employed building software around the globe, about 70% of the folks that work for us are doing something designed exclusively for the cloud or designed to serve one of the five points I spoke about today. A year from now, it would be 90%. How we are thinking about delivering it really builds from this cloud base."

That is both startling and declarative. And I think it's smart both from a business standpoint and a marketing standpoint. Of course, there are those that question Microsoft's ability to execute and the viablity of the Azure platform, Microsoft's platform as a service (PaaS) cloud-based application development platform. But, the company has to start somewhere and the fact that Ballmer is out front and pointing his company--and R&D dollars--in the direction of cloud computing is big.

I like the energy and direction coming from Redmond. And, I've never been a fan of Microsoft. But, I like the vision and the talk. Will they walk the walk? Looks like they are sure going to give it a try.

To watch and hear the complete Ballmer presentation go here.