Microsoft delivered one piece of news today and hinted at another, both related to continued trend for computing in the cloud. Firstly we got our sight of the technical preview of the next version of Microsoft Office, which for the first time offers access to the core applications in the cloud. Then we heard about a Microsoft branded streaming music service to compete with Spotify.
In themselves they're pretty important announcement but they're rather more important when seen in the context of Microsoft's "to the death" battle with Google. Google very much reigns in the clouds (sorry, couldn't resist) and Microsoft have made several abortive attempts to catch-up. Putting its core application suite out there is a massive change of strategy from Microsoft. The streaming music service is a pretty quick reaction to Spotify's success - the service only came out of beta in January...
For mobile devices this probably has significant impact for third party Office suites, although how many hoops Microsoft asks mobile users to jump through to gain access remains to be seen...
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