DaveBirchall.com on Business Technology

Archive for November 4th, 2008

Microsoft unveiled its new software plus service offering to room full of developers in LA last week. MS Chief Architect Ray Ozzie introduced Azure as the platform that will support Microsoft Software plus service strategy. The plan will enable Microsoft to compete with the likes of Amazon, Google and Salesforce.com who each have their own SaaS / Cloud offering. The cloud computing concept allows clients to hire storage space and processing cycles on the server side. MS aims to offer service such as exchange, sharepoint and other well established technologies through the cloud. It seems that the future of software technology and therefore our businesses

This news made the front page of the well known technology journal (yes I am being sarcastic) Mx in the same week as news broke about the proposed internet filter being pushed by the Australian Government. Under the plan, content will be restricted by ISP’s to filter ‘harmful content’ such as extremist messages, pornography and other such ‘morally damaging’ content. Critics of the scheme claim that our internet access will be restricted in the same way as the great firewall place by the Chinese government. There are fears that a filter is a step in the wrong direction away from freedom of the internet and towards politically motivated filtering of content.

Of most concern to me is the claim that a filtered internet could only run at 20% capacity of unfiltered speeds. This has obvious implications for your business if you want to take advantage of next generation technologies such as cloud computing. To add to the fray experts predict that the filter will be next to useless at filtering out such content.

Get educated or take action