It turns out that the gratis vs libre croud are still obsessed with the desktop - while the industry turns toward the cloud.

CNET asks the Free Software Foundation (FSF):

Instead of soiling your feet in Apple's shrines to proprietary software and hardware (aka "Apple Store"), why don't you instead demand that the web services we use remain open? Why not fight for open data guarantees? Why not, in other words, do something that affects more than my ability to listen to Radiohead on the Zune, and instead affects my ability to take years of email stored in Gmail and move it elsewhere, offline or online?

Service portability will be a big challenge for Cloud Providers. Interoperable APIs are a good start - but open data will be the key to customer satisfaction. Dynamics CRM Online vs Salesforce.com is a great example of this. With SFDC is hard to get your data back (not impossible - but not easy). MSCRM Online gives you your complete database - all your data - not just a collection of CSVs. Then you can take that DB and migrate it to the system of your choosing.

PaaS providers will need to ensure that they can offer platform portability (where feasible) to the partners which build SaaS offerings on top of them. In theory everything could be portable but at some point it will begin to negatively impact COGS.

SaaS providers will need to consider how they want to attract and retain business. The ability to import data from your competitors is a strong selling point (eg. the Salesforce.com migration template isn't in MSCRM just for fun). SaaS providers should take the leap of faith and encourage their customers to take their data whenever they want. Smart SaaS players will make 'ease of leaving' as much as a selling point as 'ease of arriving'. As the old adage says: "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was."

Y Combinator puts CRM at #6 of it's list of 30 ideas it would like to fund. It's also good to see 'Outsourced IT' at #4. I think the industry is about to experience to major paradigm shifts:

The Cloud is one of these shifts. Over the next ten years companies of all sizes will seriously question the need to have servers and infrastructure in house. Do people want their own generators or do they want to buy off the grid?

The IT Rebellion will be another. The fact that most CIOs can never become the CEO is telling. I believe that many companies will begin to radically restructure their IT arrangements. These restructures will go beyond simple outsourcing arrangements and will be synergistically tied to cloud migrations. Today these IT Rebellions are limited to regional and departmental skirmishes. Expect these to become enterprise wide.

Microsoft is well positioned as neutral party in both these paradigm shifts. We are well positioned with respect to the cloud (I wouldn't have moved from my beloved CRM team to Cloud Services if I didn't believe that). On the IT Rebellion front we are always faithfully served both business user and IT department and I believe we will continue to do so.

My new team just released R12 of BizTalk Services (the umbrella codename for Identity, Messaging and Workflow services in the Cloud).

Clemens has a detailed blog post which covers the new features.

More information about services and the SDK can be found at http://labs.biztalk.net. Anyone can sign up for an account and start using the service right away (however don't forget we are still in beta).

P.S. I know it confuses a lot of people - but the service is not actually BizTalk Server. Zero knowledge of BizTalk Server is required to us the service. The BizTalk brand was used to denote 'systems integration' functionality. I'm guessing that in the medium/long term you'll see us adopt another brand for this service.

I got my new workstation today. Dell T3400 (which appears to be the standard workhorse in our team) and a Samsung 245BW display (24" Widescreen at 1920x1200 native). I tried running the display in portrait mode (good for reading code) but it was so long my neck had to move to scan the entire screen. In it's landscape configuration the monitor is almost as wide as my desk (thanks to a rather 'snuggly' office sharing arrangement).

When installing all the drivers I discovered an interesting fact about the Dell: it has an NVIDIA 8800 GTS graphics card which "feature a powerful unified architecture that delivers an incredibly true-to-life gaming experience. Power through games at record speeds". I'm not exactly sure what kind of gaming I'm supposed to be doing at work - but hey - it runs Windows Classic Mode on Windows Server 2008 like a dream!

As a side note I switched my Lenovo T60p over to Windows Server 2008 64-bit and it's running like a dream (much better drivers are out now since I tried 64-bit last). One piece of advice: if you install Hyper-V the 'Sleep' function of your machine won't work (thanks to Michael Lu who passed on that very useful info).

The Steve Ballmer Keynote Transcript pretty much says it all. Video highlight is here.We are serious about SaaS. As you can see Microsoft is serious about platform offerings, finished services and consumer experiences in the Cloud. Partners are increasingly seeing the vision of S+S coming together as Microsoft's cloud based products seamlessly integrate with their on-premise cousins.

Today was my first day with the Cloud Services team. What's Cloud Services might you ask.... well - I'm not 100% sure how much I can say/blog yet.

In the next few days I'll have the "what's bloggable" discussion.