In a bid to position Microsoft as a cross-platform software and service provider, the Redmond giant is reportedly all set to rebrand its much ambitious cloud platform from ‘Windows Azure’ to ‘Microsoft Azure’ anytime soon. Buzz has it that an official announcement on the same is expected anytime this week.
If at all this happens, the development won’t be a surprising one, after all Windows Azure is clearly not all about Windows anymore. Azure users can run Linux in virtual machines on the operating system. Furthermore, its users can also effectively run Oracle databases and middleware, as also other non-Windows-specific development tools the likes of Java, Ruby, PHP and Python to name a few. It must be noted that confusion around the naming convention of Windows Azure, earlier known by its codename ‘Red Dog’ is not new. Back in 2012 Microsoft had eliminated the word ‘Azure’ from its cloud billing portal. Meanwhile, Microsoft officials had emphasised that Microsoft had no plans to move away from the Windows Azure branding.
However, all this is changing now as the company moves in a direction where it is aggressively trying to prove that it’s not Windows-only anymore. Microsoft’s Office on iPad suite is another example of that new corporate positioning. Microsoft is developing the Office suite for Mac computers despite the fact that Apple-made iWork productivity suite is already available for free in all iPhones, iPads and Macbooks. According to a Computerwoche report, Thorsten Pretty, Microsoft Germany’s head of the Office suite revealed that the company will release the next version of Office for Mac this year. The update will come in the later half of the year. The company has already passed the new version of Office for Mac to its enterprise customers.
