Mary Jo Foley is firmly on the cloud computing trail with her post today - Piecing together Microsoft’s cloud-computing vision. She references a recent Microsoft sponsored paper by David Chappell titled A Short Introduction to Cloud Platforms which is a good, and relatively short read.

I liked Chappell’s explanation of Attached Services

 

Attached services: Every on-premises application provides useful functions on its own. An application can sometimes enhance these by accessing application-specific services provided in the cloud. Because these services are usable only by this particular application, they can be thought of as attached to it. One popular consumer example of this is Apple’s iTunes: The desktop application is useful for playing music and more, while an attached service allows buying new audio and video content. Microsoft’s Exchange Hosted Services provides an enterprise example, adding cloud-based spam filtering, archiving, and other services to an on-premises Exchange server.

 

I often use iTunes and Exchange as great examples of Software plus Services. It’s always fun to put an iPod in my presentation and see/hear the gasps in the audience :)

I also like David’s closing summary

 

Cloud platforms aren’t yet at the center of most people’s attention. The odds are good, though, that this won’t be true five years from now. The attractions of cloud-based computing, including scalability and lower costs, are very real. If you work in application development, whether for a software vendor or an end user, expect the cloud to play an increasing role in your future. The next generation of application platforms is here.

 

If you’re looking for a good primer on cloud computing platforms, this paper is a pretty good start IMHO.