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• Microsoft have an advantage initially by being the supplier of the internal operating system for most of the users that would be using the Cloud.
  
  However, I believe that Amazon has several advantages that will make them dominant.
  
  1. Microsoft have too much existing software baggage from their network server environment. Amazon are entirely Internet-based.
  
  2. Microsoft are very ungiving to their customers. Amazon have a reputation (and I know this from personal experience) of making the returns and credit [process a pleasure, and guaranteeiing service levels. In other words, much more customer-responsive.
  
  3. Amazon lives and dies on the web, and Amazon management understand the environment better than Microsoft management at every level. Microsoft management have Office, Windows Server, and Windows Vista etc as their major profit platforms, and their multiple levels of management understand these markets and environments much better than they understand the Internet. There is a learning barrier, where many people in Microsoft management will have to have their web epiphanies, and many mistakes will be made in the process.
  
  4. Amazon has the hardware and network to make a Cloud fly. They have built the infrastructure very carefully, and I have a hunch that they have done a much bigger and better job than Microsoft. I will be watching closely for early glitches: who has to fix bugs, and whop works smoothly. After all, it would be in Microsoft's best interest to be in Cloud Computing, if only to make it so unreliable that their customers stay with their existing Microsoft servers.
  
  5. It is easier for Amazon to find the best and brightest. The Microsoft reputation is to take the best and brightest and burn them out, trash them, then hire again. The bottom 50% are fired and replaced continuously. So for the very talented, the Amazon environment of encouragement and respect is much more appealing, I think, and the Microsoft Aura of the 90's has really got tarnished with their recent lack of performance.
  
  Just a thought, but I see Amazon winning this one more easily than you might expect. In reply to: "What Ray Ozzie sees in Azure's cloud"

  October 28, 2008

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