In my view, this deal is all about buying brand awareness. Despite the fact that Microsoft have similar technology in their Live Messenger products for consumers, Live Messenger is not top of mind for consumers when they want to place a VOIP voice or video call. If Microsoft spent the time and money to integrate Live Messenger video/voice into their product lines such as Xbox and Windows Phone, they wouldn’t see the return on that because most people would just say “but all my friends are on Skype!” and would not use it.

By purchasing Skype, Microsoft can integrate it into all their products (including their business-focused Lync) and have a built-in user base and user mind-share. It will sell more products because people who already use Skype will consider purchasing an Xbox, Windows Phone, etc. because they’ll realize that they can use Skype to connect to all their friends and family by using it.

Additionally, when the LTE networks really start to come online and become the primary network being used by the operators, Microsoft will have a big hammer to swing as the owner of the most prevalent VOIP technology with the largest existing userbase. They can license that technology to the carriers for use as their VOIP technology that will be riding on top of LTE (and future networks).

All in all a very smart move in my opinion. It’s likely not a huge direct revenue generator, but a revenue enabler across their whole range of products and services.

To be honest, I didn’t spend much time taking pictures or video at MIX11 because I was spending my time listening and learning about what’s coming with the Windows Phone update scheduled for later this year, codenamed “Mango.” However, I figured that I’d share some of the pictures and video that I did capture.

Here are the pictures:

Pictures from MIX11 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Oh, and I also captured a short video clip:

The party on Wednesday night was rockin’!

Jon Oltsik over at cnet News has an interesting article where he tries to define the various aspects of Cloud Computing.  Generally, I agree with most aspects of this article.  However, I have to take issue with the assumption that Cloud Infrastructure will remain a small area.

Cloud Infrastructure is already a fairly sizeable business today and I only see it growing larger.  The article states that the author believes Software as a Service is the area that will see the largest growth.  I agree.  However, what the author fails to realize is that a significant portion, if not most, of the developers putting out Software as a Service applications will be using Cloud Infrastructure services from others such as Amazon to build out and launch their apps.

Why shouldn’t SaaS developers take advantage of the economies of scale that the infrastructure providers have?  It makes no sense for them to reinvent the wheel by deploying their own datacenters when someone else has already done all the work for them and will continue to maintain it effectively.  This allows the developers to concentrate on their core competency, which is their software services.  This is one of the same reasons many businesses want to use Cloud Services in the first place: it allows them to focus on what they do best and not have to worry about IT.

I believe that the future is pretty bright for the Cloud Services industry.