Microsoft democratizing the corporate cloud at the Cloud and Mobility Summit 2014

“Our studies show that up to 43% of small businesses think a cloud strategy is only for large organizations.” said John Weigelt, chief technology officer at Microsoft CanadaBy Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Toronto -Microsoft Canada hosted a two-day Cloud and Mobility summit in downtown Toronto which focused on raising awareness of the benefits of secure cloud services. Executives here are spreading the gospel of cloud computing and how it is now easier than ever for organizations of all sizes to find tailor-made corporate cloud solutions to manage various aspects of their business.

The first day of the event was highlighted by focusing on Microsoft’s Cloud Platform solutions, namely Azure. In attendance were developers, service providers and IT managers of small to medium businesses as well as larger corporations learning to connect social, mobile, and big data to into their enterprise.

"We're excited to host the summit for hundreds of our Canadian customers. It is an exciting time in an exciting space." Jason Zander Corporate VP of Microsoft Azure at Microsoft

For managed cloud services, which are sold to businesses as subscriptions, the long term benefits are the freedom and flexibility to add and remove services as needed without having to worry about updating applications and patching back-end servers and software.

This is all done and managed on Microsoft's end, which means a democratization of the corporate cloud since even smaller organizations can benefit from the scalability and power of cloud computing.

Jason Zander, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Microsoft Azure, stressed that it was the best time for companies of all sizes to rethink their cloud strategies.

"We're expanding at a faster rate. Microsoft Azure currently signs up 10,000 new customers weekly and we serve 80 per cent of the Fortune 500 companies," Zander says. The cloud opportunities for startups and SMB's are quite compelling as these smaller entities can enjoy the power and scalability that larger enterprises have at their disposal.

"There's a point at which if you don't leverage this environment, your competitors will," Zander points out.