Small businesses embrace Microsoft's Cloud

Microsoft reminded everyone with some stats on its cloud computing progress and updates to Office 365 and SkyDrive. However, beneath today's announcements there are signs of drought, with only a small number of enterprises embracing Microsoft's cloud.

The Redmond, Wash.-based company is enhancing both services and has broadened availability, 22 more countries includes Argentina, Iceland, Indonesia, South Africa and Taiwan — for Office 365. SkyDrive gets a modern makeover, including HTML5 enhancements that are in line with broader Microsoft development objectives for Internet Explorer 10 and Windows 8.

But Microsoft isn't a cloud company like Google, which profits from what it and third-parties sell around services like search. Microsoft sells software. Think of Microsoft's cloud quite literally — rain falling to the earth and evaporating into the sky. Office 365 and SkyDrive depend at least in some way on desktop software, which utility they extend to the cloud and return to users.

Read rest of the story to Small businesses embrace Microsoft's Cloud