Microsoft is joining the battle for cloud platform supremacy through the release of Office 365. In doing so, Microsoft joins the likes of Google and VMware to see who will emerge as the new power brokers of the IT industry. Microsoft held the distinction of being the power broker in the PC era, but the cloud is quickly becoming the third generation of computing platforms for long-term growth.

This is all good news for consumers. Competition spurs innovation and better, more cost efficient products. Although significant issues remain with cloud computing, in particular the data security and data privacy issues, the competition between the major players in the IT industry will hopefully result in fixes for these problems.

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