Forecast: mostly cloudy

Microsoft started its journey in 1975 with a simple mission: become the dominant software manufacturer. (They're mission statement was "A computer in every office and in every home... and all of them running Microsoft software.") It is safe to say that they have accomplished that mission.

Apple started about the same time. Their product was hardware, not software. I don't know if they had a mission statement, but "Computers that regular people can use" would not be a bad approximation. They too have accomplished their mission.

The computing world is bigger than office software and consumer gadgets. It reaches to embedded systems, high performance computing, games, and the World Wide Web. In these areas, neither Microsoft nor Apple have become dominant.

The frontier is on the web, with cloud computing on the back end and browsers and smart phones on the front end. Apple has a commanding lead on the front end with their iPhone, but RIM and Google are pushing hard with Blackberry and Droid devices. Microsoft is pushing with Windows Phone 7, but by sticking to software they have all but given the market away.

The back end is the interesting area. With a long legacy of open source (Linux and Apache) the old back end of web servers is growing into cloud processing. Vendors want to be there, but the competition is difficult. Microsoft is developing their Azure platform, and has even changed their C# language so that it can live in the cloud. (The scaling that makes the cloud places requirements on the programs that run in the cloud, and those requirements demand specific features in language design. Not just any program can move to the cloud.)

I'm pretty sure that Oracle wants to move into the cloud, or at least ride it with their applications. Yet they are in a difficult position -- the NoSQL databases fit better in the cloud, and Oracles namesake DB fits in the cloud as well as an anvil fits in a real-life cloud.

The most successful cloud folks have leverage open source and advanced languages like Ruby and Python. And the folks who are working in the cloud are the bright young things out of school or from creativity-supporting IT shops. Folks from the stodgy, conservative organizations tend to worry more about politics than technology, and cloud tech has a disturbing influence on politics. You cannot keep the old organization chart and expect the cloud to fit into the existing structure.

So here is where we see Microsoft and Apple: Microsoft has fit into the organization, making PCs operate much like big mainframes. Apple has targeted the top of the food chain (the user) with little attention to the plumbing underneath.

My guess is that Apple will weather the incoming clouds a bit easier than Microsoft, and open source will have a big win with application development.