Microsoft Azure may be the new Windows

For the past two decades Microsoft has used the Windows platform to build its empire. Microsoft delivered a capable combination of operating system and applications. Microsoft's applications ran on Windows (and only Windows) and used proprietary formats. The combination gave Microsoft a near-stranglehold on the market.

The world is changing. Perhaps it is time for Microsoft to move on to something new. Here's why:

File formats The formats for Microsoft applications are open and documented. (Due to court decisions.) Proprietary formats worked to Microsoft's advantage. Now non-Microsoft applications can read and write files which can be exchanged with Microsoft applications.

Other operating systems for personal computers Mac OS and Linux are capable operating systems. Both have a significant number of applications. One can run a home or a small office with Windows, Mac OS, or Linux.

Competing applications The Microsoft Office suite is no longer the only game in town. Competing applications handle word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, e-mail, and even project management.

The Web Applications are moving from PC desktops to the browser, a trend that may have been started by Microsoft itself, with its web version of Outlook.

Phones and tablets Mobile devices offer a new vision of computing, one that entails less administration.

I think that Microsoft has looked at these changes and decided that Windows is not the way forward. I think that Windows, while still an important part of Microsoft's offerings, is no longer the center of its world.

Microsoft's re-branding of "Windows Azure" as "Microsoft Azure" is telling. The cloud computing platform supports more than Windows, and more than just Microsoft's Windows-centric languages.

Windows is an old operating system. It carries a lot of baggage, code to ensure compatibility with previous versions. While Linux and Mac OS are based on the older Unix, Windows has seen more changes as Microsoft added features and fixed defects. It may be that previous design decisions, the accumulated baggage of two decades, are limiting the ability of Windows to rise to new challenges.

My guess is that Microsoft may de-emphasize Windows and focus on subscriptions such as Office 365 and the web version of Visual Studio. Such a change would correspond to a move from the PC platform to a cloud platform. Instead of Windows, Microsoft will sell its Azure platform.

The knowledgeable reader will point out that Azure is built on Windows, so Windows is still part of the system. This is true -- for now. I expect Microsoft to replace Azure's "core" of Windows with an operating system better suited to servers and cloud processing, just as it replaced the early Windows "core" of MS-DOS. Windows was, in its early incarnations, a DOS application. Microsoft expanded it into a full operating system, one that surpassed MS-DOS.

I think Microsoft can do the same with Azure. Initially a system built on Windows, it can become larger than Windows, a better operating system for cloud computing, and more capable than Windows.

Windows made sense when people installed software on their personal computers. Today, people buy apps and the installation is automatic. The world is ready for a successor to Windows, and I think Azure can be that successor.