Microsoft Moves Aggressively to Secure Its Future (Premium)

This week's blockbuster Azure Sphere announcement represents an astonishing confluence of several big themes we've discussed here on Thurrott.com in recent weeks.

This is a big story. And not just for the obvious reasons.

And certainly not because of security. Because it was announced at the security-themed RSA Conference this week, Azure Sphere is being positioned by many as "IoT security." But that's only part of the story. The least interesting part, frankly.

Since I've been obsessing over what Microsoft will do next on the client now that it has publicly demoted Windows, I of course focused on the Linux-based OS that the software giant is making. But that, too, is just part of the story. An interesting part, for sure. But only a part.

So let's step back for a moment and consider what's really happening here.

Microsoft often speaks about the digital transformation that is sweeping the industry and about its role helping its enterprise customers, in particular, make this transition. But there is a less-frequently communicated digital transformation happening here, too, and it's the one I care about the most: Microsoft's. Microsoft, which once lorded over the personal computing industry, is now trying to find its way in a more heterogeneous world that it focused on cloud and mobile.

Microsoft's epic defeat in mobile is well-understood and doesn't need to be repeated here. Likewise, the software giant's future in the cloud is as well-understood. Just note that all of the software giant's moves in recent years can be viewed through the lens of these two initiatives, one a success and one a failure.

So what is Azure Sphere really about?

At a high level, Azure Sphere supports the premise of my commentary of two weeks ago, Microsoft's Role in the Next Wave (Premium). Which is that the "next wave" is what I call ambient computing.

Today, ambient computing is mostly about digital personal assistants on phones and in smart speakers. But those are limited and transitionary markets. According to Microsoft, the industry already ships over 9 billion IoT devices every year. That compares to about 1.5 billion smartphones and about 250 million PCs. That's the potential here. Something that swaps even the smartphone market.

But Azure Sphere isn't a big story just because Microsoft intends to play a role in ambient computing. Of course it does. It's a big deal because Microsoft, very explicitly, intends to play a major role at every level of the stack imaginable. It's not just providing AI-based cloud services and an Internet of Things (IoT) software platform. It's doing everything.

Put simply, this is a public declaration by Microsoft that it will not miss the next wave.

The name Azure Sphere is interesting on two levels. Most obviously, it ties the platform into Microsoft's Azure cloud services family. Less obviously, it kicks the Windows brand to the curb. This is the first public-facing operating system from Micro...

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