Microsoft is preparing to launch its new software, which will be a “big step forward” for its cloud-based information technology business, the company said on Thursday.
The new software will allow users to access their knowledge in a “new and different way”.
“The new software is designed to bring the most innovative solutions to your organization,” Microsoft said in a statement.
It is based on the company’s knowledge and collaboration platform, known as Knowledge Base, and will offer users “a new and different experience”, the company added.
Microsoft has been facing pressure to deliver the new software in the face of competition from Google, Facebook and Amazon, which have all recently released software based on their cloud-computing offerings.
Microsoft’s cloud-focused offerings include Azure, its virtual cloud service, and the Windows Azure cloud service.
As Microsoft moves ahead with its new product, the software maker has been faced with a number of questions.
“Is this the end of the Microsoft knowledge suite?”, said John Horgan, senior vice president and general manager of the corporate cloud division at Information Systems Group, a consultancy.
“Or will we see some other new software?
I’m not sure.”
Microsoft’s cloud offering is based around a cloud-managed collection of software applications, called Knowledge Base.
According to Horgan and others, Knowledge Base is Microsoft’s answer to Google’s Google Cloud Platform (GCP), a service that allows companies to share data in a highly managed and secure way.
GCP has been used by companies from companies like Netflix to Google to Facebook and other big companies to run online services.
This means that Microsoft is hoping that the new product will bring more benefits to its cloud services than Google Cloud, which has had its own cloud offerings for several years.
In fact, some believe that the cloud is Microsoft and not Google, and that Microsoft will likely continue to develop its own software.
The new product is scheduled to launch next year.
There will be “no more surprises”, Horgan said.
However, some experts are concerned that the Microsoft cloud offering will be limited to a small number of customers, which could slow down adoption of the new products.
Many companies, like Facebook and Twitter, have been using Microsoft’s own cloud services for years.