Microsoft said it would push Windows Server 2012 out the door in early September and it did on Tuesday, after a year of public test builds. It positioned it as the “cornerstone” of its cloud strategy, its “Cloud OS” for private and hosted clouds and a building block for Windows Azure.
It said “the Cloud OS does what operating systems have always done: manage hardware and provide a platform for applications. But it also expands to include services and technologies that have not previously been considered part of an operating system.”
In the case of Windows Server, the 2012 model works independently and connects to 200 or so online services available through Azure, stuff like bursting or analytics.
Microsoft says the widgetry is “built from the cloud up.”