Or, maybe they just wish they were in a cloud since this week’s Conference is in Washington, DC where humidity is keeping pace with temperatures.  I’ve lived in Washington, DC and there’s a very good reason why Congress leaves during the summer.

Anyway, this conference is suppose to be all about MS Online Services (Azure), BPOS (Business Productivity Online Standard Suite–now that’s catchy!), Cloud Services, whatever they want to call it.  Come on Redmond.  Pick a name and stay with it.  All you do is confuse the market by calling the same thing by several different names.  Or, in other words, get your heads out of the clouds and listen to what’s happening on the ground.

Now, why is the version of SharePoint on our Microosoft Online Services platform still stuck at 2007?  SharePoint 2010 was released in May 2010 and it’s now July.  Aren’t automatic software updates benefits of operating in the Cloud?

According to Chris Capossela, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Information Worker Product Management Group, ”It just takes us some time to upgrade the data centers to the new versions of Exchange server and SharePoint server.  By the end of this year [2010] our largest online customers will have the updated versions, which are powered by the 2010 servers.”

Well, as a small BPOS user of only 40 seats, that makes me wonder why we paid a premium to Microsoft rather than a more reasonable fee to Google.  Of course, Microsoft has a solution for their small customers, “Customers who are desperate to run Exchange 2010 and SharePoint 2010 in the cloud can look to third-party vendors, such as Intermedia, which has already launched hosted versions of the latest Exchange and 2010 technologies.”