Nicholas Carr advises his readers to put their ears to the ground as Microsoft prepares to announce further details about their "computing in the cloud" strategy.

Some facts and observations I've made:

• Ray Ozzie, Bill Gates heir apparent, is a smart guy and has been under the radar for over 2 years working on something (presumably).
• Microsoft has been building, acquiring, and deploying datacenters at an alarming rate. But the utilization math doesn't quite add up. There's a lot of untapped, unused computing power owned by Microsoft.
• In my recent discussions with various Microsoft employees, there is a much more open and humble acknowledgment that they are in the canonical Innovators Dilemma and must branch out into hosted services while still retaining the Windows OS/Office cash cow.

It will be interesting to see how similar this new strategy is to Microsoft's Hailstorm platform, which was announced 7 years ago. Ironically enough, the Architect of Hailstorm, Mark Lukovsky, left Microsoft and joined Google to ultimately implement and fulfill this vision.

Microsoft clearly has the Engineering resources and talent to compete with Google, Yahoo!, and Salesforce.com in Internet delivered services. It makes one wonder what exactly is preventing them from tapping their true potential? 

Per Nicholas' advice, my ear is firmly planted to the ground...