I underlined in several of my previous posts that cloud computing brings great benefits such as scalability and increased energy efficiency, but what about the next phase? As data centers grow in capacity and the rate of adoption increases, we need also to look to the future.

Last week, I was in Nairobi, Kenya for the United Nations Chief Executive Briefing, where Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, launched the UN’s new energy neutral Nairobi office building. The building is the first of its kind for the UN in Africa and is a global showcase of sustainable design and technology.

It’s a clear message my colleagues gave me at a recent event: the ICT industry and cloud computing are key components in helping to reduce the carbon footprint in Europe.  But of course ICT people would say that, I hear you cry!

The discussion about cloud computing really has come out of nowhere, and yet everywhere in the information and communications and technology industries, we find people talking about it.

Our favorite Geek in Disguise, Steve Clayton from the UK, provides on his blog a short and useful summary of Steve Ballmer’s speech yesterday in which the Microsoft CEO described how “we’re all in” cloud computing.

As you may have read before on this site, we opened one of the largest data centres in Europe just last year in Dublin. Large-scale facilities such as this can play a big role in the development of cloud computing, providing companies with better and cheaper computing facilities. Great news to resource-strapped companies in particular.

Ray Ozzie introduced the term Software plus Services about 3 years ago and since then it’s where I have focused all of my time at Microsoft.

We were very proud to announce the grand opening of our Dublin data centre last month. This state of the art facility helps to improve cloud computing capacity and network infrastructure throughout Europe to meet the demand generated from Microsoft’s online, live and cloud services (like Bing, Windows Live and the Azure Services Platform).

Microsoft’s first European “mega data centre”, which opened recently on the western outskirts of Dublin, uses 50 per cent less energy than a traditional data centre built some three years ago.

We at Microsoft are delighted to see the opening of the first "mega data center" here in Europe. The Dublin Data Center is part of Microsoft’s long-term commitment in the region, and is a major step in realising Microsoft’s Software plus Services strategy.

The internet is developing at a tremendous pace as more businesses and peopleworldwide gain access to an ever greater range of online services including online office functionality, video and music downloads and more.