I attended Microsoft’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Houston, Texas, from July 7-12. Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer kicked off the week with an impressive and passionate speech on how Microsoft has delivered on its promise of being “all in” in the cloud.

Microsoft announced that it was “all in” the cloud a number of years ago and introduced two key offerings: 1) Microsoft Azure, a cloud platform for hosting applications, and 2) Office365, a subscription-based office productivity service and software suite. Both of these offerings would be hosted in Microsoft’s public cloud at Microsoft data centers.

Because both offerings were hosted only in a limited number of countries and were not customizable, large enterprises and governments were not able or willing to adopt them. Many organizations have data sovereignty rules that require data to remain in-country.

At last week’s WPC event, Microsoft announced a new cloud strategy called “Cloud OS.” This strategy is supported by new software versions of Microsoft System Center and Windows Server, which offer customers the same capabilities as Microsoft Azure and Office365, but on-premise (or via a partner’s data center) and in a private cloud.

A hybrid approach is also possible. Applications can run in a private cloud and, if additional capacity is temporarily required, it can be securely obtained by reaching into Microsoft’s public cloud.

Just three years ago, Microsoft offered only public cloud capabilities hosted at Microsoft. It has come a long way since then. With the introduction of its Cloud OS strategy, it now gives customers the flexibility to chose how they want to deploy their applications and where—in the public cloud, a private cloud or a mix of the two (hybrid)—while ensuring a common user experience.

The new Microsoft software versions supporting the company’s Cloud OS strategy just now are being released. Over the next year, it will be interesting to see how clients respond to this change and how it will influence their own cloud strategies—and, as a Microsoft Global Alliance partner, we welcome the opportunity to help clients explore their cloud strategy.