Back in October 2011, Microsoft named the initiative to introduce Windows Azure cloud platform into the Chinese market “Moon Cake,” which represents harmony and happiness in Chinese culture. On May 23, 2013, Microsoft made the announcement in Shanghai that Windows Azure will be available in Chinese market starting on June 6 —  almost half a year after its agreement with Shanghai government and 21ViaNet to operate Windows Azure together last November. Chinese customers will finally be able to “taste” this foreign moon cake.

I believe that a new chapter of cloud is going to be written by a new ecosystem in China market, and Microsoft will be the leader of this disruption. My reasons:

• The cloud market in China will be more disrupted. Due to the regulatory limitations on data center and related telecom value-added services operations for foreign players, the cloud market for both infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) has been an easy battlefield for local players, such as Alibaba/HiChina. Microsoft’s innovative way working with both government and local service partners to break through this “great wall” shows all of the major global giants, such as Amazon.com, the great opportunity from this approach to the Chinese market. We can anticipate that they will also enter the Chinese market in the coming six to 18 months.

There’s one word that sums up what’s going on in the business of insurance right now: disruption. Last week, I had the opportunity to talk with an innovation team at a Tier 1 carrier. When I asked the group if they were feeling that big changes were afoot in the industry, there was lots of head nodding. Consider just these few catalysts of change:

• An improving economy driven by freshening winds in the US housing market.
• Activist consumers willing to both join forces with their insurers and at the same time regulate them through the power of social media.
• Converging physical and digital worlds that engage consumers through smart portable devices.
• Two maturing regulatory reforms: one that reorders the molecules of the health insurance industry and the second that’s creating a new industry (and risks), namely access to medical marijuana.

Three years ago, Stanford Communications Professor Emeritus Donald F. Roberts believed that American youth had hit a ceiling on media use, as there simply weren’t enough hours in the day to increase the amount of time children were spending on media. He was astounded to see that time spent on media consumption did in fact grow, as young individuals began consuming heavily across multiple devices at the same time. And the numbers have continued to increase since: More than 80% of US online consumers ages 12 to 17 multitask online while watching TV. 

Multitasking behavior among this demographic has changed not only in terms of the total number of hours but also in terms of the devices used. Forrester’s Consumer Technographics® data shows that in 2011, young consumers primarily went online via desktop or laptop computers while watching TV, while now they prefer to use more portable devices for multitasking activity:

Amazon announced today that its Kindle Fire HD tablet offerings will rocket from availability in just seven markets (U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Japan) to 170+ countries in mid-June. The 7” and 8.9” Amazon Kindle Fire HD models have enjoyed great success in the consumer market, as Forrester predicted they would even before the first device was released in November, 2011.

The move to expand geographically makes sense, as Amazon continues to capitalize on its core strength – its content + device + services value proposition – in consumer markets. Perhaps less obviously, though, Kindle Fire HD has turned out to be something of a stealth competitor in the bring-your-own-device (BYO) space.

In a survey of information workers in the U.S., Canada, U.K., France, and Germany – fielded from February to April 2013 – we found that, among those who say they use a tablet at least weekly for work: